Early Music Festival performances continue

Performing songs from the Italian Renaissance, the Camerino Band will perform at 8 p.m. tonight at the Unitarian Universalist Church, featuring sopranos Elizabeth Ronan and Sonja Rasmussen, mezzo-soprano Angela Mariani, and lute-player Adam Wead. The band is just one of the groups performing at the Bloomington Early Music Festival, which continues through May 31 at venues throughout the city.\nAt the BLEMF, early masterpieces are performed on instruments modeled after or made during the Baroque period. BLEMF executive director Alain Barker said the instruments have gone through many transformations since most classical composers were alive. \n"If you played Mozart on the piano, it is completely different from what he was playing on when he was alive," Barker said.\nMost classical pieces were composed for instruments that have much different sounds than those of today. At the BLEMF, musicians reconstruct music to sound as it did when it was written.\n"It makes playing music the traditional way very boring," said early music doctoral student Aaron Westman.\nWestman, who will be playing Baroque viola with the BLEMF orchestra in Handel's oratorio "Solomon" throughout the week in West Lafayette, Indianapolis, and Bloomington, said his instrument was brand new, but made in the Baroque style.\n"My instrument was made to mid-18th century specifications to play music from 1700 to 1900," Westman said. "It came from Brussels, and the person who made it has been constructing instruments in that style for 15 years."\nAll this week, the public can view early music instruments at Wylie House.\nAt 8 p.m. Tuesday at Auer Hall, the Buxtehude Project plays its tribute to 17th century composer Buxtehude. Although the artist is best known for his organ music, tomorrow the group will explore his chamber music.\n"The style in which (Buxtehude) wrote -- fantastic and fanciful -- was supposed to sound like people were improvising it and playing it for the first time," said doctoral student Gesa Kordes. "It's unpredictable and changes on the spot -- a really cool mixture of composition and craftsmanship."\nAs a child, composer Johann Sebastian Bach was said to have walked 250 miles to hear Buxtehude play. Kordes said it is easy to see why Bach traveled so far to hear the musician.\n"He was one of the most inventive composers in the 17th century in that part of the word," Kordes said. "He was only recently rediscovered. It's very expressive music which invokes a lot of emotional reactions in the audience and the musicians."\nKordes is also performing with the BLEMF Orchestra in "Solomon" throughout the week. The Bach Choral Singers, the choir for "Solomon," is based in Lafayette, so the choir and orchestra were unable to practice together until the festival started.\n"All of the rehearsals have to be very compact," Kordes said. "It means six to nine hours of rehearsal every day during the festival and some of us are also playing in chamber orchestras in addition to this. It will be an interesting week."\nBarker said he was excited about the BLEMF, which draws musicians and music lovers from around the world.\n"It's an amazing celebration of absolutely beautiful music," Barker said. \n-- Contact Arts editor Jenica Schultz at jwschult@indiana.edu.