The Boston Early Music Festival & Exhibition was founded in 1980 by leading practitioners of early music performance with a mission to promote and conserve the field through biennial Festivals highlighted by the first modern production of a rare period opera. Festivals include concerts by leading early music artists, rare instrument exhibitions, lectures, master classes, and scores of concurrent performance events by up-and-coming artists. In 1989, in response to an increasing demand for early music in ‘non-Festival’ years, BEMF began producing an annual Concert Series that continues to bring the brightest stars of early music to Boston every season.

Together, the BEMF Concert Series and biennial Festivals have made Boston the world center for early music performance and conservation. BEMF has won wide acclaim for staging lavish Baroque operas while simultaneously occupying a leading role in early music as this country’s premier presenting organization for performers of music of the Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque periods. The New York Times has hailed BEMF as "this country’s most prestigious forum for original-instrument performance," while The Times, London has dubbed Boston Early Music "the world’s leading festival of early music." After the 2001 Festival, The Boston Globe praised BEMF for using "each accomplishment as a steppingstone to something better…the city and the world of music owe these people a debt of gratitude."

For more than 20 years, BEMF has produced a week-long biennial Festival & Exhibition, bringing together an extraordinarily rich assortment of the most highly acclaimed musicians and singers in the field; dozens of period instrument makers to exhibit their wares; early music historians and musicologists; professional organizations; and scores of other performers, representing the latest talent on the early music scene, to appear in concurrent events. The exhibitions of instruments are the largest of their kind (the 1999 Festival, summed up by one reviewer as a "miracle of organization" and "an embarrassment of riches," hosted 85 makers from all over the world). Only the surprising number and diversity of events, which attract more than 12,000 participants and fans in a typical year, rival the artistic quality of Festival offerings.