Boston Baroque Celebrates The Holidays With Annual Messiah And New Year's Concerts

Boston Baroque's 50th season continues with a return to two programs that have become beloved holiday traditions for many: Handel's Messiah and a New Year's Celebration. This year, audiences near and far will have the opportunity to join Boston Baroque for the holidays, as we welcome both in-person audiences and virtual audiences around the world via livestream on IDAGIO.

This year's Messiah performances will take place on Saturday, December 3rd at 7:30pm at GBH's Calderwood Studio, and Sunday, December 4th at 3pm at NEC's Jordan Hall. The Saturday 7:30pm performance will be streamed live on IDAGIO, and available to rent on-demand for 30 days following the stream.

Music Director Martin Pearlman's GRAMMY-nominated interpretation of Handel's Messiah will be performed in its entirety with all three parts with an intermission. This year's performances will feature an all-star cast of soloists, including the return of soprano Heidi Stober, mezzo-soprano Ann McMahon Quintero, and tenor Thomas Cooley to the Boston Baroque stage, and the Boston Baroque debut of baritone Sidney Outlaw.

The New Year's Celebration performances will take place on Saturday, December 31st at 8pm at GBH's Calderwood Studio, and Sunday, January 1st at 3pm at Harvard University's Sanders Theatre. The 8pm performance on December 31st will be streamed live on IDAGIO.

Music Director Martin Pearlman will lead Boston Baroque's renown orchestra in an hourlong program with no intermission. The program includes Bach's Orchestral Suite No. 2 and his Brandenburg Concerto No. 6, Telemann's Concerto in E minor for Recorder and Flute featuring soloists Aldo Abreu, recorder, and Joseph Monticello, flute, and Vivaldi's motet "O qui coeli" with soprano Amanda Forsythe.

Livestream director Matthew Principe will take the helm for both programs, in partnership with GBH's Production Group, bringing a sumptuous concert experience online with carefully crafted camera angles and dynamic lighting. Through our streaming partnership with IDAGIO, Boston Baroque performances have been streamed on 5 continents across 17 countries over the last year.

Safety will remain a top priority for both musicians and audience members. All patrons are required to self-attest that they are fully vaccinated and boosted with a COVID-19 vaccine. A CDC-approved mask must be worn at all times in all areas indoors, and Boston Baroque strongly recommends using an N95, KN95, or double-masking with a disposable surgical mask.

Both in-person and livestream tickets are available for purchase online at baroque.boston or by calling the Box Office at (617) 987-8600. Livestream tickets begin at $9, and in-person tickets range from $25-$125. The virtual performance will become available to stream on-demand 30 days after the live air date, with on-demand rentals beginning at $9.

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.

Boston Baroque has expanded its reach globally through its partnership with IDAGIO, the world's leading classical music streaming service. Its 2021-2022 Season was the first full season by a Baroque orchestra to stream on the platform, and brought together virtual audiences from across five continents (North America, South America, Asia, Europe, and Australia) and over 17 countries.

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-six 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.

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.

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