It is with immense sadness that The Boston Camerata, its Artistic Director, Musicians, Staff and Board announce the death of Joel Cohen on July 26 in Haverhill, Ma.
A charismatic leader, he directed the Camerata from 1963 to 2008.
On 16 July 2026, under the direction of Anne Azéma, The Boston Camerata returns to the Tanglewood Music Festival and perform Free America: Early Songs of Resistance and Rebellion (1790–1860) at Seiji Ozawa Hall.
After a long hiatus, enriched by other musical discoveries, The Boston Camerata is eager to return to the captivating repertoire of arguably the most famous English-musician of his day: John Dowland. This year especially, as 2026 marks the 400th anniversary of his death.
Looking to the past in order to better understand the present, in the opening performance of its 71st season, The Boston Camerata continues to explore age-old themes of justice and corruption with satirical works from the Middle Ages.
Commissioned by the Reims Festival for the 800th anniversary of their Cathedral, The Boston Camerata’s A Gallery of Kings program, presented by the Boston Early Music Festival, has its U.S. premiere this June.
The classic and much admired collaboration between the Tero Saarinen Company (TSC) and The Boston Camerata (TBC) now returns to the stage 20 years after its premiere.
Leading the second half of our 70th anniversary season programming, Anne Azéma’s powerful staging of Daniel reverberates once again at Trinity Church Copley Square on January 19, 2025 at 2pm. This contemporary production involves lights, movement, urgent poetry, and a sterling cast of seasoned professionals, children, and students of the Longy School of Music of Bard College.
The holiday season is fast-approaching, and The Boston Camerata is delighted to offer two celebratory programs: A Medieval Christmas: Hodie Christus Natus Est tours Maine and Massachusetts December 5-8, and A German Christmas: In Dulci Jubilo comes to Cambridge, MA on December 22.
With an unusually long and distinguished career, immersed at every moment in [early] music and the riches of musical history, the Boston Camerata rejoices in seven decades of historically-informed performance, research, community outreach, and musical education.
Something extraordinary is about to happen: The Boston Camerata, America’s leading early music ensemble, is about to celebrate a milestone anniversary.
This week the Massachusetts Cultural Council (MCC) awarded $51 million of Cultural Sector Pandemic Recovery Grants to organizations and individuals. The Boston Camerata is proud to be among the recipients! We are grateful to MCC and everyone who advocates for arts funding at the state and national level.
Many moods, both somber and joyful, will be expressed in the Boston Camerata’s upcoming concert season, featuring four productions of Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque early music.
The Thomas Binkley Award honors individuals who, in their roles as leaders of collegiate early-music ensembles, have made outstanding contributions to the study and performance of early music.
Douce Dame Jolie: Guillaume de Machau’ts Last Affair, Camerata’s version of Machaut’s verse novel Le Voir Dit — The True Story, was first created for the Reims Festival in 2011, and will soon receive its US premiere. The program provides a nuanced and intimate perspective on timeless human circumstances and emotions.
Anne Azéma, Artistic Director of The Boston Camerata, has been promoted to the ran of Officier (Officer) of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Government.
The Boston Camerata, under Anne Azéma’s director, continues its pioneering musical explorations in 2021-22 with a three-concert series, ranging from the early Middle Ages to the American spiritual tradition of the nineteenth century.
“Thursday night’s [16 July 2026] concert by The Boston Camerata at Tanglewood’s Seiji Ozawa Hall featured a fantastically brilliant program of early American songs grappling with the challenges of the young Republic. The thrilling beauty of the music vied with the gripping power of the content.”
– Anne Davenport, The Boston Musical Intelligencer
Photo credit: Hilary Scott, courtesy of the Boston Symphony Orchestra
“The notes of ‘O Zion Arise,’ sung by bass-baritone Phillip Bullock, rang through the rafters of the Alna Meetinghouse. The audience held a collective breath as drums, flutes, and more voices joined, leading the ensemble to ‘Yankee Doodle’. At times, the audience joined in, singing the chorus of songs written when the meetinghouse was first built.”
Free America! opens The Boston Camerata’s 72nd on Sunday, July 12, at 2pm at Alna’s historic meetinghouse.
“The group will sing early American songs, hymns, and marches from the years 1790-1860, performed inside a timber-frame meetinghouse built when much of the music was new.”
This Sunday, July 12, at 2pm, The Boston Camerata presents Free America! Early Songs of Resistance and Rebellion at the Alna Meetinghouse.
“Built in the same year that George Washington was first inaugurated as president, Alna’s 1789 Meetinghouse is one of the few physical connections in Lincoln County to the founding era — and a particularly fitting venue for songs from the decades that immediately followed”, said Ed Pentaleri, one of Historic Alna’s directors.
Partnering with Historic Alna, The Boston Camerata will present Free America! Early Songs of Resistance and Rebellion at the Alna Meetinghouse on Sunday, July 12 at 2pm.
“The program — songs, hymns, and marches from the early American republic — will be performed inside a building that was constructed when this music was new.”
“Picture Anne Azéma leading her esteemed cohort from the Boston Camerata and performing 13th-century music of courtly love and legend. Now picture Azéma with the same cohort, performing the same music but for a strategic, turn-based combat computer role-playing game recently released on Steam and already explored avidly by gamers and reviewers on Discord.”
Artifice Studio announced the release date for their Legends of the Round Table RPG! The game features music recorded by musicians of The Boston Camerata.
“An authentic soundtrack featuring live lute and harp performances enhances the atmosphere. This includes haunting vocals by Anne Azéma of The Boston Camerata.”
The Boston Camerata will revisit the captivating repertoire of arguably one of the most important English musicians before Purcell: John Dowland (1563–1626). At the ensemble’s February 15th “Farewell, Unkind: Songs and Dances of John Dowland” concert at Longy’s Pickman Hall, internationally admired British lutenist Nigel North will guide and sustain five voices’ travels through the marvelous Dowland cosmos.
Artistic Director Anne Azéma leads a program of Dowland’s lute songs and dances, joined by British lutenist Nigel North [pictured left] and five vocalists including Corey Dalton Hart, Andrew Padgett, Camila Parias, and Deborah Rentz-Moore.
“Additional guests at Ozawa Hall this summer include some familiar faces for Bostonians, including the Boston Symphony Chamber Players, The Boston Camerata and A Far Cry with pianist Simone Dinnerstein; and Silkroad Ensemble with Rhiannon Giddens.”
Early music ensemble The Boston Camerata returns to Tanglewood to present Free America! Early Songs of Resistance and Rebellion. Led by the Camerata’s artistic director Anne Azéma, the program explores the vital and life-affirming sounds of the young Republic, as its citizens stood and played forth their love of freedom and their rejection of tyranny. (Thurs., July 16, 8 p.m.)
“It’s a pretty eclectic, but I must say thrilling lineup of programs and artists that we’ve managed to include in the season…Our own Boston Camerata, which will be doing early American Revolutionary music.”
– Tony Fogg, Vice President for Artistic Planning at the Boston Symphony, in an interview with Brian McCreath (CRB)
What could be more touching and delightful than an evening of Dowland presented by The Boston Camerata, under the direction of Anne Azéma, now in its 72nd year.
In the Nonesuch holiday playlist of “tunes both classic and soon-to-be”, Camerata is featured with tracks from A Medieval Christmas (1975), Sing We Noel: Christmas Music from England & Early America (1978), A Renaissance Christmas (1985), and A Baroque Christmas (1991).
“The U.S. premiere of Boston Camerata’s ‘Gallery of Kings’ this past June was an evening made up of stories of regal deeds and misdeeds through songs and texts.”
As the Camerata prepares for its second program of the Christmas 2025 season, The Midnight Cry: An American Christmas (Dec. 21, 2025, 4:00pm at First Church in Cambridge), BMInt engaged with Director Emeritus, Joel Cohen and Artistic Director, Anne Azéma to collect reminiscences and reflections on Camerata’s 50-year history of holiday programming.
“Boston Camerata has crafted a cornucopia of holiday programs in its 70-plus years of existence, and it usually performs two of them every December. This year’s offerings both originate from emeritus music director Joel Cohen’s long tenure, but current director Anne Azéma has revised and augmented them.”
“Boston Camerata returns to Lincoln Theater in Damariscotta at 3 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 4 to present ‘Sing We Noel: Christmas Music from England and Early America.'”
“Drawing on perennial repertoire for the Camerata, music director Anne Azéma crafted an experience that brought tears to our eyes, sometimes from laughter and in others from a despairing sense of the profound sameness of injustice across history…’City of Fools’ proved that early music still has relevance for the modern listener beyond simply a historical curiosity. It can tell us something about our own society today.”
Through story, song, missives, and popular gibes at authority, the Boston Camerata program looked at kings remembered for their great deeds and those commemorated for their bumbling idiocy.
From Artifice Studio, Legends of the Round Table is an RPG (role-playing game) inspired by authentic Medieval tales, transporting players into the historical and magical world of King Arthur. Play for the rich narratives, 13th-century inspired hand-drawn art, and to hear Camerata musicians perform throughout your adventures!
The Boston Camerata presents two programs in Spring 2025: Trav’ling Home (April 26 & 27) and A Gallery of Kings: Uses and Abuses of Power ca. 1300 (June 10).
This reprise of Borrowed Light, “a classic, even a mythical work” (Dancer Canal Historique, March 2025), born from a collaboration between The Boston Camerata and Tero Saarinen Company, has been met in Finland and France by sold out halls and enthusiastic standing ovations.
6 March 2025
Radio France
Dans la discographie de la Boston Camerata: « La Boston Camerata fête ses 70 ans cette année. À l’occasion de la venue de la directrice musicale, Anne Azéma, dans la matinale de Jean-Baptiste Urbain, on plonge dans sa discographie. »
« Dans la pénombre, des voix s’élèvent tandis que les silhouettes des danseurs se mettent en mouvement. Doucement, souplement, comme s’ils s’éveillaient au monde… »
Borrowed Light, Le figaro 2011 (Reposted February 2025)
« Leur spectacle Borrowed Light, sur les shakers (puritains de Nouvelle-Angleterre), créé avec le chorégraphe Tero Saarinen, au Havre, en 2004, et repris mercredi au festival Automne en Normandie, fut nommé l’an passé meilleur spectacle de la décennie par la critique américaine, au terme d’une tournée de quarante dates ! »
Boston Music Intelligencer: The fiery prophecies of Daniel, young captive in corrupt Babylon, will ring forth again. Anne Azéma’s new production of the greatest musical play from the French Middle Ages involves deeply evocative lighting, movement, urgent poetry, and a sterling cast. Seasoned professionals will partner with children and Longy School of Music of Bard College students to make 1310 happen again at Trinity Church, Copley Square on January 19th at 2:00.
“Boston Camerata proved that medieval music can resonate as much as holiday music of today in a well-attended performance on Friday [December 6] night in Belmont.”
“Music conveys the flow of history, Cohen says. Boston Camerata concerts show ‘that something old can still make you vibrate, that something comes alive across the centuries.'”
“In 1954, with playable instruments in hand, a collective of Boston musicians started experimenting with early repertoires from a remote musical world…”
“Anne Azéma’s internationally acclaimed and always compelling early-music group kicks off its season with one of its rousing specialties, We’ll Be There! American Spirituals, Black and White, 1800-1900” ~ Lloyd Schwartz
“But Boston Camerata’s smart and economical take on the composer’s only fully sung drama, heard at Pickman Hall Saturday night, provided a glimpse into the very nature of Baroque spectacle.”
“Under Anne Azéma’s veteran leadership, Camerata offers a candlelit performance of Charpentier’s “Messe de Minuit” alongside Christmas music from the Burgundian court and more.”
“[This concert] was beautiful and vibrant … revealing … This is something one almost never hears examined in the context of classical music, and it was moving and exciting to witness it come alive.”
“Sensitive and enthusiastic…free from any trace of academicism…spiritual serenity. The [Camerata] ensemble is full of grace, extraordinarily eloquent.”
“The Camerata produces a joyous, tightly defined sound in these chants, songs, and processionals, many familiar from its indelible live performances.” View as PDF
“The singing is crisp, pure, yet with plenty of emotional heft… The accompaniments – on medieval fiddle, harp, bells and ancient winds – are lively and evocative.”
“I have had the pleasure of being joined by the Camerata’s long-time performer and now director, Anne Azéma… Her wit, intelligence, and devotion to the craft shine through in every performance and conversation.”
