The Bach & Beyond Baroque Music Festival’s 27th year may be its last.

The Fredonia Opera House’s Bach & Beyond Baroque Music Festival will likely end after the 2024 season.

In a Feb. 9 letter to opera house patrons, Executive Director Rick Davis outlined the reasons why the event appears headed into its final measures.

“Culminating a years-long trend in declining attendance, this past year’s festival had the lowest attendance in its 26 years,” Davis wrote. “This translates into low ticket sales revenue.”

Although ticket sales don’t cover the festival’s cost, “we also have lost many of the Festival’s most ardent sponsors,” he continued. “Several have passed away; others have moved out of the area or into care facilities. This sponsorship decline started before COVID, has grown in the years since, and truthfully, has been seen in more than just the Bach & Beyond Festival.”

Davis went on to cite problems with living accommodations for the festival’s visiting musicians.

“One of the ways we have been able to control costs of the Festival is through housing our musicians in the homes of supporters and board members,” he wrote. “This saves on the cost of accommodations. Understandably, this type of donated housing has been harder to secure since COVID; and this past year, we had to pay to house some of our musicians.”

Davis concluded that all of the issues make the festival “financially unsustainable. And so, barring a miraculous turnaround in circumstances, this year, sadly, will mark the finale of the Bach & Beyond Baroque Music Festival.”

He then asked letter recipients to “help the Festival conclude with a great hurrah rather than a whimper” by buying tickets to the 2024 event, and providing housing for musicians.

The festival is set for June 10-16.