Engaging Communities: Recorders Beyond Borders
News from the Boston Early Music Festival
Artistic Director, Nina Stern has been named Director of Community Engagement for the Boston Early Music Festival. At this year's festival, she will lead a program, Engaging Communities: Recorders Beyond Borders, featuring young recorder players from around the globe. An award-winning group of S’Cool Sounds students from Kibera in Nairobi, Kenya will be featured alongside a virtual performance by a group of American children hailing from Seattle to New York, from New Jersey to Boston. The children will then have an opportunity to greet each other and share stories, ending with a question and answer session for all viewers.
As the newly appointed BEMF Director of Community Engagement, Nina Stern will build upon the ‘Recorders Beyond Borders’ event to establish the BEMF Youth Ensemble for the June 2023 Festival, bringing together young players of recorder, strings, and percussion from far and wide. Through the joyful collaboration of music-making, this program will create bonds and build community for the next generation of music lovers and beyond.
Recorder teachers from near and far are helping with this project. We give special thanks to Julius Odhiambo and Jacob Saya In Nairobi; Evan Harris and Ruaridh Pattison in New York, Miyo Aoki, Vicki Boeckman, Sabine Endrigkeit, and Isabella Pagel in Seattle; Bonnie Kelly, Karen Robbins, and Jennifer Farley Smith in Boston; and Julienne Pape in New Jersey for gathering and instructing young participants.
Video of the Week
Here are our students from Kibera playing "Malaika", a popular Kenyan song. Students from around the US are learning this song and will record it in honor of their friends from across the world.
Link to "Malaika".
Community Member Highlight
Dedicated to inspiring young children and sharing the wonders and joys of Early Music and historically informed performance, the internationally renowned Boston Early Music Festival (BEMF) has offered engaging Family Day programs at its biennial Festival & Exhibition for decades, and provided in-school programs for Boston public school children.
“My own lifelong passion and dedication to the arts began with childhood flute and piano lessons,” notes BEMF Executive Director Kathleen Fay. “I firmly believe that the spark lit by devoted teachers—and nurtured by community events like this—inspires young people to grow up enjoying music, participate in making music, develop a life-long appreciation for music, and also cultivate an awareness of what it means to support the arts. I’m overjoyed to welcome Nina to the BEMF team, leading our efforts to foster young musicians."
For more information about the June 6–13, 2021 Boston Early Music Festival and its free, online Engaging Communities event, please visit www.BEMF.org.