The Eastern Music Festival, the summer educational program and classical music festival, has received three donor gifts totaling $130,000.

Peep in on the last nights of EMF and you can expect multiple symphonic finales, the Young Artists Orchestras offering their valedictories, followed by the professionals of the Festival Orchestra on closing night. 

The Eastern Music Festival will end its 58th season tonight. But its music director will return next summer for four seasons. The EMF board has signed a new four-year contract with Gerard Schwarz. It secures his role with the festival through the 2023 season.

The 58th annual Eastern Music Festival draws to a close Saturday, but the public still has an chance to hear guest pianist Horacio Gutiérrez, a piece’s world premiere and student concerts.

The annual open house for the Eastern Music Festival is Sunday, July 21 at Guilford College. It’s an afternoon of free concerts open to the public and it marks beginning of the last week of the 2019 Eastern Music Festival  which ends Saturday, July 27.

From Sunday through July 27, Rowan and other EMF faculty members immerse 24 guitar students in long days of lessons, performance-development classes, practice and rehearsals to prepare for public concerts. They all perform in a guitar orchestra and in smaller ensembles.

An Eastern Music Festival audience will watch top students solo with the Young Artist Orchestras in the July 25 Concerto Competition winners’ concert.

The Eastern Music Festival has two nights of chamber music featuring faculty musicians and guest artists. Monday night concerts are held in the intimate Tew Recital Hall on the campus of the University of North Carolina Greensboro. At the most recent of these, two eclectic works by contemporary composers were sandwiched between pieces by Robert Schumann (1810-56) and Johannes Brahms (1833-97).

Most of you who read these words missed a once-in-a lifetime musical experience on July 6, when the Eastern Music Festival Orchestra played the Shostakovich Eleventh Symphony in the Dana Auditorium of Guilford College.

The Eastern Music Festival, a mainstay of cultural life in central NC for 58 years, chugs along, producing concert after concert at high levels of technical and artistic proficiency, virtually night after night, in Greensboro, mostly on the campus of Guilford College. Two weeks remain this season. ... The faculty orchestra has long been renowned as one of the best in the state if not the whole southeast. Based on the performance under discussion here, one might be inspired to say the Eastern Festival Orchestra is, simply, the best. 

Festivals such as the Eastern Music Festival are ideal vehicles for exploring the byways and edges of the repertoire along with standard pieces. This concert, held in Dana Auditorium, made use of a substantial swath of professional faculty musicians to perform a Mozart quintet masterpiece, a seminal Ligeti woodwind quintet, Dvořák's rare Terzetto, and a remarkable flute trio by Lowell Liebermann.

The Eastern Music Festival is about half over, and the concerts – chamber and orchestral – are coming fast and furious. Members of the EMF faculty gathered together in Tew Recital Hall at UNC-G Monday evening for the third program of chamber music featuring four well-known composers.

Eastern Music Festival's inaugural Euphonium Tuba Institute is a new program that utilizes the world-renowned pedagogy of EMF faculty artists Dr. Aaron Tindall and Dr. Demondrae Thurman. Twenty-five enthusiastic and talented high school and college euphonium and tuba players have been on Guilford College's quaint campus since June 22 for two weeks of lessons, chamber music, excerpt classes, and recitals.

"Fanfares and Flourishes" was the overall title for this concert of the Eastern Festival Orchestra in Guilford College's Dana Auditorium. A musical calling card by one of the most significant living American women composers opened the concert. Both large twentieth century Russian works filling out the program abounded in plenty of orchestral flourishes.

EMF principal tuba Aaron Tindall was the virtuoso soloist. It is an understatement to say his performance was breathtaking, not least his breath control and stamina! His articulation, whether in fast passages or slow melodic lines, was superb. The gamut of musical fireworks in the cadenzas was astonishing. 

Wednesday’s concert by the Eastern Festival Orchestra wasn’t a mostly Mozart night — it was an all Mozart night. Four concertos provided a hearty feast in this Eastern Music Festival performance at Guilford College’s Dana Auditorium.

Thursday night's concert brought an orchestra comprised of Eastern Music Festival students, mostly from the US but also from Germany, Taiwan, India, Hong Kong, Canada, France, China, Jamaica, Australia, Argentina, Peru, Italy, Bolivia, South Korea, the UK, and Portugal. They come to Greensboro for the five-week festival – to take lessons, to participate in masterclasses, and to perform. And they really can perform!

Nothing shows the musicianship and technical quality of an orchestra like playing music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-91).

Gerard Schwarz will mark his 15th season at the Eastern Music Festival with a program he describes as “the most ambitious and extraordinary we have ever put together.”

Thirteen North Carolina students at this summer's Eastern Music Festival have received scholarships from the Louis DeJoy and Aldona Z. Wos Family Foundation.

The Eastern Music Festival will return to the city for its 58th summer of performances, featuring its familiar stars of classical music as well as new faces.

The Eastern Music Festival has received a $500,000 gift from patron Alan G. Benaroya of San Diego, Calif., prompting the festival to name the music director's chair for him.

Boasting our largest audiences in years and riding high on stellar reviews of our recently completed 57^th season, Eastern Music Festival is excited to announce the receipt of a generous gift in the amount of $75,000. Given by a private donor, this gift helps the Festival finish its 2018 fiscal year on a high note and launch 2019 on strong financial footing. 

While given with no strings attached, the anonymous donor has asked that EMF use the donation as impetus to encourage matching gifts.  Between now and September 30, 2018 - the end of its fiscal year – EMF encourages friends of the Festival to match this gift dollar for dollar as part of the year-end campaign.

Very few classical artists, regardless of proficiency or peer acclaim, have managed to cross over into the mainstream music world. And it is not hyperbolic to attest that virtually none have had more impact on popular culture than Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg.

 Eastern Music Festival returns for its 57th summer on June 23, with more than 60 performances during its five-week run.

The Eastern Music Festival’s fourth annual Chamber Crawl returns Saturday, bringing free live music by local musicians to 10 downtown venues.

The Chamber Crawl heralds the approach of the annual five-week festival that begins June 23.

When FaithAction International House holds its monthly ID drive on Saturday, the arts community will extend a welcoming hand to America’s newcomers.

The Salisbury Symphony and Morgan Ridge Railwalk will join forces to host acclaimed ensemble the Mile-End Trio in a special lunchtime performance. The event, which will take place Tuesday March 6, is part of the ensemble’s multi-state tour produced by the Eastern Music Festival.

Morgan Ridge Railwalk, at the heart of Salisbury’s Arts District, will open at 11 a.m. on March 6 especially for this special performance, and will offer popular lunch selections as well as beer and wine selections.

Eastern Music Festival is honored to announce the addition of acclaimed teacher and performer, Aaron Tindall to its 2018 lineup of faculty artists. Tindall is the acting principal tubist of the Sarasota Orchestra and the assistant professor of tuba and euphonium at the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami.

Internationally acclaimed soloists, world-class orchestral performers and instructors, and 234 young artists from around the globe gather in Greensboro this week to kick-off the Eastern Music Festival's 56th season.

from Harp Column: Harpist Angelica Hairston is one of four recipients of From the Top’s Arts Leadership Grant. She will receive up to $5,000 to support her music-centric project “Challenge the Stats” that lays out a practicable path to positive change. 

FREE pre-festival sampler scheduled for June 17

GREENSBORO — The Eastern Music Festival has received a $12,500 grant from The Cemala Foundation to help support its downtown programming.

"These funds help us bring EMF’s musicians into our downtown and engage with new audiences," said Chris Williams, EMF executive director.

From June 24 to July 29, EMF will bring young musicians from around the world and professionals to teach them to the Guilford College campus.

Both students and faculty perform public concerts, most of them in Guilford College's Dana Auditorium.

The Cemala grant will help to support several events at downtown locations, most of them free and others requiring a ticket purchase:

• EMF’s third Annual Chamber Crawl, 1 to 5 p.m. June 17 at various downtown locations, free.

• "The Glory of Brass — Baroque and Beyond," 8 p.m. June 28 at First Presbyterian Church, 617 N. Elm St, ticketed.

• EMF Young Artists Wind Ensemble, 6:30 p.m. July 16 at LeBauer Park, 208 N. Davie St., free.

• Fellowship String Quartet Recital, 8 p.m. July 18 at Triad Stage, 232 S. Elm St., ticketed.

• Salons at GreenHill, with EMF young artists performing at the GreenHill gallery in the Greensboro Cultural Center, 200 N. Davie St. The free performances are at 3:30 p.m. July 16 and 22 and 5:30 p.m. July 26.

Violinists Nigel Armstrong and Avi Nagin and flautist Jake Fridkis selected to fill vacancies on EMF artist roster

The competition winner will share the stage with the Eastern Music Festival Orchestra concertmaster Jeffrey Multer (Florida Orchestra) and an EMF young artist orchestra under the baton of Maestro José-Luis Novo.

Two music events this weekend will give downtown visitors an early sample of what the annual Eastern Music Festival offers.

EMF FRINGE -- 2nd Annual CHAMBER CRAWL 4 chamber ensembles – 9 downtown venues SATURDAY, June 18 - 1pm - FREE

Last night, EMF was honored with a resolution from the Greensboro City Council recognizing and celebrating our 55th anniversary. Board members and staff represented EMF in the Chamber.

EMF Congratulates Maestro Gerard Schwarz and the All Star Orchestra for receiving an Emmy Award - the 4th awarded to the Orchestra. The recognition was announced by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences at the 53th Annual Northwest Regional Emmy® Awards at ceremony in Seattle on Friday. Ten members of the EMF faculty performed with the All Star Orchestra in 2015 and we congratulate them all. Jeffrey Multer Violin The Florida Orchestra, Concertmaster Yuka Kadota (on leave 2016) Violin Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra Qing Li Violin Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Principal Second Violin Sean Weil Violin St Louis Symphony Orchestra Daniel Reinker Viola Nashville Symphony, Principal Leonid Finkelshteyn Bass North Carolina Symphony, Principal Meredith Johnson Bass Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, Principal Les Roettges Flute Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra, Principal Randall Ellis Oboe Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, Principal Kevin Reid Horn Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra, Principal

EMF makes the cover of the Guilford County Women's Journal this month. Great backstory, bios and feature on our "Encircling the City" partnership with the Public Libraries

Ben Sollee Brings His Innovative Art To Eastern Music Festival

EMF FRINGE continues Saturday, May 21 with music for percussion at West Market Street UMC

EMF’s Eclectic 2016 Fringe Schedule Begins on May 15 Jon Stickley Trio (Bluegrass/Americana/Fusion) Takes the Stage at Revolution Mill Tickets are $15 in advance and $17 at the door. To purchase tickets, contact Triad Stage Box Office from 10 a.m. – 6 p.m. Monday through Friday at (336) 272-0160 or http://purchase.tickets.com/buy/TicketPurchase?pid=8222601

Eastern Music Festival is honored to announce receipt of a significant scholarship fund gift from The Louis DeJoy and Aldona Wos Family Foundation. This generous gift will provide scholarship assistance to eight North Carolina musicians between the ages of 14 and 23 studying at EMF this summer.

A trio from the popular Creole band BeauSoleil and cellist Ben Sollee will be among acts performing during this year's Fringe series of alternative music offered by the Eastern Music Festival.

Fringe, EMF’s concert series that spotlights a wide variety of musical genres, begins May 15 and features seven concerts. For the 2016 season, Fringe offerings range from gypsy jazz to mountain music, Creole to country, blues to pops and its second annual Chamber Crawl. Featured Artists include: Ben Sollee, BeauSoleil (trio), Jon Stickley Trio and Tuba Skinny.

EMF and the Music Academy of North Carolina announce registration for 2016 EMF Explorer Camps.

On Friday evening, February 12, at Starmount Forest Country Club, Eastern Music Festival’s friends, faculty and Board of Directors celebrated the unveiling of the Festival’s 55th season at the Sketches of Spain social. The season highlights announced by Music Director Gerard Schwarz, brought excitement to the room, counteracting the cold and windy February weather. Over 150 of the festival’s most dedicated friends and supporters were on hand for the celebration.

Three young artist alumni from the Eastern Music Festival (EMF) will be featured on NPR’s syndicated radio program From the Top in coming weeks. Alec Manasse (clarinet), Nolan Harvel (guitar) and Maggie O’Leary (bassoon) were each selected by live audition to perform on the program. Their performances, recorded late in 2015 and earlier this year, will be broadcast to NPR stations around the country and shared via the From the Top website and weekly podcast.

Eastern Music Festival Executive Director Chris Williams announced today that the festival has received generous grant support from the Tannenbaum-Sternberger Foundation for 2016-2018. The Foundation’s support will allow the festival to expand and focus its educational initiatives significantly through the development of a “Distinguished Teaching Artist” residency program. 2016’s “Tannenbaum-Sternberger Distinguished Teaching Artists” will be acclaimed violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg and violist Cynthia Phelps.

Eastern Music Festival announces that alumnus Matthew Decker, the Seattle Symphony’s newly appointed Assistant Timpanist /Percussionist, has joined the EMF artist/faculty roster for 2016. Decker attended EMF as a student in 2008.

As Executive Director Chris Williams reminded the substantial audience, the blockbuster gala performance, presented in Aycock Auditorium, was the last of the Eastern Music Festival's 54th season. On paper it looked like almost too much of several good things, for at most other festivals, the evening's "major work" would have been more than enough to generate grand-finale buzz and lots of advance sales for the next round. So this program – Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 1 and Mahler's Symphony No. 2 – was generous by any standard. But in retrospect one would not have been willing to give up any part of it – aside (perhaps) from the long lines at the small sales and will-call tables in the lobby.

GREENSBORO — Eastern Music Festival audiences have just a few more opportunities to enjoy concerts by talented students and faculty before this summer’s 54th festival ends on Saturday.

GREENSBORO — Eastern Music Festival audiences have just a few more opportunities to enjoy concerts by talented students and faculty before this summer’s 54th festival ends on Saturday.

An unusual and magnificent sound was heard from the Dana Auditorium stage Wednesday night at the Eastern Music Festival: voices. In the five weeks that comprise the festival held at Guilford College, very few performances incorporate singing, but Wednesday night's concert took some steps to rectify the situation. Mozart's Missa brevis in F, K. 192 (written by the composer when he was 18 years old) and Requiem, K. 626 (unfinished at the time of his death in 1791) featured both a 40-voice choir and chamber orchestra.

The Eastern Festival Orchestra is the EMF's heavy hitter, symphonically, but because the Eastern Music Festival is an educational undertaking, this faculty ensemble isn't always the liveliest, the most incisive, or even the best disciplined, for there are two all-student groups, populated by some of the brightest and best players from all over, that can and often do give the old folks serious runs for their playing money (so go hear 'em sometime, if you haven't). All that said, one must concede that the Festival Orchestra probably takes the palm in terms of sheer volume, as demonstrated on several occasions during its most recent outing in Dana Auditorium, on the campus of Guilford College.

When Tom Philion took the reins of the Eastern Music Festival at the turn of the century, he almost immediately began formulating a plan aimed at broadening the reach of the series.

Having attended, and also reviewed, several of the Eastern Music Festival's (EMF) concerts featuring students of the festival playing as the Young Artists Orchestra, I am struck and disappointed by the poor attendance – usually about half filled/empty. This, to me, reinforces the fact that unfortunately it is often name recognition that counts rather than the merit of the performer(s). While the faculty-filled Eastern Festival Orchestra, under the direction of Gerard Schwarz, becomes –in the five weeks of the festival – one of the great orchestras in the world, these student orchestras (ages 14-20) actually approach, and at times reach, that same performance level.

Violinist Anne Akiko Meyers will play the 'Vieuxtemps' Guarneri del Gesu violin during her performances at the Eastern Music Festival in Greensboro, N.C.

Oklahoma Youth Orchestras has partnered with the Wanda L. Bass School of Music at Oklahoma City Univeristy to appoint Eric Garcia to the new position of artistic director of the Oklahoma Youth Orchestras and associate professor and music director of the OCU Symphony Orchestra.

GREENSBORO — The enthusiastic crowd inside Guilford College's Dana Auditorium leapt to its feet Saturday night at the conclusion of the world premiere of Lowell Liebermann's "Symphony No. 4."

The word "symphony" has had a long evolution in the annals of music history and continues to this day to, in the concert world, be the apex of musical composition. Even when not specifically labeled as such, because of its enormous breadth some works are referred to as "symphonies." In another fabulous concert, unique in both its programming and high level of performance, the Eastern Music Festival's "Festival Orchestra," under the direction of Gerard Schwarz, presented an eclectic night of a mighty classic, a modern giant and a world premiere. It was a gala night at Dana Auditorium on the Guilford College campus in Greensboro.

Members of the faculty of the Eastern Music Festival gathered Monday night in the UNCG School of Music, Theatre, and Dance Recital Hall before a large audience. Works by Beethoven, David Diamond, and Mozart provided the coupling of the familiar with the obscure.

Saturday night's concert by the Eastern Music Festival's faculty orchestra, the Eastern Festival Orchestra, under the dynamic direction of music director Gerard Schwarz, was filled with colorful and dramatic music. All of the compositions were examples of program music, designed to tell a story.

Famous orchestras and soloists have premiered Lowell Liebermann’s musical compositions. Add the Eastern Music Festival to that prestigious list.

The Sixth Symphony, in A minor, subtitled the "Tragic," is the first of three symphonies by the eccentric and eclectic Bohemian composer Gustav Mahler to be played during the five-week season of the 2015 Eastern Music Festival. It was performed by the excellent student "Eastern Symphony Orchestra" under the direction of Grant Cooper, in his second year at EMF. Lasting fully an hour and a quarter, it was preceded only by the short and charming (but deceptively simple) overture to Mozart's opera Le Nozze di Figaro, in which the students acquitted themselves admirably. Kudos to the young conducting intern, Ho-Yin Kwok, from Hong Kong, who directed the group with ease and confidence.

A previously unknown coefficient of expansion took over the stage of Dana Auditorium during the Eastern Music Festival's annual keyboard spectacular, billed this year as the Piedmont Music Center Piano Gala. At first, there were two works on the program, scores by Bach and Liszt, scheduled for performance by EMF piano faculty members Awadagin Pratt and William Wolfram.

The presence of two internationally renowned musicians among the Eastern Music Festival's faculty helped bring out a bevy of music lovers to Guilford College's Dana Auditorium to hear an eclectic program.

Between Wednesday's Greensboro Opera/EMF opening event, Friday's Youth program, and Saturday's diverse evening of old and new, the Eastern Music Festival was batting three-for-three for a stunning way to open the summer.

This all Beethoven program was a perfect example of the unique programming a music festival can and ought to present. Eastern Music Festival Music Director Gerard Schwarz chose three rarely programed works. Two, from the composer's early orchestral mastery, sandwiched a true rarity – Beethoven's own transcription for piano and orchestra of the great Violin Concerto. Even more imaginatively, Schwarz has begun a tradition of presenting a full sampling of the festival's talented musicians. All three orchestras – the all-faculty, professional Eastern Festival Orchestra as well as the two full-sized Young Artists Orchestras – took their places on Guilford College's Dana Auditorium stage.

The Tuesday night Faculty Chamber Series concerts take place in the Eastern Music Festival's largest weekly venue, Dana Auditorium, on Guilford College's lovely pastoral campus. Music lovers are encouraged to take full advantage of the general admission and to crowd as close to the stage as possible. The balcony, the sweet spot for orchestral concerts, was closed. This concert featured an imaginative and eclectic program that surveyed the mastery of players from almost every section of the professional Joseph M. Bryant Festival Orchestra which caps each weekend of the festival.

The first concert of the 54th Eastern Music Festival utilized the superb acoustics of the UNCG School of Music, Theatre, and Dance Recital Hall on Monday night. The composers: Mozart, Dvorak, and Tchaikovsky. The players? All faculty members of the EMF.

The staccato sound of a snare drum filtered from a practice room in the Guilford College dorm. Andrew Nowak had just arrived for a summer of study at the Eastern Music Festival. He wasted no time getting down to practice.

When the Eastern Music Festival opens on June 27, look for several new features at the 54-year-old classical school and concert series.

"Friends, it just doesn’t get any better than this. Short of traveling back in time to 1959 and snatching up Dave himself, fresh off of the “Time Out” sessions, Fringe has presented the best possible scenario for fans of Brubeck and cool jazz."

Go Triad. Music Review. May 28, 2015. Nicholas Rich / Special to News & Record.

"When I picked up Claire at the end of camp, and saw the energy with which she played in her final concert, I could see that EMF had worked its magic. Her passion for orchestral and chamber music went up several notches. It's these kind of summer experiences that create a new generation of musicians, as well as patrons for the arts." Erica Thaler, mother of Claire Thaler, violin (2014)

Jason Vieaux, guitar, winner of Best Classical Instrumental Solo for 'Play' 

All-Star Orchestra took home two Emmy Awards yesterday at the 57th Annual New York Emmy Awards, which took place at the Marriott Marquis' Broadway Ballroom in New York City.

"Music for the Theatre," the first program in the eight-episode classical music concert series, won in both categories for which it was nominated. The series features top musicians from across the country performing major symphonic masterpieces and works from leading contemporary American composers and premiered nationwide on public television and in the New York metro area on THIRTEEN in September 2013.

Maestro Gerard Schwarz raises his baton at the University of Wyoming. The former Seattle Symphony Orchestra director has 13 Grammy nominations and two Emmy wins to his credit, among numerous other awards. Tonight (Feb. 6), he’ll conduct three university ensembles in a public performance at the Buchanan Center for the Performing Arts at 7:30 PM. UW music department chair Theresa Bogard says Schwarz is honing the student groups’ sound.

This week’s National Arts Centre Orchestra program features a concerto by Mendelssohn and a symphony by Schumann, but its opening item, R. Murray Schafer’s Dream-e-scape, was as fetching as anything on the program. It’s a beautiful piece, constructed in such a way that it need not offend or confuse listeners whose tastes don’t normally include the music of composers who still walk among us. It’s melodic and colourful. The orchestration in particular is entirely brilliant.

Maestro Gerard Schwarz and the University of Wyoming’s Collegiate Chorale, Wind Ensemble and Symphony Orchestra will give a public performance at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 6, in the Buchanan Center for the Performing Arts concert hall.

My preview of this weekend's Vancouver Symphony concerts appeared in The Columbian newspaper today. The big news is that former Seattle Symphony music director Gerard Schwarz will conduct the concerts (Saturday afternoon and Sunday evening). It's a historic occasion for the orchestra, and I'll bet that they will sound better than ever.

It’s a rarity when an internationally known conductor flies into town to direct a regional orchestra, but that’s exactly what’s happening this weekend. You may see patrons of the Vancouver Symphony pinch themselves and snap a lot of photos when Gerard Schwarz steps on the podium to direct the orchestra in a program of works by Emmanuel Chabrier, Édouard Lalo, and Felix Mendelssohn.

Corigliano is creating a work for violin and orchestra to be premiered at the 2014 festival. EMF Concertmaster Jeff Multer will play the work on his Vuillaume, a violin once owned and played by Corigliano’s father, who was concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic for 23 years.

“I cannot think of a better way to honor my family and friends than to give life to new musical works that will enrich the lives of so many, from the festival’s young musicians to the audiences in North Carolina and around the world,” McElveen-Hunter said in a news release.

The series teaches children and adults more about classical music through free public television, with the aim of expanding the audience for live concerts. It’s designed to appeal to classical music fans and newcomers.

“Even if they are in their 20s and not going to symphonic concerts, when they are in their 40s and 50s, they might consider it,” Schwarz said. “We are trying to make sure that classical music is part of their comfort zone.”
Although many concerts are broadcast live, creating a classical orchestral series made just for television is rare.

“The All-Star Orchestra,” experts say, evokes memories of Leonard Bernstein on the “Omnibus” programs of the 1950s and his Young People’s Concerts.

What picture do you suppose many people associate with “string quartet”? A bunch of old white men dressed like penguins playing stodgy old music for a few people who have learned to hold it in awe? Children don’t know that. When they hear a string quartet, or any kind of classical music, they love it. I got a chance to witness it in person at one of the Eastern Music Festival’s “EMF Encircling the City” concerts. Greensboro violist and EMF faculty member Diane Phoenix-Neal conceived and started the series three years ago as part of the celebration of the festival’s 50th anniversary.