May 19, 2020—It is our pleasure to announce the launch of the Virtual Young Performers Festival and Emerging Artists Showcase. From June 8–14—during the week the Berkeley Festival & Exhibition (BFX) was to have taken place—SFEMS and Early Music America (EMA) will broadcast made-to-order, pre-recorded concerts featuring some of the brightest lights from the next generation of early music performers! We hope you will join us as we endeavor to bring the festival spirit into your home as we share some of talented musicians who would have been featured on various BFX stages. We are also delighted to welcome Sunday Baroque as a media partner for this collaboration.
A full schedule will be made available by June 1, 2020.
“We hope this will provide inspiration during this challenging period, as we seek to connect the national early music community through the vibrant-music making of these young musicians,” EMA executive director Karin Brookes said.
While we realize that nothing can replace a live performance, we are nonetheless committed to supporting and nurturing these young performers whose career paths will certainly be altered by the course of the current crisis.
We are also grateful to announce that through generous funding by the National Endowment for the Arts, EMA will sponsor SFEMS’s virtual workshop sessions the weekend of June 12–14. Several of that weekend’s sessions will be made free and open to the public.
Young Performers Festival Participants:
Davis Senior High School Baroque Ensemble—Davis, California
Early Music Youth Academy—Seattle, Washington
Juilliard415—New York, New York
McGill University Baroque Orchestra—Montréal, Quebec
Tonos del Sur (Indiana University)—Bloomington, Indiana
USC Thornton Baroque Sinfonia—Los Angeles, California
Emerging Artists Showcase Participants:
Gili Loftus, fortepiano—Montréal, Quebec
L.A. Camerata: Marylin Winkle, director—Los Angeles, California
Lyracle: Ashley Mulcahy, James Perretta—Boston, Massachusetts
Trobár: Allison Monroe, Elena Mullins, Karin Weston—Cleveland, Ohio
