INTERNATIONAL ACADEMY OF MUSIC FESTIVAL
International Academy of Music Festival is a major cultural event that annually schedules around twenty chamber music and jazz concerts between June and July, performed by top international artists and the greatest young talents selected from conservatories around the world. All this takes place in the setting of a splendid Tuscan town: during the Festival, classical music comes to life in the theaters, castles, and squares of Castelnuovo di Garfagnana.
About US
Established concert artists and emerging young talents converge in Garfagnana to host intense masterclasses: the streets of the historic center resonate for days with the sounds of pianos, violins, and cellos, in a unique atmosphere. In the late afternoon and evening, great artists and their students perform in evocative dedicated spaces in live concerts of the highest artistic standard.
The initiative, now in its twenty-first year, has continued throughout the pandemic, albeit with a reduced program. The concert offering has gradually expanded to include symphonic music, opera, folk music, and jazz, with a constant search for the most talented performers. Artists of the caliber of Oxana Yablonkaya, Dimitri Berlinsky, Suren Bagratuni, Efrem Briskin, Massimiliano Mainolfi, Alessandro Taverna, Yuri Kim, George Vachnadze, Paolo Fresu, Daniele di Bonaventura, Marco Micheli, Bjorn Solli, Flavio Boltro, Ivan Mazuze, Jason Rebello, and many others have performed at the festival.
ORGANIZATION
The same great artists who founded the Summit Music Festival created, in the 2000s, three sister events in Europe: two of these take place in two European capitals of culture, St. Petersburg in Russia and Burgos in Spain; The third, the most important, and the largest in terms of the number of artists and students involved, is the International Academy of Music Festival, which has been held continuously in Castelnuovo di Garfagnana since 2003.
For twenty years, thanks also to the great commitment of the Scuola Civica di Musica di Castelnuovo di Garfagnana, the Italian co-organizer of the event, artists from the most celebrated conservatories in New York (Juilliard School, Manhattan School, Westchester School) and around the world (Moscow Conservatory, St. Petersburg Conservatory, Munich Conservatory) have been coming to this corner of Tuscany. As mentioned, they are joined by some of the best young talents on the international music scene, thus making the event absolutely unique compared to other events.
When
L’International Academy of Music Festival da sempre si svolge nelle prime settimane estive, a cavallo tra giugno e luglio.
Numbers
As already mentioned, the Festival has twenty editions under its belt. More than one hundred musicians participate in the festival each year; approximately three thousand people attend the festival each year as spectators.
MEDIA
The media response is excellent, with the Festival appearing in local and national newspapers, local TV channels, Facebook, Instagram, the website, printed materials, and banners. It has received countless views.
Two aspects underpin the event’s uniqueness in the Italian music scene: the intercultural nature of our activities and the centrality of the talented young people who are its undisputed protagonists.
International Academy of Music Festival is a true academy, a place where the young person and their artistic talent come first, to be developed and guided until they reach the highest level. Among the young people who come to Castelnuovo, you can find both school-age child prodigies and teenagers and twenty-somethings already at the forefront of prestigious international careers.
The atmosphere of a historic center that doubles as a school and a theater is unique, welcoming internationally renowned musicians to masterclasses taught by talented musicians selected from music conservatories around the world.
The Creators of the Festival
Piero Gaddi
Massimiliano Mainolfi
Efrem Briskin
TALENTED YOUTH
International Academy of Music Festival is a true academy, a place where the young person and their artistic talent come first, to be developed and guided until they reach the highest level. Among the young people who come to Castelnuovo, you can find both school-age child prodigies and teenagers and twenty-somethings already at the forefront of prestigious international careers.
The atmosphere of a historic center that doubles as a school and a theater is unique, welcoming internationally renowned musicians to masterclasses taught by talented musicians selected from music conservatories around the world.