Boston Baroque Announces 2020-2021 Virtual Season

Boston Baroque announces a 2020-2021 Virtual Season featuring an expansion of streaming content on Boston Baroque Live; interactive behind-the-scenes talks and newly-produced documentary short films featuring our world-renowned musicians and soloists; and pop-up livestream concerts. During what will be an unprecedented concert season for all arts organizations, Boston Baroque is committed to finding innovative and safe ways to share our music with audiences across Massachusetts and around the world. Subscriptions are on sale now.

Because so much about the trajectory of the COVID-19 virus remains unknown, Boston Baroque's live concert season will be a series of pop-up concerts livestreamed online for audiences-until it is safe to bring musicians and audiences together. The first concert will be held on Saturday, September 26th at 7pm with a performance of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons featuring GRAMMY-nominated concertmaster Christina Day Martinson. Musicians will perform this concert socially distanced using a reduced orchestration of one musician per part.

Boston Baroque will be expanding content on Boston Baroque Live, our online streaming channel, with monthly releases of new-from-the-archives concerts and operas, released free to the public for 30 days before moving to Amazon Prime. These monthly releases will launch on September 15th with Boston Baroque's acclaimed production of Beethoven's Fidelio on period instruments, starring Metropolitan Opera stars soprano Wendy Bryn Harmer and tenor William Burden. The following releases will include Biber's The Mystery Sonatas featuring concertmaster Christina Day Martinson, Handel's Giulio Cesare starring soprano Susanna Phillips, and a "Best of Boston Baroque" all-star version of Handel's Messiah released for the holiday season. The full schedule of releases is listed below.

Subscribers will have exclusive access to content on Boston Baroque Live, including a special "Director's Cut" version of the monthly release with Founding Music Director Martin Pearlman, monthly concert talks with musicologist Laura Stanfield Prichard, and a series of documentary short films created by Emmy-nominated filmmaker Nathaniel Hansen that tells the stories behind the music as told by the artists themselves. Boston Baroque Live subscribers will gain early access to our new monthly concert or opera release, as well as retain access to all our previous monthly concert releases, including the critically-acclaimed productions of Handel's Agrippina and Mozart's Requiem.

Boston Baroque will launch a monthly interactive virtual event series, moderated by Music Director Martin Pearlman, on September 17th at 7pm with "A Conversation with the Stars: Wendy Bryn Harmer and William Burden," who will discuss their critically-acclaimed roles of Fidelio/Leonore and Florestan in Boston Baroque's production of Beethoven's Fidelio, the featured September release on Boston Baroque Live.

Single tickets and subscriptions to Boston Baroque's 2020-2021 Virtual Season are on sale now at baroque.boston.

BOSTON BAROQUE'S 2020-2021 MONTHLY RELEASES ON BOSTON BAROQUE LIVE

September 2020: Beethoven's Fidelio

October 2020: Biber's The Mystery Sonatas

November 2020: Handel's Giulio Cesare

December 2020: Handel's Messiah

January 2021: New Year's Celebration

February 2021: Beethoven's Symphony No. 5

March 2021: Highlights from Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea

April 2021: Handel's Water Music Suite

May 2021: Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610

June 2021: Handel's Jephtha

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. In 1971, he moved to Boston and began performing widely in solo recitals and concertos. From 2002-2016, he was a Professor of Music at Boston University's School of Music in the Historical Performance department.

Recent compositions by Martin Pearlman include his comic chamber opera Tristram Shandy, 3-act Finnegans Wake: an Operoar!, 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 in 2007.

ABOUT FILMMAKER NATHANIEL HANSEN

Originally from Portland, Oregon, Nathaniel Hansen is a Peabody Award winning, (national) Emmy nominated producer, and an award-winning Director, Cinematographer, and Editor.

His independent film work has screened at hundreds of festivals world-wide including Tribeca, SXSW, Hot Docs, Camden, RiverRun, and Independent Film Festival Boston, with the Boston Globe calling his feature film "The Elders" 'Outstanding."

His investigative short films have been featured online by sites like the New York Times, LA Times, The Atlantic, Quartz, and PBS. Nathaniel's commercial work has been featured by brands such as Pantone, Clinique, Care.com, Health Catalyst, D&B, Estée Lauder, Johnson & Johnson, and Dartmouth Hitchcock.

He holds MA and MFA degrees from Emerson College, where he is also an affiliated faculty member and frequent lecturer, and resides in Boston with his family.

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