EMAg Features

People who care about the future of historical performance often don’t understand how to reach and retain young people. This essay is a call to action for the field of historical performance to support educational work.

From the Publications Director: On the research side, A.I.’s skill in gathering and summarizing information opens boundless possibilities. But the interpretation of facts is an art all its own, not to be casually handed over to a bot. It's crazy to have to say this, but here we are: Writing is as much an art as playing the viola da gamba or the crumhorn.

Anna Mansbridge's keen imagination and cross-pollination of dance styles — Renaissance, Baroque, contemporary — has informed her work in Seattle and across the Pacific Northwest for a quarter-century.

For audiences and performers, the value of touring is undeniable. A city-to-city string of shows can seem glamorous, heightening artistic reputations and drawing new fans in distant communities. Many American early-music groups would love to go on tour. Some have learned to navigate that complex landscape.

Friends and colleagues have shared with me, and I know from experience, that vocalists with exclusively “classical” training can sometimes be blind to the richness of other music. We tend to minimize our efforts when approaching different or less “formal” genres, or even avoid them completely.

At EMA, we often hear versions of a basic question: How do I get my ensemble and concerts previewed, reviewed, mentioned in the press? Artists run their own social media but, in truth, you want someone else talking up your projects and performances. That attention, in turn, helps ticket sales and fundraising. It puts the organization on an upward spiral.

Music, much of it performed by military bands, is inextricably linked to the mythology of the American Revolution. Yet one of early America's most popular musical ensembles, the regimental band, has been obscured from the late 18th-c. soundscape.

A scholar of American musical history reflects on 'Niagara,' an obscure symphony that connects centuries of our nation's cultural life, proving once again that the only thing fixed about American musical identity is that it remains in a constant state of flux.

'That raises the question of what we’re doing when we study all those treatises and try to play like Couperin. Probably not everybody sounded like Couperin in Couperin’s day, or wanted to. And maybe we don’t actually want to sound like Couperin, either — we want to sound like a plausible, tasteful, expressive but individual performer.'

Gabriela Guadalajara is perhaps NYC's only luthier who works exclusively on period instruments. In a brilliantly devised partnership, she is helping bring Baroque instrument-making techniques to Latin America.