Because of our patrons’ generosity, we have been able to provide over $20,000 in honoraria to our artists for our cancelled regular season and Berkeley Festival main stage concerts, as well as for some of our workshops. In the case of the...
June 1, 2020—Join us next Monday, June 8, for the start of our week-long Virtual Young Performers Festival and Emerging Artists Showcase, as SFEMS and Early Music America (EMA) broadcast made-to-order, pre-recorded concerts during the week the...
May 19, 2020—It is our pleasure to announce the launch of the Virtual Young Performers Festival and Emerging Artists Showcase. From June 8–14—during the week the Berkeley Festival & Exhibition (BFX) was to have taken place—SFEMS and Early Music...
To our dear Berkeley Festival community: As I look out my window and see nature coming into ecstatic bloom, it is almost impossible to reconcile such beauty with the unfolding worldwide crisis. It is harder still to believe the worst is yet to come...
EMA’s First-ever Community Play Day June 11 at BFX Do you have a hankering to meet, rehearse, and perform with some really good musicians? Well, butter your tonsils, razzle up your bow and get the peanut butter out of your recorder windway, because...
In 1991, Concerto Amabile with soprano Nancy Zylstra gave a concert on the SFEMS series titled “Unsung Heroines,” a program of music by women: Barbara Strozzi, Isabella Leonarda, Maddalena Lombardini, Ana Bon, and Elisabeth-Claude Jacquet de la...
One of the main themes of the upcoming Berkeley Festival is reexamining the nature and meaning of “early music.” Some of the most fascinating happenings the Festival will be presentations of music from the extremes of the historical spectrum. Much...
The Piano and the Pianist in the Early Twentieth Century by Nicholas Mathew The upcoming Berkeley Festival features perhaps the broadest range of historical music ever presented at an early music festival—a claim which should be made with some...
Friday, June 1 Berkeley Baroque Strings “The Bach Family” Kati Kyme directs the 40-piece Berkeley Baroque Strings in a program of J.S. Bach and his sons. Featured are an overture by Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, a sinfonia by Carl Philip Emanuel Bach, a...
Berkeley, CA – May 8 2018 – After almost 30 years as Director of Berkeley Festival & Exhibition (BFX), Robert Cole has announced that he will step down from his position effective June 11, 2018, at the conclusion of the 2018 summer festival. Mr...