Songs and stories of powerful Kings, both good and bad, abound in the Middle Ages. “May he reign forever!” sings the crowd, but the monarch's power is limited: by his fallible judgement, his formidable adversaries, his love of power, and his own, precarious mortality. These ancient songs of kingship and its snares in Latin, German, Galician, Old English and French resonate strongly down the centuries, into our own, turbulent time.

In the European North, the forests are deep; the nights are dark and long. Perhaps this is why, in reaction, the early Christmas music of the German-speaking peoples is so intensely joyful and profoundly rich. Our program explores the marvelous music of German Christmas festivity through chants and chorales, simple carols, grandiose polyphony, and instrumental fantasias of the 15th to early 17th centuries.

Experience our recent Harmonia Mundi CD release live and in-person! Transcendent Christmas music, featuring a superb all-female ensemble of voices and instruments. The sounds 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.

2024 Program & Notes

The Christmas narrative retold using songs, chants, and instrumental pieces from the countries of the Mediterranean basin: Spain, Italy, and southern France, as well as north Africa and the Holy Land. Works are drawn from medieval manuscripts and more recent, though still archaic, folklore and oral traditions. With voices, early instruments of Europe and the Middle East, and readings of the Christmas story. We are joined by SHARQ Arabic Ensemble.

Camerata's pioneering exploration of folk hymnody in the young Republic includes spiritual songs, hymns, and anthems in a vigorous and authentic homegrown manner. This style, recalling many elements of European early music, grew up in the singing schools of colonial New England, travelled South and West in the 19th century, and continues to live on thanks to a new generation of motivated singers in all parts of the country.

From the early years of the American republic, and from a wide range of early tune books and manuscripts, a generous selection of carols, New England anthems, Southern folk hymns and religious ballads for the season.

In collaboration with the Tero Saarinen Company (TSC), Borrowed Light captures the ritualistic essence of dance and the profound strength of community. Inspired by the radical Shakers movement of the 1700s and 1800s, the work explores total surrender and devotion to a community. The live performance of original Shaker hymns by The Boston Camerata fills the space with ethereal harmonies that echo through the repetitive rituals of the movement. Collective identity can carry towards something greater, but at what point do its rigid values push the individual to the very limits of their devotion?

This TSC classic returns to the program 20 years after its premiere! 6 performances at Dance House Helsinki 21 February -- 1 March 2025.

Music of renewal and hope, from Jewish, Christian and Muslim traditions, as our planet emerges from trying months.  A performance plus a conversation with Anne Azéma and Joel Cohen.

Drawing on the original 13th-century manuscript, The Boston Camerata’s Carmina Burana presents a panoramic portrait of student and clerical life in medieval Europe: paeans to the Goddess Fortune, funny and ferocious critiques of Church and State, earnest meditations on truth and righteousness, and a generous serving of songs about drinking, gambling and amorous adventure. With its usual verve and vivacity, the Camerata gives a deepened, in turn exuberant and contemplative reading of this manuscript, under the direction of vocalist Anne Azéma.

A cornucopia of French Christmas music for voices, viols, harp and organ. Serene liturgies from the Burgundian court mingle with late Renaissance and early Baroque carols and dances. A candlelit performance of Charpentier's beloved Messe de Minuit is the centerpiece of our evening.

This program will explore the connection between earthly and celestial forces as expressed in some distinct, compelling visions. Wind player and composer Mara Winter will lead Camerata through musings on humankind’s relationship to the universe, the mystery of creation, and the magic of the natural world, sung in all three of medieval Britain’s literary languages: Latin, English and French. The essential role of instruments in the musical fabric of medieval Britain will also featured, with originally composed instrumental monophony performed in the high medieval style, blending playfully from traditional forms of instrumental music that survive today in the British Isles.“We will travel in an arc through each of these visions and allegory to contemplate the role which the natural world plays in representing the celestial spheres at play on Earth, the moving and unmoving spheres of the cosmos” says Mara. An exciting chance to see the wonderful work of our close team under a new guest leadership!

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Shortly before an important American election, this new program of songs and poems from the Middle Ages evokes the age-old themes of justice and corruption in the public sphere. Minstrel songs from medieval France, Provençe, and Germany, amazingly contemporary in their language, provide an amusing and sharply-etched perspective on our current travails. Includes pungent selections from the Play of Daniel, Carmina Burana, and Roman de Fauvel; works by gifted musican-poets Philippe le Chancelier, Bertran de Born, and Thibault de Champagne; and a very American ending.

On this fascinating and inspiring concert, Camerata will perform songs by the many religious groups that came to Boston and New England, beginning with the Puritans in 1640, to the hymn and anthem-singing Congregationalists and Universalists of the eighteenth century, to the utopian Shakers of Maine and Massachusetts, whose enormous production of spirituals and dance songs reveal themselves as central to the American dream of the Shining City. Solemn and virtuous hymn singing contrasts with the barroom ballads that became religious songs. Carefully ordered worship contrasts with inspired dancing, joyful revelation, and hope for a better world.

The fiery prophecies of Daniel, young captive in corrupt Babylon, ring forth again. This stunning, contemporary new production by Anne Azéma of the greatest musical play from the French Middle Ages involves lights, movement, urgent poetry, and a sterling cast including seasoned professionals, children, and Longy School of Music of Bard College students, to make 1310 happen again, in 2025. Our singers and musicians are supported by Peter Torpey's deeply evocative lighting and special effects.

Catch live and in-person Camerata’s new and staged production of Purcell's only true opera. Artistic Director Anne Azéma leads a stellar cast, with Tahanee Aluwihare as Dido, Luke Scott as Aeneas, Camila Parias as Dido's sister Belinda, and Jordan Weatherston Pitts as the Sorcerer, with Peter Torpey’s evocative lighting and media elements.

Virtual Pre-Concert Talk: Prof. Ellen T. Harris, MIT

This new production of Purcell's only true opera features live performance and media elements conceived by Peter Torpey, all stitched together to be viewed from the safety and comfort of your home.

Artistic Director Anne Azéma leads a stellar cast, with Tahanee Aluwihare as Dido, Luke Scott as Aeneas, Camila Parias as Dido's sister Belinda, and Jordan Weatherston Pitts as the Sorcerer, assisted by students from Longy School of Music of Bard College.

About two years before he composed his famous Mass, the aging master and churchman Guillaume de Machaut fell in love with the too-young noblewoman Péronne d'Armentière, poetess, dancer, and musician, and an unconditional admirer of the older genius and his works. Their bittersweet story, told in the words of both Machaut and Péronne, and sung to the accompaniment of harps, lutes, and vielles, comprises some of the most beautiful and touching love music of the late Middle Ages, including many songs composed and dedicated by the two lovers to each other in the course of their impossible affair.

This program explores, during a time when American ideals are undergoing such deep challenges, the vital and life-affirming sounds of the young Republic as its citizens sang and played forth their love of freedom and their rejection of tyranny. 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.

A joyful celebration of the season, with virtuoso voices and instruments performing magnificent Italian works of the Renaissance and early Baroque. Music ranging from intimate simplicity to sumptuous splendor including sacred songs of devotion, instrumental fantasias, and resplendent choral masterpieces of Venice's Golden Age. Music of Monteverdi, Gabrieli, Cipriano, Marenzio and many more performed by voices, cornetto, viola da gamba, harp, brass and organ. Not be missed!

As a prelude to Carl Orff’s extravagant Carmina Burana, Boston Camerata presents a vivacious portrait of student and clerical life in medieval Europe.

In the European North, the forests are deep; the nights are dark and long. Perhaps this is why, in reaction, the early Christmas music of the German-speaking peoples is so intensely joyful, so profoundly rich. Our program explores the marvelous music of German Christmas festivity through chants and chorales, simple carols, grandiose polyphony, and instrumental fantasias of the 15th to early 17th centuries.

This exuberant, vivacious program celebrates Christmas with music from the Spanish speaking parts of the globe: 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, keyboard, gamba, baroque guitar, and Iberian harp. The exceptional singers and instrumentalists of the Camerata are joined by local choirs, including the marvelous Fleurs des Caraïbes.

Anne Azéma performs joyful regal music from France and Provence in Monk Hall

Camerata, born at the Museum of Fine Arts in 1954, joins again with our mother institution to celebrate a milestone anniversary. Our superb singers and instrumentalists will re-create some of those first, pioneering Museum performances, echo in live music some of the visual treasures of the Museum collections, and showcase some of our present-day adventures in sound.

Lands of Pure Delight Program

Medieval Paris was not only a center of learning, debate, art, and architecture: it was also a capital of musical creation and innovation, the most important in Europe. You will hear the magnificent vocal music sung within the walls of the great cathedral, as well as miracle tales, student songs, and minstrel turns performed in Notre Dame’s shadow, on either bank of the steadily flowing Seine. A feast!

Hear a preview clip here.

We offer a summer buffet of music for our Maine friends, plus a sneak preview of our 2017-18 season! An opening set of love songs, chants, and spirituals from medieval France is followed by a feast of home-cooked ballads, Revolutionary partsongs, and paeans to American heroes, including pieces from the earliest Maine songbooks.

The Camerata brings the soul of the American founding generation to life through hymns, polyphonic songs, and ballads. This concert will explores the vital and life-affirming sounds of the young Republic as its citizens sang and played forth their love of freedom and their rejection of tyranny. The rough-hewn works of citizen-composers, such as Boston tanner William Billings or Vermont tavern-keeper Jeremiah Ingalls, still ring true to our contemporary ears.

Le Tournoi de Chauvency, written circa 1285 by the French poet Jacques Bretel, is a narration of a courtly celebration in the Lorraine region of France, and the inspiration for “The Night’s Tale”. Our performance evokes a day’s festivities at the chateau of Chauvency. 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.

Latin American Baroque music at its best! This program calls attention to "the meeting places of light and beauty that did indeed exist in those terrible, hard centuries"--the Age of Exploration in the New World. Here we show the fruitful intercultural exchanges that transpired between indigenous American cultures, the Spanish, and the Africans, and indeed, this is beautiful music. Lively and driven at times by the sunny strumming of the baroque guitar and the maracas, tambourine, and claves, at other times stately with the grandeur of voices with organ.

The constantly evolving and inventive musical minds of Italian and French masters during the fourteenth century has left us with repertoires, both sacred and secular, that successfully unite the search for new and different creative paths with astonishing lyricism and sensual beauty. In this specially commissioned program for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, you will hear music spanning the worlds of God and Man, by the greatest composers of their day: Machaut, Landini, da Bologna, and others, performed by Camerata's virtuoso soloists and instrumentalists.

Who are our heroes? How did they go to battle and with what songs? Whose side were they on? A medley of early American music featuring a portrait gallery of eminent Americans, but also high spirited celebrations, of the new nation, and around the quintessential American themes of freedom and independence. This program constitutes a chapter in the Boston 2015 celebrations of the Marquis de Lafayette and the historic return of his rebuilt 18th century "freedom frigate", the Hermione. Drawing on original print and manuscript sources, we will include songs in celebration of Lafayette's friends and associates, Washington and Jefferson, as well as both American and French compositions reflecting the social and political climate of the turbulent years 1775-1830. Liberty, martial glory, loyalty, and a healthy dose of satire and irreverence are all present in the lively ballads and broadsides of that crucial time.

Close to Reims, the regions of Champagne, Picardy, and Lorraine brought forth an abundant harvest of song in French, both secular and sacred. The subject of “Heaven's Gate” is the magnificent repertoire, composed in both the courtly and popularizing manners, in praise of the Virgin Mary. Noble songs in the refined trouvère style, narrations in word and song, and dance music with sacred texts, are all included in this production. The prior of Vic-sur-Aisne, Gauthier de Coincy (1177/8-1236), a passionate and prolix musician-poet, recounts the miracles of the Virgin that took place in his parish; Thibault de Champagne (1201-1253), count of Champagne and king of Navarra, praises the Queen of Heaven in the most elegant and subtle style; while anonymous minstrels transform the worldly songs of the day into vigorous, toe-tapping spirituals.

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

Back by popular demand! An interfaith celebration unlike any other. Discover with us the common musical roots of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, and the astonishing and beautiful interactions among these traditions. Our program includes elements of Jewish liturgy, Gregorian and Koranic chant, songs and texts of Jewish minstrels, Sephardic folksong, medieval Spanish Cantigas, and Judaeo-Islamic music from the ancient Andalusian tradition.

Songes et Mençonges: Dreams and Deceptions

The Boston Camerata Anne Azéma, voice, hurdy gurdy, harp, direction Shira Kammen, vielle, harp Timothy Leigh Evans, Michael Barrett, John Taylor Ward, voice

Medieval dreams, and even madness and folly, are frequently evoked in medieval music and poetry. Listening, we enter, via the delirium and desires of love, or the intimations of social decay, into a kind of dark transcendance. But these apparitions may also point upwards, serving as prelude to some heroic action, via the nighttime visions of kings and heroes. And they may also lead to a higher spiritual plane, via exalting, mystical epiphanies.

Anne Azéma, understands how to give to her songs the tragic intensity and dramatic power that are too often missing from academic recreations of medieval music.- Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

Magic sensuality. It may well alter the way we look at the Middle Ages. - The Boston Globe

A summit meeting in Renaissance and early Baroque song as Anne Azéma (voice) and Nigel North (lutes) explore intimate and sensual French repertoires.

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See and hear the orange creature gallop towards NowhereLand! The malevolent animal Fauvel is the protagonist of this acerbic and witty fable satirizing religious and political life in the fourteenth century and laden with implications for our own time and place. Watch Fauvel woo the Goddess Fortune, and resist his attempt to take over fair France! Our semi-staged production offers a generous selection of music, text, and visual stimulation from one of the most famous of all medieval manuscripts.

Camerata's 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.

How music and poetry, across the centuries, expresses feelings of separation and reunion.

Words and music from Artistic Director Anne Azéma. The Boston Camerata's offering for International Early Music Day.

The Boston Camerata's pioneering programs of early American music have brought pleasure to thousands of music lovers, and have helped to clarify and define our country's rich and diverse cultural identity. It traces migratory currents and flows of early American song, largely spiritual but also secular. Among the various communities participating in this rich American mosaic we encounter the Puritans of New England, the Shakers and their visionary monodies, Amish and Mennonites of Pennsylvania, and the newly-freed African-American religious communities. The musical sources of this program are drawn from European and New World oral traditions, hymns, psalms and chants in English, German dialects, early songbooks of Black churches, as well as gems from the still largely unpublished Shaker manuscript archive at Sabbathday Lake, ME.

Music of personal devotion in the early Renaissance reflects the spirituality of homes and small chapels in an age of intense religious renewal. Prayers, songs, and chants accompany music for the Virgin, meditations on the cross, and astonishing reworkings of the day's popular melodies set to sacred texts.

Anne Azéma, voice, hurdy gurdy
Michael Barrett, voice, lute
Daniel Hershey, voice
Joel Frederiksen, voice, lute
Andrew Arceci, viola da gamba
Shira Kammen, vielle, harp
Carol Lewis, viola da gamba

Since its creation in 1986, our retelling of the Tristan and Iseult legend using original medieval music and poetry has won numerous awards and distinctions and has toured around the globe. Now, in 2018, Anne Azéma brings this immortal lovers' tale back to life, directing an all-star cast in Joel Cohen's powerful scenario, complemented by her stunning new stage design.

Camerata's most honored production of recent seasons was originally conceived as a recording project. At the request of Erato records, intense literary and musical research took place during winter and spring 1987. The recording sessions were held in September, 1987 at the Church of the Covenant, Boston.

Read more about the recording.

"“[We'll Be There] was beautiful and vibrant to hear.. exciting and revealing." - New York Classical Review, 2022
 
The Camerata continues its trailblazing exploration of the American spiritual tradition, with folk hymns derived from English and Celtic folklore, African-derived call-and-shout group songs, links in the Black tradition to the experience of slavery, reminiscences of the Civil War, and shared celebrations of striving, freedom, and salvation.