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The
Emmanuel Music Ensemble is a collective group of singers and
instrumentalists that together, under the direction of Music
Director Craig Smith, performs a wide variety of music ranging
from small chamber ensembles to large-scale works. The Boston
Globe calls Emmanuel Music "a treasure and an incredible
prize" and the New York Times has hailed the group
as "authoritative, performing with intelligence, tenderness
and with an involving commitment and character." The group
was founded in 1970 by Craig Smith to perform the complete cycle
of over 200 sacred cantatas by J.S. Bach in the liturgical setting
for which they were intended. The cycle, which has been completed
twice, continues today at Boston's Emmanuel Church. All performances
draw their vocal and instrumental soloists from the core group
of Emmanuel musicians. Emmanuel Music has expanded its repertoire
over the years, to include large-scale works by Bach, major
symphonic works, Mozart operas, Handel operas and oratorios,
Schütz choral works, premieres of works by Pulitzer Prize-winning
composer and Principal Guest Conductor of Emmanuel Music John
Harbison, and chamber series devoted to the complete vocal,
piano, and chamber works of Schumann, Debussy, Brahms, and,
currently, a 7-year survey of Schubert - a schedule that totals
50 performances per year. Guest conductors have included composer
John Harbison, Seiji Ozawa, Christopher Hogwood, and noted Bach
scholar Christoph Wolff.
 Through
its many performances, Emmanuel Music provides talented and
eager musicians with a milieu in which to perform and perfect
their art. Three chamber groups associated with Emmanuel Music
have won the coveted Naumburg Award for excellence - the Lydian
String Quartet, the Emmanuel Wind Quintet and the
vocal group Liederkreis. Emmanuel Music achieved international
recognition from audiences and critics alike in its innovative
collaborations with the Mark Morris Dance Group, and stage
director Peter Sellars. Emmanuel Music made its European debut
in 1989 in Brussels at the Theatre de la Monnaie, and
in May, 1997 embarked on a highly successful tour of France
and Germany with stage director Peter Sellars in performances
of Weill/Bach: Mahagonny Songspiel; Conversations Between
Fear and Death where the newspaper Le Figaro praised
the group for "it's flabbergasting level of singers,
the playing of the orchestra and the conducting of Craig Smith."
In
addition to its many performances, Emmanuel Music sponsors
educational activities with The Emmanuel Children's Choir,
made up of children from diverse neighborhoods of Boston and
the Boston Metropolitan area. Emmanuel Music is presented
weekly on WGBH radio in its own "radio series" of
the Bach Cantatas on Sunday mornings at 8:00 AM, and
has been the subject of numerous national radio and television
specials, among them CBS Sunday Morning, The News
Hour with Jim Lehrer, The Connection, and NPR's Performance
Today. The group has completed two recording projects
for KOCH International - a highly acclaimed project featuring
choral works of Heinrich Schütz, and as a result of the close
association with composer John Harbison, a CD recording of
music he has written especially for Emmanuel Music. The group
has begun a Bach recording project with KOCH that features
Cantatas of J.S. Bach, and the St. John Passion, 1725 version.
Emmanuel Music has received major awards from Chamber Music
America, the Aaron Copland Fund for New Music, and the National
Endowment for the Arts. Emmanuel Music is in residence at
the C. Walsh Theatre at Suffolk University and Emmanuel Church.
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