Performance Videos

MEMF 2020 Online!

Connect with MEMF through the power of video. Airing from July 11-18, we shared performance clips by internationally renowned early music musicians or virtual lectures.

All programming Premiered on Facebook, but you do not need a Facebook account to tune in.

2019 Madison Early Music Festival All-Festival Concert

The 2019 Madison Early Music Festival All-Festival Concert, “Postcards from the Grand Tour,” took place on Saturday, July 13 at 7:30pm in Mills Hall on the UW–Madison campus.

Designed and directed by Grant Herreid, the program features a narrator, loosely based on Thomas Coryat, an English seventeenth century travel writer, who, as a young man, travels throughout Europe in search of music. Beginning in London, listening to John Dowland and other Elizabethan composers, traveling to Paris and finding motets and masses from the Notre Dame school, he then discovers Claudio Monteverdi’s compositions in Venice. When he returns to Restoration London as an old man, he enjoys the music of Henry Purcell.

Videography: Artisan AV

2018 Madison Early Music Festival All-Festival Concert

The 2018 Madison Early Music Festivall All-Festival Concert, “Journey to Lubeck: The Musical Legacy of the Reformation,” took place on Saturday, July 14 at 7:30pm in Mills Hall on the UW–Madison campus.

While Petrus Hasse, Franz Tunder, and Dieterich Buxtehude were serving as organists of the Marienkirche (St. Mary’s Church), they assembled a choir library of some 2000 works, which were catalogued in 2015 by Kerala J. Snyder for the first time. Our program will include selections from this collection, along with works by Dietrich Buxtehude and others.

Videography: Dave Alcorn

Highlights of 2017 Madison Early Music Festival (July 8-15)

The University of Wisconsin–Madison Arts Institute presented the 18th annual Madison Early Music Festival and Workshop (MEMF). Our theme for MEMF 2017 was Quixotic Musical Treasures from the Golden Age of Spain and ran from July 8 – 15, 2017.

The 2017 Madison Early Music Festival celebrated over 400 years of the novel “Don Quixote” by Miguel de Cervantes. We explored the wealth of references to the music, art, and literature that flourished and illuminated Spain during the political rise and fall of the Spanish Habsburg Dynasty

Still photography: Aliza Rand
Videography: Aaron Granat

Highlights of 2016 Madison Early Music Festival (July 9-16)

The University of Wisconsin–Madison Arts Institute presented the 17th annual Madison Early Music Festival and Workshop (MEMF). Our theme for MEMF 2016 was Shakespeare 400: An Elizabethan Celebration and ran from July 9 – 16, 2016.

The 2016 Madison Early Music Festival commemorated the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare and celebrated the glorious 45-year reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Elizabeth made music an integral part of the opulent cultural texture during the English Renaissance. With a rich tapestry of sound as backdrop, the great William Shakespeare enhanced his plays with song and wove musical allusions into all of his works.

MEMF 2016 celebrated the musical legacy of these two titans in a full week of Elizabethan history and culture through concerts, lectures, films, classes, and dances with some of the world’s finest artists. Part of Shakespeare in Wisconsin 2016.

Videography: Aaron Granat

All-Festival Concert | Madison Early Music Festival 2016

Shakespeare’s Musical World: A Musical Day in the life of Elizabethan London is a new program created and directed by Grant Herreid exclusively for the Madison Early Music Festival. The concert took place on Saturday, July 16, 2016 at 7:30pm in Mills Concert Hall at the UW-Madison School of Music.

The 17th annual Madison Early Music Festival, Shakespeare 400: An Elizabethan Celebration, took place from July 9-16, 2016, and commemorated the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare and celebrating the glorious 45-year reign of Queen Elizabeth I.

A day in Shakespeare’s England offered a variety of musical experiences: the cries of street-sellers; the sounds of the hunt; hymns and psalms sung in worship; serenades of courtly love sung to the lute or viol; consorts of instruments accompanying dance, the theater, or for amusement. The All-Festival Concert featured these diverse scenes of daily life, woven into a rich Elizabethan musical tapestry of madrigals, consort songs, devotional pieces, and instrumental music for the closing concert.

Promotional support provided by Early Music America.

Videography and live stream coverage provided by Hinckley Productions.

Part of Shakespeare in Wisconsin 2016.

The Baltimore Consort Concert | Madison Early Music Festival 2016

The Food of Love: Songs, Dances, and Fancies for Shakespeare took place on Tuesday, July 12, 2016 at 7:30pm in Mills Concert Hall at the UW–Madison School of Music.

The 17th annual Madison Early Music Festival, “Shakespeare 400: An Elizabethan Celebration,” took place from July 9-16, 2016, and commemorated the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare and celebrating the glorious 45-year reign of Queen Elizabeth I.

The Baltimore Consort presented a brand new program featuring music from the Elizabethan era: The Food of Love: Songs, Dances, and Fancies for Shakespeare with songs and consort music from Shakespeare’s plays. Soprano Danielle Svonavec performed some of the greatest hits from the Bard’s songbook, including “It Was a Lover and his Lass,” “Where the Bee Sucks,” “Full Fathom Five,” and “The Willow Song.” The Baltimore Consort instrumentalists performed dances and consort music related to the plays, using their “exquisite consort” of instruments – lute, cittern, viols, and flute.

Videography and live stream coverage provided by Hinckley Productions.

Part of Shakespeare in Wisconsin 2016.

Highlights of 2015 Madison Early Music Festival (July 11 – 18)

The 2015 Madison Early Music Festival, “Slavic Discoveries” explored the little known early music from Eastern Europe and Eurasia; the cultural and musical history from the Eastern courts, early Russian Orthodox traditions, the Bohemian Crown Lands, the Polish Renaissance world of Copernicus, and the ancient lands of the Balkans. All listeners, singers, players, and dancers were welcome to experience music from medieval, Renaissance, and baroque times!

Our 2015 Festival Concert Series featured Ensemble Peregrina, East of the River, The Rose Ensemble, and Piffaro, The Renaissance Band. Programs ranged from sacred music of churches and courts to lively dances and early traditional secular music.

Videography: Aaron Granat

Farewell, ye limpid springs – Jephtha (Handel) – Winnie Nieh (live)

Madison Early Music Festival – Handel Aria Competition 2013 Winnie Nieh, soprano (Third Place & voted as Audience Favorite)
Chappy Stowe, harpsichordist

Farandole—MEMF 2012

Instructor Jane Peck led participants of the Madison Early Music Festival in the dance Farandole.

Great Hall, UW–Madison Memorial Union

“Negritas” Los coflades ..” by Juan de Araujo

The Madison Early Music Festival performed Early Music from the New World at its 2011 All-Festival Concert on July 16, 2011 in Mills Hall at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The piece is Negritas: Los coflades de la estleya by Juan de Araujo (ca. 1646-1712).