“The best of the best in early music” is the attraction at the 2026 Berkeley Festival & Exhibition (BFX), which will take place June 6–14, including over 20 mainstage concerts at venues in Berkeley, Palo Alto, and San Francisco.
This year, the biennial event features medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque music from Western Europe, Americas, and Asia. BFX takes place in even years, as a standalone event that complements the odd-year occurrence of the Boston Early Music Festival.
Most mainstage events will take place at First Church Berkeley. The closing work will be Handel’s opera Alcina, to be performed at UC Berkeley’s Hertz Hall, as a co-production with Festival Opera.
“Audiences can also enjoy over 40 fringe events, which are self-produced concerts, at a variety of venues,” said Derek Tam, artistic director of BFX and executive and artistic director of the San Francisco Early Music Society (SFEMS). “In addition, they can come to the free Festival Exhibition and Marketplace. This component of BFX features over 30 instrument makers, publishers, and performing organizations. It is held between June 11 and June 13 in the South Wing of First Church.”
He added that Robert Cole, then executive director of Cal Performances, founded the event in 1990. Since 2010, SFEMS has been the primary presenter of BFX.
Noteworthy mainstage performances include Chanticleer, the San Francisco-based male vocal ensemble, joined with Kaleidoscope Vocal Ensemble for a mixed concert spanning the Renaissance to contemporary music. Kaleidoscope will also join with Cantata Collective to perform Bach’s 1725 St John Passion under the direction of conductor Nicholas McGegan. Berkeley-based Gamelan Sekar Jaya will also perform a concert.
Tam said he is particularly excited about Pacific Music Works’ performance “An Evening with the Countess,” a Baroque-meets-drag cabaret starring American bass-baritone John Taylor Ward. Tam also looks forward to The New York Baroque Dance Company & Music of the Regiment. This performance will feature dancers in historical costumes of the early American republic performing to pioneering African American composer Francis Johnson’s A Collection of New Cotillions.
Every two years, BFX takes at least a year to organize, with preparation starting soon after the previous Festival. This year, BFX will cost approximately $300,000 to produce. Funding comes from individual donations, ticket sales, and financial support from the City of Berkeley. BFX has a “Pay-What-You-Can” pricing model. Tam said such pricing invites in the larger community and makes performances more accessible to students and the public. Many donors also subscribe to BFX, acting as sponsors for other audience members.
Lillian Gordis is a harpsichordist who grew up in Berkeley and now lives in Paris. She said BFX significantly encouraged her development in early music.
“I attended the festival every two years between 1998 and 2008,” Gordis said. “It allows you to step into other sound worlds. Often the repertoire is less formalized than classical music. The pacing and flow are very different from contemporary music.”
This year, Gordis will perform an all-Bach recital inspired by her recent album . The program will include the Sixth Partita and preludes and fugues from The Well-Tempered Clavier.
Judith Linsenberg is the artistic director and recorder player of the well-known Baroque ensemble Musica Pacifica. In addition to performing, she teaches adult students both in person and over Zoom. Musica Pacifica will perform a mainstage concert featuring guest artist American soprano Paulina Francisco called “The Ornamented Voice - Women Composers of the Baroque.”
Linsenberg said that while working on Baroque music by female composers, she has discovered a lot of music that merits study and attention.
“It’s exciting to play new pieces and learn about the women who wrote them,” she said. Thanks to the establishment of a virtual library, The International Music Score Library Project, aka the Petrucci Music Library, public domain scores by women composers are now accessible online.
In addition to conducting the opera that closes the Festival, Tam will conduct a mainstage event with the Berkeley Youth Choir, which was founded last year. He said one of the goals of SFEMS, the parent organization of the new youth choir, is to introduce young musicians to early music. He himself started attending BFX as a young performer.
“It’s really humbling to be on the other side and be a part of production and performance as an adult,” Tam said. “I don’t know who’s out there waiting to be inspired.”
For more information about the BFX, visit: berkeleyfestival.org/.
