BEMF Friday, bit the first

Lindsey Chapel, Emmanuel Church

So you're meeting friends for lunch, but it's early yet and you've got time to kill, so you wander over to Emmanuel Church (home of Emmanuel Music) to catch a bit of Buxtehude's Membra Jesu Nostri, a piece you don't know at all, done by some people from the real upstate New York (like out beyond Syracuse, even) the existence of which you were previously mostly unaware (the ensemble, that is, not the land beyond Syracuse), but hey, it's free. It's the combined forces of Pegasus, from Rochester, and the generically but effectively named NYS Baroque, from Ithaca. (And yes, Ulisse, but no, not that one.) And reading the program notes you realize you know most of these people, and this all looks very promising. Anyway you figure you'll hang at the back and listen for twenty minutes before sneaking out again to check text messages and echo-locate your buddies. You even take the time to plan a Least Disruptive Exit Strategy with an ultra-helpful usher.

Ha!

So you sit in the last row of chairs in the Lindsey Chapel, at the end nearest the convenient side door. And promptly get trapped by a big surge of people, and the extra rows of chairs to accommodate them, and then the big klaatsch of standees behind them. No way out. You are getting an hour of Buxtehude, whether you want it or not. Life is hard. I could try to describe it but this is why youtube exists:



It might be worth noting that the CT here, José Lemos, was (I believe) one of only two CTs of the week who got Dr T's Stamp of Approval* (as Nutrice in Poppea).

Buxtehude rocks! Just played @bostonearly fringe to a packed house. Heimes Wilson Lemos Thompson Hrycelak Beattie and more: fab musicians!

— Pegasus Early Music (@PegasusEM) June 12, 2015

Totally!

*And the other was Reginald Mobley, who had subbed the night before at Vespers, and was at this concert hanging at the back with the standees, because one of the great things about this festival is all the musos who go to each others' gigs.