[music] BEMF 2011: The Earlier Guide: Intro
BACK! BY POPULAR DEMAND! SIDEREA'S EARLIER GUIDE TO THE BEMF!
What the Boston Early Music Festival (and Exhibition) Is and Why You Might Care
A week of Medieval and Renaissance music concerts happening in Boston!
AAAAAHHHH!!! IT'S NOT THE BEMF ALREADY, IS IT?!?!
No, it's not. For once in my life, I did this early. The BEMF isn't till June 12-19. Now, as I was saying...
Every two years, an awesome massive festival of historical music happens in Boston: the Boston Early Music Festival. Ticket prices range from rather a lot, down to free or donation requested.
Because it's a week-long music festival, most of the cheap concerts are during the work day, or late at night on a work night, though there are some on the weekends.
This Guide
This guide is a listing of that subset of the festival which concerns music before 1600AD (plus some just past that cut off). The BEMF defines "early" as "pre-1750"; a majority of the concerts are Baroque. Finding the Medieval and Renaissance items on the list can be quite challenging, especially for beginners. Hence this guide, a filtered list of the Medieval and Renaissance events.
As such, it adds dates to the listings. It also collates together the various classes of event into one big chronological listing, for your planning convenience.
How Does this BEMF Thing Work?
It's not as confusing as it looks. For performances, pretty much showing up with cash in hand to buy tickets at the door works perfectly.
There is something called a BEMF Pass. You do not need to have a BEMF pass to attend BEMF concerts; some concerts have discounts for BEMF pass holders (traditionally $5 off). However, the Exhibition requires a pass for admission. (Also, there are some official events, other than concerts, that require a pass for admission. However, this year, none of those obviously qualified for the Earlier Guide, so check out the BEMF website if you're interested.) More on the BEMF pass, below.
There are two flavors of concert: the "Festival" concerts and the "Fringe" concerts. The Festival concerts are the headlining acts, scheduled in the evenings; they are the only ones with advance ticket sales. All other concerts -- the Fringe concerts -- are cash-at-the-door. Really: cash only. Also, Fringe concerts and the "Late Night" (11pm) Festival concerts are festival seating: first come, first served. Want a good seat? Get in line early.
In the listing, you will see price formulas like "$15/$10 st, sr, BEMF, EMA, LSA, VdGSA". Translation: "$15 general admission, $10 for students, seniors, BEMF pass holders, and members of/subscribers to EMA, LSA, and VdGSA." Alternatively, you'll see something like "A $56 / B $45 / C $33 / D $22". Translation: reserved seating, in four levels of quality, A being the "best".
All Festival Concert programs are bound into one book, called the Yearbook, which is for sale at all Festival Concert venues and can be ordered in advance; it's $10. Also, last year the programs were downloadable from the BEMF website so you could print them yourself. Fringe Concerts hand out programs for free if they have them.
Concerts are usually not repeated. The concert schedule starts as early as 9am and runs through the day and evening, well into the night. There are concerts which start as late as 11pm.
Festival Concerts tend to be held in big concert halls or large churches. Fringe Concerts tend to be much smaller and more intimate.
Festival Concert tickets range from $20 to ~$60, and can be bought in advance.; Fringe Concert tickets range from $0 to $20.
The whole shebang is Pennsic-shaped, in that everybody tries to hold their event on War Weekend, or as close too it as possible.
How do you get a BEMF Pass?
There are two sorts of passes, Week Passes and Day Passes.
The Week Pass can be bought in advance from the BEMF. Day Passes cannot be bought in advance. Both Day and Week passes can be bought in person at the Exhibition.
Note that the Exhibition doesn't open until Wednesday; as it happens, this year none of the Med/Ren concerts before Wednesday offer a BEMF discount, so it's not a problem for us Earlier purists. But if you're one of those debased Baroque music listeners and were hoping to score a BEMF pass for discounts to other pre-Wednesday concerts, note that you won't be able to buy one in person before those concerts happen, so get one shipped to you in advance.
What are these "Golden Serpent" and "Silver Serpent" passes?
They're for Baroque music people.
How about the "Bronze Serpent"?
If you buy tickets to four or more Festival Concerts, you get the Bronze Serpent discount of 10% off all of them. There are five Festival Concerts listed in the Earlier Guide. The form does this automagically if you order them all at the same time.
The Schedule
This year, the Earlier Guide is available in two places: here, and on Google Calendar. Also new this year, "add this to my Google calendar" and automagic Google Map links. I hope I got those right. Let me know if you try to use them and they are buggy.
On Google Calendar: Week View Agenda View
Here in my LJ: Intro Su1 M Tu W Th F Sa Su2