Announcing the 2020 Virtual Young Performers Festival and Emerging Artists Showcase

We have some good news to share, as today we’re announcing 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, EMA and the San Francisco Early Music Society (SFEMS) will broadcast made-to-order, pre-recorded concerts and we are delighted to welcome Sunday Baroque as media partner for this project.  We are all anticipating with great emotion the moment when musicians and audiences will come back together again. It is devastating that the 16th biennial Berkeley Festival & Exhibition will not take place this year, and we understand that nothing takes the place of a live performance, but we’re happy to share a glimpse of the musicians who were to be featured on the stages of The San Francisco Conservatory of Music and UC Berkeley’s Hertz Hall next month. 

We hope you will take advantage of the 2020 Virtual Young Performers Festival and Emerging Artists Showcase as we endeavor to bring the festival spirit into your homes. Most importantly, 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. Through generous funding by the National Endowment for the Arts, EMA will also sponsor SFEMS’s virtual workshop sessions the weekend of June 12-14. 

Young Performers Festival

Since 2010, Early Music America (EMA) has been proud to bring together college and university ensembles throughout North America to perform at the nation’s leading early music festivals in Berkeley, CA, Bloomington, IN, and Boston, MA. Applicants submitting programs that move beyond the traditional Western classical canon, but fall within the same historical range (to ca.1820), are encouraged to apply.
Learn more

2020 Festival Ensembles

Davis Senior High School Baroque Ensemble – Davis, CA
Early Music Youth Academy – Seattle, WA
Juilliard415 – New York, NY
McGill University Baroque Ensemble – Montréal, QC
Tonos del Sur (Indiana University) – Bloomington, IN
USC Thornton Baroque Sinfonia – Los Angeles, CA

Emerging Artists Showcase

Begun in 2018, the Showcase goes beyond the university level already represented by YPF to serve the broadest possible range of artists. The term “emerging artist” can include historically-informed performers of all types, without respect to age. Applicants are asked to describe how they see the future of historical performance taking shape, and to define how their role as artists and ensembles aligns with that future vision. Applicants submitting programs that move beyond the traditional Western classical canon, but fall within the same historical range (to ca.1820), are encouraged to apply.
Learn more

2020 Showcase Artists and Ensembles

Gili Loftus: fortepiano – Montréal, QC
L.A. Camerata: dir. Marylin Winkle – Los Angeles, CA
Lyracle: Ashley Mulcahy, James Perretta – Boston, MA
Trobár: Allison Monroe, Elena Mullins, Karin Weston – Cleveland, OH

As we move forward with the Festival & Showcase, our hope is that we can offer soloists and ensembles a supportive and stimulating environment in which they can grow and flourish. We look forward to presenting dynamic concerts that reflect the future of historical performance in North America.

Benefits of the Festival

EMA and SFEMS will present a concert for each selected ensemble and this will be livestreamed and recorded. We will offer financial assistance for travel and help with finding accommodation. EMA and SFEMS will produce national publicity for both the Festival and the Showcase and promote musicians by way of EMAg—the Magazine of Early Music America, EMA’s Weekly E-Notes, as well as EMA and SFEMS’s website and social media accounts.

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