The Berkeley Festival & Exhibition is produced by The San Francisco Early Music Society and was conceived of and founded by Robert Cole, then Director of Cal Performances, and the late Joseph Spencer, proprietor of the Musical Offering and then SFEMS president. Over the years, the Festival has presented unique and amazing events: Mark Morris Dance Group's interpretation of Rameau's Platée; Le Carousel du Roi, featuring dressage horses and riders executing elaborate ballets from seventeenth-century France accompanied by shawms and sackbuts in their natural setting (outdoors); and the North American premiere of a longlost Mass by Alessandro Striggio for 40 and 60 voices.
