A TASTE of WHAT WE DO: PURCELL & THE PUB

January 23, 2027 | Newton Women’s Club | 72 Columbus St | Newton, MA

TWO Seatings: 6pm | 8pm

Where music and a well-filled glass meet! Come and enjoy “A Taste of What We Do!”

This season, the Henry Purcell Society of Boston formally launches A Taste of What We Do, a new series bringing the food, drink, stories, and social world surrounding our music vividly to life. Led by theatre historian Robert Lublin and celebrity chef Jason Wang, the series invites audiences to experience history not simply as spectators, but around the table.

For Purcell & the Pub, we’re recreating something of the convivial, unruly atmosphere of Restoration England in two intimate tasting sittings of just 40 guests each. Sample a selection of English beers while our musicians serve up the musical equivalent: lusty drinking songs, ingenious catches and rounds, tavern tunes, and some wonderfully naughty songs that prove the seventeenth century was anything but buttoned-up.

Robert Lublin will lead us through the fascinating theatrical and social world behind the music. And because not every Restoration lyric is suitable for polite company, each song comes with its own “Grandma’s Rating”—our decidedly unofficial guide to just how much you might (or might not!) want your grandmother to hear.

Purcell and the Pub is designed to feel less like a concert and more like an evening spent in very good—and occasionally badly behaved—company.

Featuring the instrumentalists and singers of the Purcell Society!