04/21/2026
Saturday, May 16 at 12pm ET/9am PT as part of EMA's America250 Mini-Summit
"Commemorating Early American in Times of Trouble"
Pay-what-you-can registration (earlymusicamerica.org/mini-summit)
Bloomington Early Music Festival is one of the few early music presenters in the US centering a festival program on the 250th anniversary of Early America’s call for independence. As an organization that has in recent years focused our efforts on giving visibility to groups that have been historically and musically underrepresented, this seemed a natural fit for BLEMF.
Nonetheless, many questions arose, from navigating diminishing funding sources and framing the festival for a politically divided audience, to the definition of “Early America” itself and what it means to commemorate ideals expressed by this “cry for freedom” in context of an Early Modern colonial society.
This panel comprises past and present BLEMF artists, board members, and scholars who are deeply immersed in these practical, ideological, historical, and of course, musical considerations. We will address difficult questions head on about planning and programming; representation, repertoire, and the beginnings of an “American” sound. We will look if not for definitive answers, then for better understanding of what’s at stake, what there is to gain as artists and what there is to offer our audience.
Bernard Gordillo, Visiting Scholar, University of California, Riverside
Carolann Buff, Associate Professor of Music at Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University
Jean Bernard Cerin, Assistant Professor of Music, Cornell University
Dominic Giardino, Membership Manager, Sons of the Revolution in the State of New York
Suzanne Ryan Melamed (moderator), President & CEO, Bloomington Early Music
