Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is pairing masterpieces with music! On Sunday, October 18, 2026, at 1:30 PM, the acclaimed early-music ensemble ACRONYM takes the stage at Calderwood Hall for a special concert inspired by the Museum’s current exhibition, The Book of Esther in the Age of Rembrandt.
The program features rare performances of three Esther cantatas from Rembrandt’s time — music nearly lost to history that ACRONYM is bringing back to life in modern premieres. The concert spotlights two remarkable women composers of the era: Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre’s Esther (1708) and the Sinfonia à 5, No. 5 (c. 1625–1650) by Leonora Duarte, who came from a Portuguese-Jewish converso family.
Founded in 2012, ACRONYM is devoted to reviving 17th-century music, with ten critically acclaimed albums to its name. The New York Times has praised the group for playing with “consummate style, grace, and unity of spirit,” while the Boston Musical Intelligencer celebrates its “unadulterated joy and funk.”
The concert coincides with the Gardner’s exhibition The Book of Esther in the Age of Rembrandt, on view through January 18, 2027, which explores how Rembrandt and his Dutch contemporaries depicted the biblical heroine — alongside contemporary artist Michal Rovner’s Esther Scrolls. The performance is part of the Museum’s Fall 2026 Weekend Concert Series at the extraordinary Calderwood Hall, a 300-seat “sonic cube” where 80% of seats feel like the front row. This series, dating to 1927, is the longest-running museum music program in the country.
Tickets are available at gardnermuseum.org/music or by calling 617-278-5156. The Museum is located at 25 Evans Way, Boston.
Photo: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (artwork: Jan Steen’s Esther, Ahasuerus, and Haman, c. 1668, courtesy of the Cleveland Museum of Art).
