EMA FEATURES & PRESS RELEASES
America250: A Braided Tale in Music
Brace yourself for tri-cornered hats and fife-and-drum renditions of 'Yankee Doodle.' Nostalgia aside, America250 is an opportunity to reflect on the broader trajectories of our musical heritage. We lose something profound if this moment is nothing more than a self-congratulatory celebration.
Praise for Harvard Baroque Returning to Its Roots
Letter to the Editor: 'It’s sort of a compliment that the current re-structuring of the Harvard Baroque Chamber Orchestra is taken as a paradigm for the decline in early-music studies in higher education...I see HBCO returning to its roots in a necessary and salutary way.'
Warm Up That Pen!
From the Executive Director: Early music suffered another painful blow when the Harvard Baroque Chamber Orchestra lost its university funding. But if we want to keep historical performance alive, we have to think bigger than just protecting individual programs at the collegiate level, and, for nonprofit ensembles, think bigger than just fighting for our own little slice of pie.
A Monster in This Part of the World
The rise of public concerts in the 1720s and '30s was in indicator of social innovations that would come to the fore during the American Revolution. Remarkably, colonial America produced musicians and paying audiences needed for public concerts not long after the trend started in Europe. But not everyone on our shores approved.
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EMA RECORDING & BOOK REVIEWS
Sleepwalkers, Outcasts, Beauty, Chaos
Great artists express their identities through their art, yet many artists are forced to live in a society that does not accept their true identity. 'Passing Fancy: Beauty in a Moment of Chaos,' from Sonnambula, an ensemble of violins, viols, and keyboard, explores works by a range of such societal outcasts from the 16th and 17th centuries.
Cantata Collective Delivers the Latest ‘St. Matthew Passion’
New recordings of Bach's 'Saint Matthew Passion' continue to come at us apace. The latest, from the Bay Area's Cantata Collective, is highlighted by stellar vocal soloists and by Nicholas McGegan's emotionally subtle conducting.
Music to Accompany the Canterbury Tales
Searching for music actually linked to the late-14th c. 'Canterbury Tales,' Elisabeth Ellison found almost none. So she searched the archives and found dance tunes and sacred works that Geoffrey Chaucer and his pilgrims may have heard in their own day.
The Murky Space Between Page and Stage
As historically informed musicians know, a performance conveys much more than just the notes on a page. 'Performing by the Book,' a recent collection of essays, covers an enormous temporal range — not exhaustive, of course, but by moving from the 15th century to the 21st it yields interesting comparisons.
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COMMUNITY NEWS & PRESS RELEASES
The North American Virtual Recorder Society (NAVRS) presents Valentina Bellanova for Bella Italia: Echoes of Folk Traditions in Medieval and Renaissance Consort Saturday, June 20 at 2:00PM, ET. Valentina will lead ...
ALBA Consort Presents "The Nightingale Sings": A Transcontinental Musical Journey from Spain to Persia NEW YORK, NY — ALBA Consort announces its upcoming performance, "The Nightingale Sings," taking place on ...
Les Bostonades’ 20th anniversary season culminates in a grand finale on June 6 featuring celebrated Parisian-based American tenor Zachary Wilder with period chamber orchestra. This festive program of audience favorites ...
Tempesta di Mare, the award-winning Philadelphia Baroque orchestra, today announces the appointment of Juan Gallastegui as its new Managing Director, effective May 22, 2026. Gallastegui succeeds Ulrike Shapiro after twenty ...
Published in 2026 to mark the four-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Louis Couperin, the Louis Couperin 400 series from Lyrebird Music presents substantially revised and expanded editions of the ...
