The Well-Tempered Ear

Classical music: The Madison Early Music Festival sees its reputation continue to expand. It is the only Madison-area event listed in NPR’s latest guide to classical music festivals for this summer. Check out other music festivals all around the U.S. And if you can, help WYSO meet its fundraising goal at the end of its fiscal year today.

ALERT: It has been a good year for the Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras (WYSO), both artistically and financially. But with the fiscal year deadline of June 30 looming, WYSO is nonetheless falling short of its $97,000 funding goal by $6,655, according to WYSO executive director Bridget Fraser.  This exceptionally worthy organization that builds both musicians (below) and audiences through lifelong learning needs your help. If you can help, in whatever amount, WYSO to meet its goal, please visit the following link and make an on-line donation by the end of Sunday:

http://wyso.music.wisc.edu/support-wyso/

By Jacob Stockinger

The past two weeks, I have written various posts about how the summer season is now almost as busy as the regular concert season in Madison.

Here is yet another proof.

One summer festival made it into NPR’s nationwide round-up of summer classical music festivals for 2013.

It wasn’t the three-weekend run in June of the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society. And it wasn’t the two-week Token Creek Chamber Music Festival in late August.

This year, what NRP included is the six-day 14th annual Madison Early Music Festival (MEMF), which will be held from Saturday, July 6, through Friday, July 12. It has the theme of the “German Renaissance.”

The MEMF features some outstanding groups including the Renaissance band Piffaro (below top), the Calmus Ensemble of Leipzig (below middle), the Dark Horse Consort and the viol-consort Parthenia (below bottom).

Here is a link to the festival homepage with links to specific concerts, workshops and lectures including the inaugural Handel aria competition on Monday, June 8.  (At bottom s a YouTube video with countertenor Andreas Scholl singing the most frequently heard video of a Handel aria on YouTube. Can you guess which one? Do you think it will be sung in the MEMF competition?)

http://continuingstudies.wisc.edu/lsa/memf/

Of course you can also get to the MEMF site by clicking on the name in the NPR listing. Here is a link to that round-up, which might prove especially helpful if you plan on traveling this summer and want to hear some love classical music in the East (Mostly Mozart Festival), Midwest, South, Southwest and West:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/deceptivecadence/2013/06/24/195333893/Hit-The-Road-And-Hear-Some-Music-Summer-Classical-Festivals-2013