Throughout Festival Week, enjoy artwork created by children of families who have recently joined our community, having left their troubled homelands in other parts of the world. The exhibit will encircle the mainstage space at FAR Center from Opening Night, Sunday, through Friday night. During evening performances, you will be surrounded by the visual art of young children who have had to leave their homes behind, while you are immersed in the music of those who had much the same experience so many centuries ago. We are grateful to our new neighbors for sharing their artwork with us and for contributing their talents to our festival. Thank you and welcome to Bloomington!
Scheduel:
2:00pm | Workshop
Cocoa Crazy
Xocolatyl to Hot Chocolate
Take a tour through the history of the beans & beverage in the Americas from its earliest uses in indigenous Central American ritual to adaptations by Westerners. Enjoy original recipes along your chocolate journey!
Led by Christopher Armijo & Steven M. Warnock
A partnership with Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard
Workshop runs 2:00pm-4:00pm
Lotus Firebay 105 S. Rogers Street
5:30pm | Public Screening
Assai Ad Libitum
The Great Fear: Musical Exiles of the French Revolution
(Greensboro, NC & Williamsburg, VA) Exploring music of the period between the French Revolution (1789-1799) and the Battle of Waterloo (1815), The Great Fear follows the migration, exaltation, and degradation of Pierre Louis Hus-Desforges (1773-1838), Nicolas Méhul (1765-1817), Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-George (1745 – 1799), and Hélène de Montgeroult (1764- 1836). By bringing together music of four French composers affected not only by the Revolution and the downfall of Napoleon, but also by family lineage, gender, and race, this program gives voice to the circumstances and events that led to political, social, and cultural exile during this violent and precarious time.
Assai Ad Libitum is a newly formed historical ensemble passionate about exploring and performing rare and unrecorded works. Based on the Southeastern coast of the US, the trio comprises Patricia García Gil (fortepiano), Sophie Genevieve Lowe (baroque violin), and Ryan Lowe (baroque cello). Patricia García Gil is a Spanish keyboardist with international accolades in performance and pedagogy on both modern and historical keyboard instruments. A BLEMF 2023 Emerging Artist, she is currently pursuing a DMA in Historical Keyboards at University of North Carolina-Greensboro. Baroque violinist Sophie Genevieve Lowe hails from South Dakota, studied at the Royal Academy of Music and Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music in London, UK, and has appeared on concert stages across the UK and North America. Recently relocated to the US from London after graduating with honors from the Trinity Conservatoire of Music, Welsh cellist Ryan Lowe has performed extensively in the United Kingdom, Europe, Asia, and the United States. Sophie and Ryan regularly perform as a duet at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation in Virginia.
Assai Ad Libitum is a BLEMF Emerging Ensemble.
5:00pm | Pre-Concert Discussion (screened) with Kirby Haugland, specialist in music of the Napoleonic era, and members of Assai Ad Libitum
Venue: Screening at Lotus Firebay 105 S. Rogers Street
8:00pm | Live Concert
Bach & Beethoven Experience
The Story of Pa I Sha
(Chicago, IL) Following three generations of BBE Artistic Director Brandi Berry Benson’s own Chickasaw ancestors, this musical journey begins with her fourth great-grandmother, Pa I Sha, who walked the Trail of Tears (or the Removal). The program moves on to Pa I Sha’s daughter Mary, marriage to a Civil War soldier, their nine children, and their experience as an interracial family forced to live in a tent outside of town. The final stage of the program addresses the discrimination that led this family and later generations to deny their full degree of Indian blood or to deny their indigenous identity altogether. Using melodies of the Chickasaw and Choctaw Nations, the performance features a narrator/vocalist (in English with some Chickasaw language), traverso, Native American flute, period strings, and Chickasaw percussion.
Founded in 2009, the Bach & Beethoven Experience brings artists together to collaborate and transform the classical concert experience through classical, folk, and new music using period instruments. Hailed as “thrilling...charming... performed with such grace, joy and sincerity that a watcher and listener had to be won over" (Bloomington Herald Times), the BBE has performed across the U.S. including at Baroque on Beaver Island Festival, Early Music Academy in Ann Arbor, the Green Mill, Martyrs’, 4th Presbyterian downtown, the Dame Myra Hess series, Boston Early Music Festival fringe series, the Beat Hotel in Boston, and in residency at the Old Town School of Folk Music. The BBE has released three albums, A Gaelic Summer (2019), An Appalachian Summer (2019), and Chicago Stories (2021).
7:15pm | Pre-concert Discussion with Brandie Macdonald, Executive Director of the IU Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, and BBE Music Director Brandi Berry Benson, both members of the Chickasaw Nation.
Venue: FAR Center for Contemporary Arts 505 W. 4th Street
