The Berkeley Festival and Exhibition, along with Early Music America, host an event called the YOUNG PERFORMERS FESTIVAL & EMERGING ARTIST SHOWCASE. The Young Performers Festival’s mission is to bring together, ” … collegiate and pre-college early-music ensembles throughout North America to perform at leading early-music festivals in the United States.” and the Emerging Artist Showcase’s goal is to feature, ” … artists of any age in the early music field who have not otherwise performed regularly in major festivals or concert series. Applicants are asked to describe how they see the future of historical performance taking shape, and to define how their role as artists and ensembles aligns with that future vision.”
The 2022 YOUNG PERFORMERS FESTIVAL & EMERGING ARTIST SHOWCASE took place from June 1-10, and today’s Beautiful Music is one of the presentations — the first of several I’ll be sharing with you over the next few days. We’ll start with the June 1, 2022 Emerging Artists Showcase of the Ximenez Quartet: violinists Karin Cuellar & Simon Alexandre, violist Namgon Lee, and cellist Jessica Korotkin. They played a program called “Pedro Ximenez’s Salon” that featured music by Peruvian-Bolivian composer Pedro Ximenez Abrill Tirado (1784-1856), the most prolific South American composer of the first half of the 19th century.