Bloomington Early Music Festival

The Bloomington Early Music Festival is a week long festival featuring in-person and virtual concerts and workshops - all of which are free! Our 2024 festival programming will explore music of communities and individuals in exile, from forced migration, expulsion, and diaspora to the paradox of exile “in place” that plays out as extreme political repression and forced religious conversion. BLEM aims to highlight the many ways that the conditions of exile—found in seemingly countless histories across regions and religions, throughout medieval times to the end of the early modern era—have been expressed through music that displays resistance, defines identity, expresses fear, loss, hope, and joy, and communicates faith and convictions.