2022-23 Season
PopUp Boston!
Saturday, November 5, 2022
11:00 a.m.: Fenway Community Center
1:00 p.m.: Jamaica Plain branch library
3:00 p.m.: Central Library of the Boston Public Library
BCE returns with a series of free-to-all pop-up concerts in three beloved community gathering spaces. The 30-minute family-friendly program celebrates Boston’s diverse community with music from around the world. Pieces include Shawn Kirchner’s joyful arrangement of “Unclouded Day” by J.K. Alwood, the transcendent “Muusika” by Pärt Uusberg, and Eric Whitacre’s musical setting of the beloved bedtime story “Goodnight Moon”.
Join us at any of these locations throughout the day!
Season of Light
Saturday, December 10 at 3:00 p.m.
Old South Church (Copley Square, Boston)
BCE’s annual holiday concert in the beautiful sanctuary of Boston’s historic Old South Church is our most popular concert. This year’s program celebrates the ways we bring more light into the darkness, featuring traditional and contemporary music by Edvard Grieg, William Byrd, Kim André Arnesen, Abbie Betinis, Marques L. A. Garrett, along with beloved holiday carols.
For the Beauty of the Earth
Saturday, March 25 at 7:00 p.m.
University Lutheran Church (Harvard Square, Cambridge)
Spring comes to BCE with a celebration of the natural elements: earth, air, and water. Works include Antonín Dvořák’s “Songs of Nature,” Joe Twist’s “Hymn of Ancient Lands,” Matthew Orlovich’s “Tides of Ocean,” and Jake Runestad’s “We Can Mend the Sky.”
Ceremony of the Steps
In collaboration with Jace Clayton and the MassArt Art Museum
Thursday, May 18 at 7:00pm
MassArt Art Museum, Stephen D. Paine Gallery
Free and open to the public.
Ceremony of the Steps, a performance piece by artist Jace Clayton, highlights two ways in which people join voices and come together—in celebration and in protest. On May 18, Boston Choral Ensemble, under the direction of Dr. Katherine Chan, will perform a selection of their repertoire as well as a new arrangement composed by Jace Clayton in partnership with the chorus. Through its melding of harmony and incessant repetition, Ceremony of the Steps features both a capella songs and ambient loops of electronically-altered voices that blend the structure of choral compositions with the recurring chants for social change.
This Is How We Love
Saturday, June 3 at 7:00 p.m.
First Church Cambridge (Harvard Square, Cambridge)
BCE closes our 2022/23 season with songs of love, acceptance, and compassion. Works include “This Is How You Love” by Jocelyn Hagen and Timothy C. Takach (winner of BCE’s 4th Commission Competition), and the New England premier of “You Have a Name and a Place” by Lansing McLoskey, the winning piece from BCE’s 11th Commission Competition, with additional works by Saunder Choi, Edward Elgar, and others.
