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NTE

GEMS Virtuoso Early Music Artist-Educators in NYC Public Schools

After a successful 2022 pilot project at New York City’s Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School, GEMS is eager to embark on year two of NeverTooEarly, a project connecting New York City public school music students with virtuoso early music artist-educators for a unique series of half day classroom sessions of transformative musical learning and growth.

Never Too Early seeks to provide a rare opportunity for students from across the New York City school system to engage with GEMS partner ensembles in an approachable, inclusive classroom setting. Students play on period instruments, learn the cultural context from which the music — some familiar but much discovered through research by the artists themselves — was composed, and gain an understanding of how the use of informed Baroque and early Classical period style and technique makes the music come alive.

As this whole new world of music takes shape in the classroom, students discover that the pursuit of mastering early music is not solely defined by understanding its time in history, typically described as from the Baroque to early Classical eras (1600–1750), but also by an eye-opening approach, by necessity a series of discoveries leading to informed personal interpretation, tantalizing for those who engage in its practice in charting their own artistic destinies. And students see that making a living as an artist has possibilities they had previously not imagined.

Watch this space for updates!

GEMS is a non-profit corporation that supports and promotes the artists and organizations in New York devoted to early music — playing repertoire from the Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, and early Classical periods.