EMA News Features & Press Releases

Retelling her ancestry as a series of musical stories, the author starts with a very great grandmother, Pa I Sha. She walked the Trail of Tears, the forced removal of the Five Civilized Tribes from their homelands to Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma. The Chickasaws called this dark chapter “the Removal.” She tells a musical story both harrowing and hopeful, about both hardship and love.

The Oklahoma Baroque Orchestra, founded in 2022, has rapidly blossomed under artistic director Dylan Madoux. His goal is to create a self-sustaining early-music community for Oklahoma City and the region. People around the country are starting to take notice.

In appointing Marie-Nathalie Lacoursière to lead its prestigious dance activities, BEMF has picked a multidisciplinary choreographer, dancer, actor, and musician. She has been 'an invaluable collaborator for many years and is at the top of her field.'

Creative artists in early music are hoping to attract new fans by offering more than old music in predictable formations. By design, they break from the status quo, with soap-bubble sets for Vivaldi and Bach in spoken English. Historically informed? 'It’s historically inspired, which is maybe more important.'

Across North America, ensembles are connecting with audiences not just as passive-listening concert-goers but as participants in making music. Give a performance of Renaissance polyphony, but also teach local amateurs how to sing it themselves. 'They will hear it as never before — from within the ensemble.'

Soprano Michele Kennedy writes about two profoundly moving experiences in her musical life. 'For aspiring young musicians, seeing their own image reflected back from the stage can be life-altering.' And, as an artist, 'being that example for others to see...'

If you know anything about Southern Oregon, it might be for Crater Lake or the Oregon Shakespeare Festival or as an increasingly impressive wine region. But the Jefferson Baroque Orchestra has been going steadily for three decades. Under new leadership, the ensemble is aiming to become one of the leading period instrument groups on the West Coast.

Next Week, New Orleans' OperaCreole and D.C.'s Opera Lafayette collaborate on a world premiere, 138 years after the music was written. Edmond Dédé fled antebellum New Orleans for France, where he was a successful conductor and composer. But his grand, four-act opera "Morgiane" was never performed, till now.

Two musicians with Deep South connections recently launched a Facebook group, hoping to encourage the small and far-flung scene. Over the holidays, they came together for the first time in an afternoon jam. Baroque violinist Lindsey Tootle, an Alabama native, sends a session report.

If you're in Europe, hoping to hear a deluxe celebration of Palestrina's 500th birthday, go to the Duomo in Milan. In North America, the biggest Palestrina 2025 party will be in Grand Rapids, Mich., where an ambitious Catholic church will host a dozen ensembles, from the Tallis Scholars and Gesualdo Six to their own parish choirs -- and all of it sung at regular Mass services.