Boston Camerata Announces 2019-2020 Tours

The Boston Camerata, America's preeminent early music ensemble, has announced their 2019-2020 Boston performance season. The concerts and events span from historic Faneuil Hall in downtown Boston, MA, to Seattle, WA. Songs of freedom, rebellion, independence, and love heard through the perspective of early music provide a powerful look at today's political and cultural landscape.

A September 2019 Harmonia Mundi release of the Camerata's latest recording, Free America, ties in with the season-opening performances of the same name with newly recorded songs from the late 1700s and early 1800s. Commissioned by the Paris Philharmonie and recorded in France in September 2018, this CD will be the basis for both the Boston and Portland, ME concerts, and a concert in Boston's sister-city Strasbourg, France on October 5, 2019. Listen to a sample on Spotify.

"Every generation faces deep challenges, and ours is no exception says Anne Azéma, Camerata Artistic Director. The Boston Camerata presents a life-affirming musical season full of both challenge and consolation. Let's celebrate, together, the healing forces of music and the arts as we strive to move ourselves, and our beloved nation, into a better place."

La Reina Joiosa

September 15, 2019, 6:00 pm
Via Mediaeval, Klingenmünster Monastary, Weinstraße 40, 76889 Klingenmünster, Germany
URL: http://www.via-mediaeval.de/?fbclid=IwAR16M0PuU-kZKURhuiolj3zjPoEH9JHJOCYRbv2xa0lfthkwWZ5HO9ZiPP8

With its jubilee edition, Via Mediæval looks back on 20 years of concerts and presents "old acquaintances," both as performers and in the choice of spaces. Anne Azéma, a Via Mediæval favorite, returns to perform "La Reina Joiosa" (The Happy Queen), music from France and Provence.

Free America! Songs of Revolt and Rebellion (1790-1860)

October 5, 2019, 8pm
Palais de la Musique, Auditorium Cassin, Strasbourg, France

Free to the public at large

URL: https://bostoncamerata.org/performances/touring/

November 8, 2019, 8pm
Faneuil Hall, 4 S Market St, Boston, MA 02109
Tickets: $26-$63; students $10
URL: https://bostoncamerata.org/performances/boston-series/

December 1, 2019, 8pm
Portland Ovations, Hannaford Hall, USM Campus, 88 Bedford Street, Portland, ME 04101
Tickets: $47-$51

URL: https://boxoffice.porttix.com/boston-camerata-portland-ovations-portland-maine

"These are the times that try mens' souls," wrote Thomas Paine in 1776. But what fantastic music and verse arose from those early years of our Republic, as its citizens sang and played forth their love of freedom and their rejection of tyranny! This program explores, during a time when American ideals are undergoing such deep challenges, the vital and life-affirming sounds of the young Republic. The rough-hewn sounds of citizen-composers, such as the Boston tanner Billings or the Vermont tavern-keeper Ingalls, still ring true and strong today. And Liberty's early attendants -- feminists, abolitionists, freed slaves, Boston rascals and the insolent scallywags of "Yankee Doodle" all remind us that in our musical roots lies our true strength.

Exhilarating part songs, marches, anthems, jigs, and ballads from early prints and manuscript sources in a program first commissioned by the Paris Philharmonie and first performed there last fall 2018 and now the subject of a new Harmonia Mundi CD.

The concerts in Strasbourg, France and Boston, MA celebrate the Sister City partnership between the two cities, first established in 1960. The birthplace of Camerata Artistic Director Anne Azéma, Strasbourg is a center of government, economy, culture, education, and medicine.

Puer Natus Est: A Medieval Christmas

December 6, 2019, 5pm

Lane Concert Series, Burlington, VT

https://www.uvm.edu/laneseries/concerts_and_performances

December 7 and 8, 2019, 5pm
Early Music Now, St. Joseph Chapel, 1501 S Layton Blvd, Milwaukee, WI 53215
Tickets: $29-$59

URL: https://earlymusicnow.secure.force.com/ticket/#sections_a0F2L00000thxuRUAQ

December 14, 2019, 3pm
Union College Concerts, Memorial Chapel, Schenectady, NY 12308

Tickets: $35

URL: https://unioncollegeconcerts.org/products/boston-camerata-12-14-19

A glimpse of Christmas spirituality from Medieval France, Italy, England, and Provence, including music of the church and songs of private devotion around the joyous theme of the Nativity. Included are songs to the Virgin Mary, processionals from Saint Martial of Limoges, hymns, lyrics, and miracle ballads sung in Latin, Old French, Old Provençal, and Saxon, interlaced with Medieval English texts of the Nativity. Our cast features an extraordinary trio of women's voices with harp and vielle. Anne Azéma, Camila Parias, Deborah Rentz-Moore, voices; Christa Patton, winds, harp; Allison Monroe, Vielle.

La Estrella: A Hispanic Christmas

December 20-22, 2019:
December 20, 8pm, All Saints' Church - Ashmont, 209 Ashmont St, Dorchester Center, MA 02124

December 21, 8pm, First Parish Church of Newbury, 20 High St, Newbury, MA 01951
December 22, 4pm, The First Parish in Cambridge, 1446 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA 02138

Tickets: $26-$63; students $10
URL: https://bostoncamerata.org/performances/boston-series/

This exuberant, vivacious program celebrates Christmas with music from the Spanish speaking parts of the globe: Medieval and Renaissance Iberia, and the Hispanic settlements of the New World. Encounters among indigenous Americans, the Spaniards, and West Africans produced some extraordinary musical results -- unusual vocal colors, soulful melodies, and irresistible rhythms, sustained in our production by winds, keyboards, gamba, baroque guitar, and Iberian harp. The exceptional singers and instrumentalists of the Camerata (Colombia and North America) are joined by Les Fleurs des Caraïbes and The Hispanic Children's Choir at Immaculate Conception under the direction of Oscar Olmos.

Daniel: A Masterpiece Revisited (The Play of Daniel)

January 18, 2020, 7:30pm

Early Music Seattle, St. Mark's Cathedral, 1245 10th Avenue E, Seattle, WA

Tickets: $20-$45

URL: https://app.arts-people.com/index.php'show=100886

January, 25, 2020, 8pm

First Church Cambridge, 11 Garden St, Cambridge, MA 02138

Tickets: $26-$63; students $10
URL: https://bostoncamerata.org/performances/boston-series/

February 2, 2020, 2pm - Salem, OR Debut

St. Paul's Episcopal Church, 1444 Liberty Street SE, Salem, OR 97302

http://images.acswebnetworks.com/1/2742/SPMG_1920_WEBb.pdf

February 3-8, 2020 - Eugene, OR Debut

University of Oregon School of Music and Dance, 961 E 18th Ave, Eugene, OR 97403

https://music.uoregon.edu/

This ambitious production combines old and new, bringing together music and movement, theater and liturgy, light and shadow, to retell the biblical story of the young prophet-in-exile. The underlying, still-contemporary themes of truth to power, tyranny punished, and of redemption from bondage, are brilliantly served by Anne Azéma's staging and by an extraordinary singing cast.

Daniel was conceived in the Middle Ages as a student play, of and by irreverent young people. Camerata's production incorporates and develops this basic idea. The Boston Camerata principals (voice and instruments) are supported by Peter Torpey's deeply evocative lighting and special effects. Other participants in the play are recruited among students, choristers, children's choir, as well as the public. The Camerata's Daniel was premiered in 2014, has since toured in the US three times (2017, 2018, 2020) and returns now to our series.

The Night's Tale: A Tournament of Love

April 17, 2020, 7:30pm

UChicago Arts, Assembly Hall, International House, University of Chicago, 1414 E 59th St, Chicago, IL 60637

URL: https://ticketsweb.uchicago.edu/shows/the%20boston%20camerata/events

April 19, 2020, 2:30pm
Linda Hall Library, 5109 Cherry Street, Kansas City, MO 64110
Tickets: $15-$35

URL: https://tickets.vendini.com/ticket-software.html?t=tix&e=dcf48592565de387bad2b1c29f526bf4

The Night's Tale is a music-theater production created by Boston Camerata director Anne Azéma, based on a medieval French narrative of festivity, tournaments, and love games.
Our performance captures a day's celebrations. Daylight is the domain of men, who joust and fight in ritual encounters; when night falls, women converse in music and dance, far from the masculine violence of the daytime. Mutual desire aroused during the day culminates in the evening's rites --aggressive and courtly, passionate and playful. Lighting and Design, Peter Torpey.

The Three Sisters: Songs of Love and Passion, ca 1300

April 25, 2020, 8pm

Pickman Hall, Longy School of Music of Bard College, 27 Garden St, Cambridge, MA 02138

Tickets: $26-$63; students $10
URL: https://bostoncamerata.org/performances/boston-series/

Camerata's new offering to the spirit of Spring: a conversation, via fabulous, age-old music and poetry, and very much from the female point of view, around the always-contemporary themes of desire, yearning, and fulfillment. These songs will be performed by a virtuoso consort of women in love (or not); Anne Azéma, joined by Camila Parias, Clare McNamara, voices, and Susanne Ansorg, vielle and guittern.

Photo Credit Dan Busler

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