Media Contact: Emily Kirk Weddle, Boston Baroque
eweddle@bostonbaroque.org | 617-987-8600
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
BOSTON, MA—Boston Baroque is delighted to announce a 2021-2022 Season with both in-person and virtual concerts and events. Boston Baroque’s five-concert series will be presented exclusively from the 5,000 square foot GBH Calderwood Studio, where live audiences on site and virtual audiences around the world will be welcomed to a new concert experience.
Boston Baroque will be the first Baroque orchestra in the world to stream its entire season on the global streaming platform IDAGIO, where concerts will be available through livestream and on demand options. “Although the next season marks some new directions for Boston Baroque, it’s also a natural next step for us,” says Music Director Martin Pearlman. “While we continue presenting great music on period instruments, Boston Baroque is embracing technology as a way to reach new audiences, much as we did when we became the first period instrument orchestra in North America to sign a major record deal with Telarc in 1992. I’m excited about the artistic possibilities that next season holds.”
This season is a new chapter and step into the future after a year of cataclysmic change for the field of early and classical music. Boston Baroque is committed to creatively bringing our mission to life in this new world. Season subscriptions will feature both virtual and in-person options, giving an opportunity for live and streaming audiences across the world to engage with high quality music in an intimate and interactive way. Programs will be presented in an immersive, visually sumptuous environment featuring high-quality lighting design, projection design, and carefully crafted camera angles.
“We’ve learned that our audiences’ expectations have evolved throughout this pandemic, and our 21-22 season aims to meet their changing needs,” says Executive Director Jennifer Ritvo Hughes. “Our audiences have come to cherish the opportunities to engage directly with our music and our musicians that an online format affords. Next season’s live studio audiences will have some really unique opportunities. There’s something special about knowing that audiences around the world are watching along with you, and I’m eagerly anticipating how this mix of in person and virtual audiences evolves.”
Safety will also remain a top priority for both musicians and audience members for the coming season. To accommodate more audience members in a safe and socially-distant manner, Boston Baroque will present more concerts with shortened programs, usually with no intermission. Audiences will also have a livestream and on demand option for all performances, made possible by Boston Baroque’s new streaming partner IDAGIO.
“We are delighted to welcome Boston Baroque to IDAGIO’s Global Concert Hall, sharing their vibrant 2021-2022 Season with audiences across the globe,” says Till Janczukowicz, Founder and CEO of IDAGIO. “This will be the first time a Baroque orchestra has streamed their entire season on IDAGIO, and we look forward to an ongoing collaboration with this celebrated ensemble.”
Founded in 2019, IDAGIO is the world’s leading streaming service for classical music, offering both video and audio streaming to music lovers in over 160 countries worldwide. Boston Baroque will present livestreams of in-person concerts from GBH Calderwood Studio on IDAGIO’s Global Concert Hall, joining organizations like the Vienna Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, and New World Symphony on the platform. Boston Baroque is honored to be the first American Baroque orchestra or ensemble to be featured on the global streaming platform IDAGIO, and looks forward to expanding our virtual offerings with this partnership.
THE 2021-2022 SEASON
The concert season will open on October 23rd and 24th with an all-orchestral program featuring Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks and Rebel’s Les Élémens. The no-intermission show will be performed four times across the two days, with performances at 3pm and 8pm, and one performance livestreamed on IDAGIO.
Boston Baroque will return to its beloved December holiday traditions of presenting Handel’s Messiah and a New Year’s Celebration Concert with a twist. Performances of Handel’s Messiah will be held on December 10, 11, and 12 at 7:30pm. Boston Baroque’s return to the beloved work will feature an all-star cast of soloists—soprano Maya Kherani will make her Boston Baroque debut while countertenor Christopher Lowrey, tenor Aaron Sheehan, and bass-baritone Kevin Deas will return to the Boston Baroque stage.
The New Year’s Celebration program will ring in the new year in style featuring Mozart’s Symphony No. 40, a violin concerto by Chevalier des Saint-Georges, and Cimarosa’s Il Maestro di Cappella with baritone David McFerrin. The performances will be held on December 31st and January 1st.
Boston Baroque will welcome its renowned chorus back to the stage on March 19th and 20th with Vivaldi’s Gloria and Handel’s Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day with tenor soloist Rufus Müller and soprano soloist Elena Villalón in her Boston Baroque debut. The performances will be held at 3pm and 8pm on both dates.
The 2021-2022 Season will conclude on April 21st, 22nd, and 24th with a new production of Handel’s Amadigi di Gaula. The opera will come to life in the hands of conductor Martin Pearlman, internationally-renowned stage director Louisa Muller, and an outstanding cast, including Metropolitan opera star countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, mezzo-soprano Daniela Mack in her Boston Baroque debut, soprano Amanda Forsythe, and soprano Camille Ortiz in her Boston Baroque debut.
2021-2022 Season Subscriptions are now on sale for $200 on Boston Baroque’s website or by calling (617) 987-8600. The foundation of 2021-2022 Season Subscriptions includes pre-sale access to in-person tickets when they go on sale in addition to livestream tickets to all concerts, virtual deep dives with musicians and experts from around the world, and access to releases from our concert archives. Single tickets will go on sale later this summer.
ABOUT BOSTON BAROQUE
The six-time GRAMMY®-nominated Boston Baroque is the first permanent Baroque orchestra established in North America and, according to Fanfare Magazine, is widely regarded as “one of the world’s premier period instrument bands.” The ensemble produces lively, emotionally charged, groundbreaking performances of Baroque and Classical works for today’s audiences performed on instruments and using performance techniques that reflect the eras in which the music was composed.
Founded in 1973 as “Banchetto Musicale” by Music Director Martin Pearlman, Boston Baroque’s orchestra is composed of some of the finest period instrument players in the United States, and is frequently joined by the ensemble’s professional chorus and by world-class instrumental and vocal soloists from around the globe. The ensemble has performed at major music centers across the United States and performed recently in Poland for the 2015 Beethoven Festival, with sold-out performances of Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 in Warsaw and Handel’s Messiah in Katowice.
Boston Baroque reaches an international audience with its twenty-five acclaimed recordings. In 2012, the ensemble became the first American orchestra to record with the highly-regarded UK audiophile label Linn Records, and its release of The Creation received great critical acclaim. In April 2014, the orchestra recorded Monteverdi’s rarely performed opera, Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in patria, which was released on Linn Records and received two nominations at the 2016 GRAMMY® Awards.
Boston Baroque’s recordings have received six GRAMMY® Award Nominations: its 1992 release of Handel’s Messiah, 1998 release of Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610, 2000 release of Bach’s Mass in B Minor, 2015 release of Monteverdi’s Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in patria, and 2018 release of Biber’s The Mystery Sonatas.
High-res photos available for download online: https://baroque.boston/press-kit
ABOUT MARTIN PEARLMAN, FOUNDING MUSIC DIRECTOR AND CONDUCTOR
Boston Baroque founder, music director, and conductor Martin Pearlman is one of this country’s leading interpreters of Baroque and Classical music on period and modern instruments. In addition to Boston Baroque’s annual concert season, Mr. Pearlman tours in the United States and Europe and has produced twenty-six major recordings for Telarc and Linn Records. Mr. Pearlman’s completion and orchestration of music from Mozart’s Lo Sposo Deluso, his performing version of Purcell’s Comical History of Don Quixote, and his new orchestration of Cimarosa’s Il Maestro di Cappella were all premiered by Boston Baroque.
Highlights of his work include the complete Monteverdi opera cycle, with his own new performing editions of L’incoronazione di Poppea and Il ritorno d’Ulisse; the American premiere of Rameau’s Zoroastre; the Boston premiere of Rameau’s Pigmalion; the New England premieres of Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride and Alceste; and the Beethoven symphonies on period instruments. Mr. Pearlman is also known for his internationally acclaimed series of Handel operas including Agrippina, Alcina, Giulio Cesare, and Semele. He made his Kennedy Center debut with The Washington National Opera in Handel’s Semele and has guest conducted the National Arts Center Orchestra of Ottawa, Utah Opera, Opera Columbus, Boston Lyric Opera, Minnesota Orchestra, San Antonio Symphony and the New World Symphony. Mr. Pearlman is the only conductor from the early music field to have performed live on the internationally televised GRAMMY® Awards show.
Mr. Pearlman grew up in Oak Park, Illinois, where he received training in composition, violin, piano, and theory. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Cornell University, where he studied composition with Karel Husa and Robert Palmer. In 1967–1968, he studied harpsichord in Amsterdam with Gustav Leonhardt on a Fulbright Grant, and in 1971 he received his Master of Music in composition from Yale University, studying composition with Yehudi Wyner and harpsichord with Ralph Kirkpatrick. After moving to Boston, he performed widely as a solo harpsichordist in the U. S. and Europe, and in 1973 he founded the first American period instrument orchestra, Banchetto Musicale, now called Boston Baroque. He also served as Professor of Music in the Historical Performance department at Boston University’s School of Music.
Recent compositions by Martin Pearlman include a string quartet, piano works, a comic chamber opera The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, a three-act work on Finnegans Wake, as well as The Creation According to Orpheus, for solo piano, harp, percussion and string orchestra. He has also composed music for three plays of Samuel Beckett, commissioned by and premiered at New York’s 92nd Street Y and performed at Harvard University.
BOSTON BAROQUE 2021-2022 CONCERT SEASON AT-A-GLANCE
October 23, 2021 at 3pm & 8pm*
October 24, 2021 at 3pm & 8pm
GBH Calderwood Studio
*Performance streamed live on IDAGIO
REBEL: Les Élémens
CORELLI: Concerto Grosso
HANDEL: Flute Suite in G Major from Water Music
HANDEL: Music for the Royal Fireworks
December 10, 2021 at 7:30pm
December 11, 2021 at 7:30pm*
December 12, 2021 at 7:30pm
GBH Calderwood Studio
*Performance streamed live on IDAGIO
HANDEL: Messiah
Maya Kherani, soprano
Christopher Lowrey, countertenor
Aaron Sheehan, tenor
Kevin Deas, bass-baritone
December 31, 2021 at 3pm & 8pm*
January 1, 2022 at 1pm & 4pm
GBH Calderwood Studio
*Performance streamed live on IDAGIO
MOZART: Symphony No. 40
CHEVALIER de SAINT-GEORGES: Violin Concerto
CIMAROSA: Il Maestro di Cappella
David McFerrin, baritone
March 19, 2022 at 3pm & 8pm*
March 20, 2022 at 3pm & 8pm
GBH Calderwood Studio
*Performance streamed live on IDAGIO
HANDEL: Ode for St. Cecilia
Elena Villalón, soprano
Rufus Müller, tenor
VIVALDI: Gloria
April 21, 2022 at 7:30pm
April 22, 2022 at 7:30pm*
April 24, 2022 at 3pm
GBH Calderwood Studio
*Performance streamed live on IDAGIO
OPERA
HANDEL: Amadigi di Gaula
Anthony Roth Costanzo, Amadigi
Daniela Mack, Dardano
Amanda Forsythe, Melissa
Camille Oritz, Oriana
Louisa Muller, stage director
