What does SFEMS stand for?
To hundreds of attendees, SFEMS is a wonderful week playing, singing, and studying at one of Six Summer Workshops, coached by some of early music’s most inspiring artists and interpreters.
For thousands of audience members, SFEMS is a wonderfully rich Early Music Concert Series that presents outstanding performances in programs of music spanning eight centuries.
For 33 aspiring ensembles and community organizations, SFEMS is a sponsor and patron who gives them non-profit status, insurance, development grants, and other benefits through our Affiliates Program.
And every two years, artists and audience from around the world are drawn to the Bay Area to participate in the SFEMS-produced Berkeley Festival and Exhibition—an 8-day celebration of thrilling performances by the world’s greatest exponents of early music.
While it may be hard to pronounce, SFEMS stands for everything the San Francisco Early Music Society does to further historically informed performance of early music throughout the Bay Area, while nurturing a joyful spirit of community among our members, patrons, donors, performers, workshop participants, board and staff.
ALL of us are SFEMS!
Your donation is the key to turning our organization’s dreams into reality. Strong support from you now will ensure that all of our programs—the 2020 Berkeley Festival, the concert series, the workshops and our Affiliate program—will endure and thrive. Ticket sales and tuition/room & board income cover only 65% of operating expenses. We must make up the remaining 35% of our budget in contributed income. Please help us reach our goal to raise $50,000 by the end of the year.
Thank you so much for your past support of SFEMS! I hope that, in these waning weeks of a tumultuous year, you will help sustain SFEMS’s activities that bring people together in celebration of music’s gifts from past centuries. The musical gifts we receive and share with others remind us of the good that humans are capable of creating in our world.
With best wishes for the holiday season,
Joyce Johnson Hamilton
President, SFEMS
