March 17, 2015 (PITTSBURGH, PA). Early Music America has named its annual award winners for 2015. Shulamit Kleinerman, newly appointed co-director of SFEMS’s Music Discovery Workshop and Youth Collegium, is the 2015 recipient of the Laurette Goldberg Award for lifetime achievement in early music outreach.
EMA’s Goldberg Award recognizes outstanding achievement in outreach and/or educational projects for children or adults by ensembles and individual artists. The Award is named for Laurette Goldberg (1932–2005), teacher, performer, author and founder of musical enterprises in the San Francisco Bay Area, including MusicSources, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, and the Cazadero Baroque Music Camp, which became the SFEMS Summer Baroque Workshop in 1980. Laurette was also a board member of SFEMS during its early years and a former vice-president of the Society.
As the founder and director of Seattle Historical Arts for Kids, Shulamit Kleinerman unites her musical specialties with her longtime commitment to youth education. In ten years, SHAK has grown from a series of hands-on summer arts camps for children to a year-round calendar of workshops and performances in early music and theater for students aged 6–18.
An annual theatrical performance, presented by the Early Music Guild of Seattle, puts children and teens onstage to recreate masterworks from Shakespeare plays to Handel opera to medieval miracle stories, each with period song, dance, and drama, in period costume and accompanied by early-music professionals. A year-round Early Music Youth Academy introduces instrumental students to music from the Middle Ages and Renaissance, along with instruments such as the viola da gamba, rebec, vielle, and medieval harp.
Shula maintains a full violin studio for children and co-teaches two middle-school-aged viola da gamba students. She also serves as the Youth Outreach Program Coordinator at the Early Music Guild of Seattle, helping bring historical music programming to Seattle’s most underserved students in their schools. She has directed the theater project at the SFEMS Music Discovery Workshop for children since 2012, and as noted above was chosen last year to serve as co-director of the program.
Shulamit, along with Early Music America’s other winners, will be honored during the Boston Early Music Festival at EMA’s Annual Meeting and Awards Ceremony, taking place on Friday, June 12, 4:00 p.m. at First Church, Boston.
