Currently celebrating its sixty-fourth anniversary, The Boston Camerata ranks among the world’s oldest and most eminent early music ensembles. Founded in 1954, Camerata has been under the direction of French-born singer and scholar Anne Azéma since 2008. Along with its commitment to maintaining and renewing Camerata “classics,” Anne Azéma and the Camerata originate many new and distinguished productions of important early repertoires spanning eight centuries of music history.
Camerata’s musical performances are well known for their blending of spontaneity and emotional commitment with careful research and scholarship. With its distinguished roster of singers and specialists in early instruments, Camerata produces an annual concert series for audiences in the Greater Boston area. The Boston Camerata also tours regularly in the US and all over the world, recently appearing in Paris at the Palais de Chaillot, in collaboration with the Tero Saarinen Company of Helsinki, Finland (2014), and during its 60th anniversary season, at the Théatre de la Ville (2015). Anne Azéma’s innovative staged production built around a medieval tournament in France, The Night’s Tale, first presented in France and Luxembourg, was performed in Boston to great acclaim in Spring 2016. The company’s South American début tour took place in Brazil in July 2016. Further tours took place in Europe in 2017 (Switzerland, Holland, France) and in North America (Canada and the US Midwest in late 2017 and early 2018) – including a reprise of the Play of Daniel, presented with great success to Boston audiences in late 2014, during early 2017 again in Boston and other American cities and due to tour in 2020.
The Camerata is also renowned for its many concerts and recordings of early music from the New World North and South and for its bridge productions of Eastern and Western music. A Mediterranean Christmas and The Sacred Bridge: Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Medieval Europe are noted among these pioneering enterprises.
The Camerata’s many recordings (Grand Prix du Disque) as well as its numerous media appearances (two prizes at FIFA Montréal, 2014; one prize at the 2014 Massachusetts Film Festival) and its many museum and educational projects (including its recent Visiting Artist residency at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology), have brought its work to audiences in every continent. Collaborations with local choirs (both children and adults) and with young professionals-in-training in both Europe and the United States are a distinctive feature of the company’s 2016, 2017 and 2018 touring seasons. April 2018 will mark the release of the Camerata’s latest CD, recorded in coordination with an international exhibit project of late Medieval artifacts (Toronto, New York and Amsterdam). September 2018 will see the company’s next media project, in France and in partnership with la Philharmonie de Paris and Harmonia Mundi.