Trav’ling Home: American Spirituals, 1770-1870 with The Boston Camerata

The Boston Camerata is an early music ensemble founded in 1954 and based in Boston. The Camerata was directed from 1969 to 2008 by Joel Cohen, who remains Music Director Emeritus. Since 2008, the company's artistic director has been French-born singer and scholar Anne Azéma. Azéma has produced several new programs with the Camerata, featuring repertoire that spans eight centuries of music. The Camerata tours in the United States and abroad.

This program will trace migratory currents and flows of early American song, largely spiritual but also secular. Among the various communities participating in this rich American mosaic we encounter are the Puritans of New England, the Shakers and their visionary monodies, Amish and Mennonites of Pennsylvania, and the newly-freed African-American religious communities. The musical sources of this program are drawn from European and New World oral traditions, hymns, psalms and chants in English, German dialects, early songbooks of Black churches, as well as gems from the still largely unpublished Shaker manuscript archive at Sabbathday Lake, ME.

This concert is presented by Bing Productions in collaboration with Trinity United Methodist Church and is sponsored by Florence Bank.

Host or Publisher Bing Productions