Workshops & Festivals in 2024
The following organizations are Advertisers or Partner Members of ARS, and we are delighted to spread the word about their workshops and events of interest to recorder players. Music of Italy and Spain
Union College
Schenectady, NY
June 30-July 7 and 7-14, 2024Classes are on a wide range -- Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, and Traditional music topics. You can take an easy ride, just for the fun of it, or you can improve your playing, singing, or dancing; expand your knowledge; and enjoy being part of the friendly and stimulating Festival community. Classes run Monday thru Friday each week. Tuition: $710 per week for all programs. See website for room & board options.
Contact: Sally Merriman
781-488-3337
info@amherstearlymusic.orgamherstearlymusic.org
Founded in 1990 and produced by the San Francisco Early Music Society (SFEMS), the Festival has become one of the world’s largest and most important early music conclaves, deemed “a remarkable institution on the American musical scene” by The New York Times.
Enjoy eight days of scintillating music with 19 main stage concerts, as well as special events, a three-day vendor exhibition, community workshops, and dozens of Fringe presentations.
For the first time in Festival history, mainstage concerts will be pay-what-you-can, continuing SFEMS’ initiative from the regular season to remove income as a barrier to arts accessibility. To support this experiment—which has already brought record-breaking crowds to SFEMS concerts this season— patrons are invited to consider “paying-it-forward” by purchasing a paid subscription, which not only ensures premium seat(s), but will serve as an investment in this groundbreaking initiative.
Director: Derek Tam
June 9-16, 2024
Contact: Sarah Coykendall
Email: bfx.fringe@sfems.org
https://www.berkeleyfestival.org/
August 30 - September 1, 2024
Bloom Early Music Workshop
St. Matthew Lutheran Church, 123 Market St., Bloomsburg PA
Director: Susan Schwartz
Faculty: Lisle Kulbach, Lawrence Lipnik and Joan Kimball
Spend a glorious weekend making early music in historic Bloomsburg, located in beautiful Columbia County, Pennsylvania. The workshop will feature Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque ensemble repertoire in a friendly and supportive environment. All types of early instruments are welcome – the more, the merrier! Classes include recorder and viol consorts, voices and viols, and ensembles for mixed instrumental and vocal ensembles in spacious rooms adjoining the historic St. Matthew Lutheran Church. Group playing will take place Friday and Saturday evenings, and the weekend will culminate Sunday in an all workshop large group session with an informal presentation open to the Bloomsburg community.
Susan Schwartz
Phone: 570-416-2597
Email:
director@bloomearlymusic.orgbloomearlymusic.org
May 19-25, 2024
Bloomington Early Music Festival 2024: Early Music in Exile
Downtown Bloomington Indiana; live streamed at blemf.org
Board Director and CEO: Suzanne Ryan Melamed; Festival Manager: Steven M. Warnock
Early Music in Exile will explore music of communities and individuals displaced from their homeland due to forced migration, political expulsion, and ethnic diaspora, as well as the paradox of exile “in place” that plays out as extreme political repression, incarceration, and forced religious conversion. While educational workshops designed for children and adults will investigate everyday life in the early music era -- from food & drink to dance, sword fighting, and early technologies -- BLEMF 2024 musical performances, alongside in-depth discussions and interviews will highlight the many ways that the conditions of exile -- found in seemingly countless histories across regions and religions throughout medieval times to the end of the early modern era -- have been expressed through music that displays resistance, defines identity, expresses fear, loss, hope, and joy, and communicates faith and convictions.
Contact: Maggie Eronimous
Email: office@blemf.org
Website: blemf.org
Joanna Reiner Wilkerson, Director of Camp Programs, Early Music Week at Pinewoods
camp@cdss.org
August 10-17, 2024
Early Music Week at Pinewoods
Pinewoods Camp, Plymouth, MA
Director: Lisa Terry
Early Music Week offers joyful opportunities and challenges to players, singers, and dancers of every level. As classes unfold through the week, we will explore and discover the innovation and creativity that lie behind some of the world’s most vibrant and compelling renaissance, baroque, and medieval music, listening and playing with deeper understanding, as well as dancing together and enjoying all that the Pinewoods community has to offer.
Contact: Joanna Reiner Wilkinson
Contact address: 116 Pleasant St., Suite 345, Easthampton, MA 01027
Phone: 413-203-5437 x101
Email: camp@cdss.org
Website: cdss.org/em
University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP)
Department of Music
500 W University
El Paso, Texas 79902
Dr. Lindsey Macchiarella
lmacchiarella@utep.edu
www.utep.edu/liberalarts/music/outreach/musicology-area/early-music-latin-america-festival.html
The University of Texas at El Paso has been approved for a $28,000 Grants for Arts Projects award from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to support the Early Music Latin America Festival. This project includes a concert and free workshop to promote music from the 16-18th centuries from Latin American countries.
Recent musicological research has shown that this repertoire contains diverse influences of critical importance to cultural and music-historical narratives. Compared to Renaissance and Baroque European repertoire, early Latin American music has been rarely recorded, performed, or taught. Led by Project Director, Lindsey Macchiarella, the University of Texas at El Paso seeks to strengthen the performance and dissemination of this repertoire in the borderlands and beyond, transforming prevailing music-historical narratives of early classical music and establishing UTEP as a center for early Latin American music.
The early Latin American music workshop will take place March 1-4 and the concert will be performed and live-streamed on March 2. The concert will feature LeStrange viol consort performing with Mary Springfels, Daniel Meyers, Jason Priset, and Estelí Gomez.
Contact: Dr. Lindsey Macchiarella
Email:
lmacchiarella@utep.edu Tish Berlin & Frances Blaker
National Road Scholar Early Music Workshop
Two sessions: Oct 27 - Nov 2, 2024 and Nov 3 - Nov 9, 2024
Hidden Valley Early Music Road Scholar, Carmel Valley, CA. Open to intermediate to advanced recorders and viols. Week 2 includes a special auditioned track for advanced dulcian and shawm players with Marilyn Boenau and Tish Berlin. Visit https://www.roadscholar.org/find-an-adventure/6254/national-road-scholar-recorder-early-music-workshop/dates/ to register. If you are told that enrollment is closed, write to hiddenvalleymusic.org to ask about openings.
Week 1 faculty: Recorder: Tish Berlin, Frances Blaker, Larry Lipnik; Viola da gamba: David Morris; Early strings: Shira Kammen
Week 2 faculty: Recorder: Tish Berlin, Frances Blaker, Larry Lipnik; Viola da gamba: Mary Springfels, Larry Lipnik; Dulcian/shawm: Marilyn Boenau
Peter Meckel
PO Box 116, Carmel Valley, CA 93924
(831) 659-3115
info@hiddenvalleymusic.org
https://www.roadscholar.org/find-an-adventure/6254/national-road-scholar-recorder-early-music-workshop/dates/
https://tibiaduo.com/
The Mideast Early Music Workshop
July 21-27, 2024
Early Music from Medieval to the Early Baroque
Held at LaRoche University, Pittsburgh, PA. An opportunity for early music enthusiasts to work with an outstanding faculty and students of all levels.
Revel in the joy of playing early music! Friendly, welcoming staff and students will make you feel right at home. Bring recorder, Baroque flute or viola da gamba for your main instrument. Then fill up the car with all your other early music instruments, like crumhorns, harps, sackbuts, percussion and more. This is your opportunity as an early music enthusiast to work with an outstanding faculty. The week includes technique classes at all levels; large and small ensembles and a variety of elective classes.
Karen Parsons
Phone: 724-444-4784
Email: EarlyMusicWeekMideast@gmail.com
www.EarlyMusicWeekMideast.org
Jody Miller, Director
recorder96@gmail.com
June 30 - July 6, 2024
Mountain Collegium Early Music & Folk Music Workshop
Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, NC
Director: Jody Miller
Faculty: Recorder - Phil Hollar, Joan Kimball, Jody Miller, Emily O'Brien, Pat Petersen, Gwyn Roberts, Anne Timberlake, Barbara Weiss
The backdrop of the Smoky Mountains provides an idyllic setting for a workshop that is both intensive and fun. With classes in Renaissance, Baroque, and contemporary music for recorder players, there are offerings to suit musicians of all levels and interests. In addition to four classes each day, there are nightly large-group playing sessions, concerts, English country dancing, and so much more! Work-study awards are available.
This diverse workshop offers also offers classes in capped reeds, early brass, viola da gamba, folk music, early harp, and more! Come for the recorder experience, but leave with so much more!
Registration opens March 2024. Visit www.mountaincollegium.org to join our mailing list.
Mountain Collegium encourages you to apply for workstudy or for a scholarship through the American Recorder Society.
Contact: Jody Miller, 404-314-1891
info@mountaincollegium.org
www.mountaincollegium.org
June 16-29, 2024
Music of Paris and Versailles, 1660-1760
Oberlin College Conservatory of Music - Oberlin, Ohio
Featuring the Oberlin Baroque Ensemble, distinguished resident faculty, and special guests Emma Kirkby and James Taylor
The Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute, the premiere summer workshop focusing on baroque instruments and voice, will mark its 52nd year of preparing musicians of all ages (15 and up) to perform some of the great works on period instruments. Learn from faculty and resident artists and participate in master classes, recitals, and student concerts to practice baroque techniques and gain a fuller appreciation of this unique musical genre.
New 2024 offerings! Recorder Consort and Viol Consort tracks.
Contact: Anna Hoffmann
Oberlin Conservatory of Music, 77 West College Street, Oberlin OH 44074
440-775-8044
summer@oberlin.edu
https://www.oberlin.edu/summer-programs/bpi
San Francisco Early Music Society
Baroque Workshop: June 24–30
Medieval/Renaissance Workshop: July 14–20
Recorder Workshop: July 21–27
Classical Workshop: July 28–August 3
Recorder Week Workshop theme for 2024:
Musical Voyages
Director: Annette Bauer
Music is an intangible, invisible, and ephemeral art form, yet it can, and has been, a part of tangible movement in the world. Our theme "Musical Voyages" opens an invitation for us to imagine different ways in which music has traveled and moved from place to place. Whether it be by way of the wandering minstrels of the European Middle Ages, the "international" court composers of Renaissance Europe, or the music accompanying people forced into exile or diaspora, music was adapted and reinvented in its new homes, while keeping its identity and roots within.
Musical manuscripts and the invention of musical printing created a wave of diffusion and popularization of repertoire across Europe and beyond. Some of the music by 16th- to 18th-century European composers made its way to the "Americas," where it was infused with its own local, and often complex, resonance. The imaginations of later composers have often been captured by the music of far-away places, quoting and reinterpreting it in new contexts, thus bringing it to new lands in new ways.
This year's workshop theme is intended to let our imagination trace these different kinds of musical "voyages," and most importantly, to let the music move us.
The above workshops are all 1-week workshop with day classes and evening presentations, held in Berkeley, CA. Room and Board info posted on sfems.org.
Contact: Stacey Helley, PO Box 10151 Berkeley, CA 94709
510-683-1674
workshops@sfems.org
https://www.sfems.org/workshops
Daniel Johnson, Workshop Director
info@toot.org
May 26 - June 1, 2024
Summer Texas Toot
Schreiner University, Kerrville TX
Daniel Johnson, Director; Susan Richter, Administrator
Faculty: Annette Bauer, Glen Shannon and Jennifer Carpenter, recorder
Joan Kimball, recorder and reeds; Héctor Alfonso Torres González, lute
Brent Wissick and Mary Springfels, viola da gamba; Therese Honey, harp
The Summer Texas Toot offers a one-week program of classes at all levels, focusing on Renaissance and Baroque music, but also ranging from Medieval to Sephardic to 21st century. Expert instructors in recorder, viol, lute, harp, winds, and voice will teach technique classes, coach one-on-a-part groups, and lead larger ensembles, both mixed and whole. Please join us for the 2024 Toot … “more than recorders”! We are very excited to be returning to our new home base: Schreiner University, in Kerrville, Texas! Nestled in the beauty of the Texas Hill Country, Schreiner’s campus provides all the classrooms, concert spaces, housing, and meals that you expect as part of the Toot experience. The campus itself is beautifully landscaped with lots of trees and broad sidewalks, and all the public buildings are fully ADA-accessible.
Fall Texas Toot (dates TBA)
Lakeview Methodist Conference Center, near Palestine, TX
Daniel Johnson, Director; Susan Richter, Administrator
Contact: Danny Johnson
Attn: Texas Toot, PO Box 4328
Austin TX 78765
Phone: (512) 578-8040
Email: info@toot.org
Website: www.toot.org
Pamela J. Wiese, Director
oprecorder@gmail.com
www.whitewaterearlymusic.org
May 31-June 2 2024
Whitewater Early Music Festival
University of Wisconsin at Whitewater, Whitewater, Wisconsin
Directors: Laura Kuhlman and Pamela Wiese
Faculty -
Recorders: Miyo Aoki, David Echelard, Lisette Kielson, Laura Kuhlman, Liza Malamut, Mona Mann. Viols: John Mark Rosenthal, Katherine Schuldiner
A weekend workshop for vocal, recorders and viols with fantastic presenters. Classes on a variety of subjects and range from Advanced Beginner to Advanced. Ice cream social and large group playing on Saturday evening. This year we are moving to a modern accessible dorm with semi-private rooms and baths, and A/C!
SFEMS Workshops
Whitewater Early Music Festival