Blue Heron, directed by Scott Metcalfe,[1] is a professional vocal ensemble based in the Boston area.
The ensemble presents an annual concert series in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and performs throughout New England as well as touring the US; it made its European debut in the United Kingdom in 2017.
One of the partbooks was lost and another damaged in the intervening centuries, but the missing parts had recently been reconstructed and published by the English musicologist and composer Nick Sandon.
[8] Blue Heron draws from a roster of musicians in order to constitute the ensemble best suited to the repertoire at hand.
The performing ensemble may range in size from three singers (for a 15th-century chanson) to as many as thirteen (for a large-scale early 16th-century English mass in a cathedral setting) and adds instruments such as slide trumpet, trombone, dulcian, fiddle, rebec, harp, and lute when appropriate.
[9] The group has appeared in other concert series and at venues throughout the United States, including Music Before 1800 in New York City and the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., as well as in Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Shaker Heights, Milwaukee, St. Louis, San Francisco, Seattle, Grand Rapids, and Philadelphia.
[8] In October 2017, the ensemble gave its debut concerts in the United Kingdom, performing in the chapels of Peterhouse and Trinity Colleges in Cambridge, and in London at Lambeth Palace Library.
In June 2022, the ensemble will make its debut in continental Europe at the Tage Alter Musik festival in Regensburg, Germany.
[11] With Jessie Ann Owens of the University of California, Davis, Blue Heron was recognized with the 2015 Noah Greenberg Award from the American Musicological Society; the prize helped fund the preparation and world premiere recording of Cipriano de Rore's first book of madrigals, I madrigali a cinque voci of 1542.