Bloomington Early Music Festival 2026
May 26-30
Festival Preview
Live Performances
All live performances will take place at the beautiful Trinity Episcopal Church, 111 South Grant Street, in downtown Bloomington.
Franklin Quartet
May 26 ~ 7pm
A Federal Fanfare at the Franklins’
Begin your Early American adventure in Benjamin Franklin’s own parlor as the Philadelphia-based Franklin Quartet performs works of European composers personally acquainted with Franklin during his decade in Paris. You will enjoy an intimate house concert rooted in the city’s rich 18th-century parlor music tradition that helped shape early cultural exchange as the US formed its own identity separate from, but heavily influenced by, Europe.
Tonos
May 27 ~ 7pm
Padre Kino’s Soundscape: Music and Mission in Early America
Move next far across the land to 17th-century New Spain, territory destined to be the very last to join the continental United States in 1912, as Tonos presents a collection of music from Jesuit missions resonant with rich intellectual and artistic exchange across the region that weaves together Indigenous, Spanish, and Catholic traditions that are still part of the fabric of the present-day nation.
Alchymy Viols
May 29 ~ 7pm
A Songbook from Across the Sea: The Sounds of French Louisiana
Viols and voices bring treasured works by the most reputed French composers of the 17th century to life in Alchymy Viols' offering of music from the Ursuline Manuscript, a spiritual songbook gifted from France to a convent in New Orleans in 1736. The result is a stunning expression of the feminine colonial experience in French Louisiana—territory that would join the United States soon after it was formed.
The BEMI Players
May 30 ~ 5pm
The 4th Annual Stanley Richie Youth Performance
Hear the future of early music in the sounds of Bloomington Early Music Immersion, our weeklong day camp for young string players, on the BLEMF stage for the fourth year in a row! We could hardly be more proud of these burgeoning musicians whose talent and dediation seem to make anything possible across the repertoire. Join us in cheering on Bloomington’s own!
Early Music Access Project
May 30 ~ 7pm
Tunes & Stories from Monticello
Our week of celebration comes to a rousing close with Charlottesville, VA’s Early Music Access Project! A trio of two fiddles and a storyteller bring to life the tales of Pricilla Hemings—enslaved nursemaid to Thomas Jefferson’s household and the aunt of Sally Hemings—interwoven with music of the Hemings and Scott family fiddlers of Monticello. Nationally acclaimed storyteller Sheila Arnold and renowned Black fiddler Benjamin Hunter join EMAP’s David McCormick for this very special festival finale.
Virtual Performances
All virtual performances will be available to stream at www.blemf.org from May 26 until June 8, and each will be presented in a public screening at our festival on the dates listed below.
Williamsburg Baroque
May 26 ~ 5pm
Deplorable Barbarism & Delightful Recreation
Direct from Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, Williamsburg Baroque offers an impressive display of instrumental music from the early decades of the nascent United States, titled after Thomas Jefferson’s enticing commentary on the state of music in the land. All composed between 1767 and 1803, the music you will enjoy reflects the new “Immigrant School” of early American composers hailing from Europe and across the young nation.
Music of the Regiment
May 27 ~ 5pm
Equal to Any Band in this Country
During the American War for Independence, military bands provided music for social events, recruiting, military ceremonies and—with ill-equipped and hungry soldiers on the verge of mutiny—to aid troops to “march on cheerfully [sic]” into battle. Music of the Regiment, out of Alexandria, VA, recreates the historical band of the Second Virginia Regiment, pairing spoken word with marches, arias, and divertimenti in a soundtrack of the international armies that converged in 1781 for the famous battle at Yorktown.
Patricia García Gil
May 28 ~ 5pm
Music for a Nation, “by a Lady”
Internationally accomplished historical keyboardist and three-time BLEMF artist Patricia García Gil explores Parlor Music—a genre in which those of “the fair sex” were meant to charm rather than to dazzle—throughout the first century of the United States. From the earliest piano music written by American women to sophisticated works of South American women composers who bridged the two continents, Gil brilliantly links women’s parlor culture to a rising public virtuosity most often reserved for men.