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How the Boston Early Music Festival Went Online for 2021

Photo from the 2017 production of "Le Carnaval de Venise" at Boston Early Music Festival
Kathy Wittman
/
BEMF
Photo from the 2017 production of "Le Carnaval de Venise" at Boston Early Music Festival

Find out how BEMF is moving the 2021 Festival online, celebrate Martha Argerich's 80th birthday, and step inside the Divine Comedy, all in our latest roundup!

1. Wherever you are in the world, there's bound to be a neat little restaurant or bar playing some unique live music. Here are 12 of the coolest eat-in music venues on the planet, courtesy of Atlas Obscura. One of them is even in New England!

2. On June 5th, legendary pianist Martha Argerich turns 80! Celebrate her birthday with a few stories and musical excerpts from her astounding career.

Debussy: Fantaisie for Piano and Orchestra, L. 73 - II. Lento e molto espressivo

By the way, you can read about Argerich's triumphant 2017 return to Boston's Symphony Hall with the Celebrity Series of Boston here.

3. Looking for even more ways to fill your summer with (local) music? From The Boston Globe, here are 10.

4. Step inside Dante Alighieri's "Divine Comedy" in a multimedia experience showcasing an illuminated manuscript digitized, made 3D, and set to an otherworldly soundtrack. Here's a preview video, and you can explore for yourself here.

Comedia

5. "We’ve opened up our audience to people from six continents. There’s nothing like a live, in-person concert, all of us agree with that. But for myriad people who can’t come to Boston, this is the way to expose our beautiful music to them and to increase awareness of what we do. So why not?"

Why not, indeed? That's a quote from Boston Early Music Festival executive director Kathleen Fay, in this interview all about the upcoming virtual festival, starting on June 6th. (Also, shameless plug: part of the Festival took place in GBH's Fraser Performance Studio, and the recording engineer for the whole thing is our own Antonio Oliart Ros!)

Watch a preview for this year's centerpiece opera, Campra's "Le Carnaval de Venise:"

2021 Virtual Festival | Campra's Le Carnaval de Venise

Kendall Todd is the Content Manager for GBH Music.