ARS at the Boston Early Music Festival

The Boston Early Music Festival (BEMF) will be held June 8-15, 2025.
Since 1981, the Boston Early Music Festival has established itself as an international leader in the field of Early Music. BEMF presents a wealth of diverse programs and activities, including superb productions of Baroque opera, award-winning recordings, an annual concert season that brings the field’s brightest stars to Boston and New York City, and North America’s leading festival for Early Music. This year's festival theme is "Love and Power."

The American Recorder Society’s Recorder Relay is a must-attend event at BEMF. Featuring local recorder players and groups, as well as visiting players from around the world, this event will be held on Friday, June 13, from 10am-2pm, in the Mary Norton Hall in the Old South Church, 645 Boylston St. This celebration of the recorder community will be, as always, replete with terrific performances and a fascinating variety of styles and interpretations.
   
The Recorder Relay is always free and open to the general public.  Performers are not compensated, but it truly is a fun chance to gather as a community and share our collective talents and passions. 
 
BEMF Beyond Borders Concert, co-sponsored by ARS
On Sunday, June 15 at 10am, a concert featuring young musicians from the local Boston area as well as from Taiwan and Brazil will be held in Jordan Hall at the New England Conservatory of Music. This will be an exciting event showcasing the talents of young musicians who will perform together in a celebration of musical collaboration and diversity. Short performance videos submitted by other international youth recorder groups will be featured as well. Afterward, the award-winning Boreas Quartett Bremen, a fantastic recorder group based in Germany, will perform at 12:30.

A Recorder Masterclass will be held on Saturday June 14. Details are still coming together but a member of the Boreas Quartett Bremen will coach individuals and groups as they perform a prepared piece. Auditors are welcome to attend.

The BEMF Exhibition
The heart of the Boston Early Music Festival is its world-famous Exhibition. As the premier early music trade show in North America and among the largest in the world, the BEMF Exhibition features Early Music tradespeople from across the globe, with makers of period instruments, music publishers, dealers in rare books, prints, and manuscripts, and representatives from the world’s leading conservatories and schools of music. ARS will have a table with membership materials, samples of magazines and ARS-published music, aas well as chocolate and our usual array of ARS-branded swag (pencils, toothbrushes, and maybe more exciting items). 

Past ARS Recorder Relays
You can see a compilation of past performances here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8TQUGypf24
 
Read here about three young people from New Jersey who performed as part of Montclair Early Music's RecorderKids program. 

Following the 2023 Relay, there was a reception and presentation of the ARS Distinguished Achievement Award honoring Nina Stern, and Presidential Special Honor Award honoring Clea Gahlano. The two professionals favored the Relay audience by playing two duets. One of them, the Vivace from G.Ph. Telemann’s Canonic Sonata No. 1 in B flat major, can be viewed on the ARS YouTube channel here.