BLEMF 2026
Early Music & Early America
May 26 - 30 | SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
FESTIVAL DESCRIPTION COPY PLACEHOLDER
This Semiquincentennial, we bring to you 5 live and 3 virtual concerts paired with preconcert discussions, NUMBER educational workshops, our 4th BEMI Players youth performance, 1 very Happy Hour, and our 3rd BLEMF Community Showcase, in which we invite Bloomington musicians to the stage.
BLEMF 2026: Early Music & Early America MORE DESCRIPTION COPY. Join us!
BLEMF Events are FREE & OPEN TO ALL*
*except 21+ Happy Hour
Tuesday, May 26
2:00pm | Workshop
What’s That Sound?
Shape Note Singing!
Discover the vibrant tradition of shape note singing, a uniquely American style of community music-making that dates back to the early 19th century. In this hands-on workshop, participants will learn how the shape note system works and try singing from a historic tunebook together. No prior musical experience is required—just bring your voice and curiosity! 🎶
Led by C. Keith Collins
Venue to be announced
A partnership with Bloomington Shape Notes
Keith Collins is adjunct instructor in historical bassoon and recorder at Indiana University's Historical Performance Institute, and also teaches baroque bassoon and curtal at the University of North Texas. He has taught at Tafelmusik Baroque Summer Institute, Indiana University Recorder Academy, and has been guest lecturer at the Indiana Early Double Reed Workshop. He has been a writer for NPR's early music program Harmonia. Keith’s other interests include the history of Appalachian folk music and the banjo, early American hymnody and the shape-note tradition, and the early history and repertoire of the harp in the UK and Ireland.
5:00pm | Public Screening
with Pre-Concert Discussion
Williamsburg Baroque
Deplorable Barbarism & Delightful Recreation
(Williamsburg, VA) A trio of musicians direct from Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, Williamsburg Baroque offers an impressive display of instrumental music from the early decades of the nascent United States. The works in this program—all composed between 1767 and 1803 and titled after Thomas Jefferson comments on the state of music in the land—reflect the new “Immigrant School” of early American composers hailing from Europe and across the young nation.
Williamsburg Baroque is a BLEM Emerging Ensemble.
Venue to be announced
Available May 26th on BLEM’s YouTube channel
CO-SPONSORED BY STEVE & JO ELLEN HAM
Opening Night!
7:00pm | Live Concert
6:15 | Pre-Concert Discussion
Franklin Quartet
A Federal Fanfare at the Franklins’
(Philadelphia, PA) BLEMF 2026 begins our concert series in an ostensible 1785, in Benjamin Franklin’s own parlor as the Philadelphia-based Franklin Quartet performs works of lesser-known European composers personally acquainted with Franklin during his decade in Paris. Listeners 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.
Pre-concert discussion with Peyson Weekley, Indiana University Ph.D. student in musicology, and specialist in music and politics in the Enlightenment
Trinity Episcopal Church
111 S. Grant Street
Livestreamed at www.BLEMF.org
Wednesday, May 27
5:00pm | Public Screening
with Pre-Concert Discussion
Music of the Regiment
Equal to Any Band in this Country
(Alexandria, VA) 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 “march on cheerfully [sic]” into battle. Music of the Regiment, out of Alexandria, VA, recreates the historical band of the Second Virginia Regiment in a program that pairs readings with marches, arias, and divertimenti that formed the soundtrack for the international armies converging at Yorktown in 1781.
Monroe County Public Library
303 E. Kirkwood Ave
Available May 26th on BLEM’s YouTube channel
7:00pm | Live Concert
6:15 | Pre-Concert Discussion
Tonos
Padre Kino’s Soundscape: Music and Mission in Early America
(Bloomington, IN) The second night of the concert series moves far across the land to 17th-century New Spain, to territory destined to be the very last to join the continental United States in 1912. Tonos, a beloved ensemble born in Bloomington a decade ago, presents a collection of music from Jesuit missions resonant with the rich intellectual and artistic exchange from across the region. Tonos’s performance brings together Indigenous, Spanish, and Catholic traditions that remain a part of the fabric of the present-day nation.
Trinity Episcopal Church
111 S. Grant Street
Livestreamed at www.BLEMF.org
SPONSORED BY Peter Burkholder & Doug McKinney
GENEROUSLY SPONSORED BY THE LATIN AMERICAN MUSIC CENTER, JACOBS SCHOOL OF MUSIC
AND CO-SPONSORED BY THE DEPARTMENT OF SPANISH & PORTUGUESE, INDIANA UNIVERSITY
Thursday, May 28
2:00pm | Workshop
Making Music Books in Early America
Quills & Ink
Back by popular demand, we gladly return to the Lilly Library to explore its extensive and incredibly varied collections of books, manuscripts, sheet music, and cultural artifacts. Join us as we discover materials that illuminate life in early America, from everyday objects to the documents that shaped a young nation. Stick around afterward for a hands-on crafting activity led by Dr. Kirby Haugland, who will guide participants in the art of quill and ink writing.
Led by the Lilly Library & Kirby Haugland
Lilly Library
1200 E. 7th Street
A PARTNERSHIP WITH THE LILLY LIBRARY AT INDIANA UNVERSITY
Dr. Kirby Haugland is a visiting assistant professor in the musicology department at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. His research focuses on relationships surrounding musical creation and performance. This interest manifests in subjects ranging from early film music and contemporary composer John Adams to technologies of 18th-century theater stages. He is a talented trumpet player—if an out of practice one—and he serves as Finance & Administration Manager for Bloomington Early Music.
5:00pm | Public Screening
with Pre-Concert Discussion
Patricia García Gil
Music for a Nation, “by a Lady”
(Ithaca, NY/Madrid, Spain) Internationally accomplished historical keyboardist 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. Moving from the earliest piano music written by American women veiled as “A Lady” or “A Young Lady,” to more sophisticated works by recognized American women composers, to South American women composers who through influence and immigration bridged the two continents, Gil brilliantly links women’s parlor culture to a rising public virtuosity most often reserved for men.
Pre-Concert Discussion screened at the start of the program, with Glenda Goodman, a historian of music who specializes in American music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Patrica García Gil is a BLEM Emerging Artist.
Monroe County Public Library
303 E. Kirkwood Avenue
Available May 26th on BLEM’s YouTube channel
7:00pm | Live Concert
BLEMF Community Showcase
Bloomington Musicians Take the Stage!
A remarkable line-up of musicians from our local community and an astonishingly enthusiastic response from their audience of friends, neighbors, and fans made it abundantly clear that the BLEMF Community Showcase must continue! Our 2024 & 2025 programs brought to the stage a surprisingly varied array of early music talent and skill, and this year promises to be just as exciting.
Trinity Episcopal Church
111 S. Grant Street
Livestreamed at www.BLEMF.org
Friday, May 29
5:00pm | Documentary Film Premiere
with Pre-Concert Discussion
Black Fiddlers of Monticello
David McCormick, filmmaker
(Charlottesville, VA) PLACEHOLDER COPY
Pre-Concert Discussion screened at the start of the program
Venue to be confirmed
CO-SPONSORED BY LINDA HANDELSMAN
7:00pm | Live Concert
6:15 | Pre-Concert Discussion
Alchymy Viols
The Sounds of French Louisiana
Indiana’s own Alchymy Viols offers music from the Ursuline Manuscript, a spiritual songbook gifted from France in 1736 to a convent in New Orleans in the heart of French Louisiana—territory that would later join the United States. Sung in devotion by the Ursuline sisters, its music is by the most reputed French composers of the era—Lully, Campra, Lambert, Marchand, Clérembault—adapted with religious lyrics. In transcriptions by Alchymy artistic director Phil Spray, this concert is a stunning showcase of feminine expression and colonial life in the Louisiana territory.
Trinity Episcopal Church
111 S. Grant Street
Livestreamed at www.BLEMF.org
SPONSORED BY CATHLEEN CAMERON AND BY JACK DOSKOW & JEAN PERSON
CO-SPONSORED BY PAUL BORG AND BY THE DEPARTMENT OF FRENCH & ITALIAN, INDIANA UNIVERSITY
Saturday, May 30
2:00pm | Workshop
The Early American Ballroom
Lessons in Contredanse
Step into the lively world of the early American ballroom and learn the elegant steps of the contredanse, a popular social dance of the 18th century. In partnership with the Bloomington Old Time Music & Dance Group, this workshop introduces the basic figures and rhythms that brought communities together on the dance floor. No prior dance experience is required—just bring comfortable shoes and a willingness to move!
Harmony School
909 E. 2nd Street
A PARTNERSHIP WITH THE BLOOMINGTON OLD TIME MUSIC & DANCE GROUP
CO-SPONSORED BY LINDA HANDELSMAN
5:00pm | Live Concert
with Pre-Concert Discussion
The BEMI Players
In their 4th annual Stanley Ritchie Youth Performance!
(Bloomington, IN) This fourth appearance on the BLEMF mainstage by members of the Bloomington Early Music Immersion program showcases new skills and newly discovered talents developed during a week of instruction and activities introducing middle-school aged musicians to Baroque era technique and repertoire. A partnership between Bloomington Early Music and the Historical Performance Institute of the Jacobs School of Music, the 2026 BEMI program is once again free to participants and fun for all!
Livestreamed at www.BLEMF.org
Trinity Episcopal Church
111 S. Grant Street
7:00pm | Live Concert
6:15 | Pre-Concert Discussion
Early Music Access Project
Tunes & Stories from Monticello
(Charlottesville, VA) The series and celebration come to a rousing close with Early Music Access Project’s trio of two fiddles and a storyteller, bringing to life the tales of Pricilla Hemings—enslaved nursemaid to Thomas Jefferson’s household and the aunt of Sally Hemings—with music played by 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 finale.
Trinity Episcopal Church
111 S. Grant Street
Livestreamed at www.BLEMF.org
CO-SPONSORED BY LYNN SCHWARTZBERG & PETER HARALOVICH
