Applications are open for the New England Conservatory (NEC) Early Music Institute, which will take place from June 21-27, 2026. Interested applicants are asked to apply by April 1, with scholarships available.
Designed for college students and advanced amateur players of both modern and period instruments, and directed by baroque cellist Guy Fishman, the Early Music Institute offers a week-long intensive in historically-informed performance of music from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The program will have access to NEC’s collection of period instruments, which have been acquired through the generosity of Life Trustee Harold I. Pratt ’17 hon. DM, who endowed the Conservatory’s Pratt Early Music Program.
Participants in the program will receive daily instruction from specialists in early music and study and rehearse chamber repertoire from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
In addition, participants will have access to a variety of lectures and seminars on topics related to early music, as well as NEC’s extensive collection of historic instruments. The collection includes 18th-century instruments, or replicas, from all Western musical families.
The week will culminate in an orchestral performance alongside members of NEC’s early music faculty.
“There are so many things for us at NEC to be excited for in EMI 2026,” Guy Fishman told us. “We look forward to sharing our faculty’s expertise and the beauty, both sonic and visual, of our halls with instrumentalists and vocalists from across the country and the world. But the most exciting thing is having a week to delve into repertoire we are passionate about and ways of bringing it to life that rely not only on historical precedent but also on tapping the musician’s imagination and inventiveness to partner with the composer to complete the work.”
This year’s lineup of instructors includes baroque violinists Renée Hemsing and Susanna Ogata, baroque violist Sarah Darling, baroque bassist Heather Miller Lardin, harpsichordist and organist Ian Watson, and others.
Learn more about the Early Music Institute and apply here. The instruments EMI is accepting applications for are violin family, flute, oboe, recorder, and keyboards, as well as vocalists.
“One of the common feature of 17th and 18th-century music is the near-total lack of interpretive markings by the composer,” Fishman continued. “Most often, the composer partnered with the performer, expecting the latter to make dynamic, articulation, and other expressive decisions. The 19th-century violinist Pierre Baillot, not thought of as a “baroque” violinist, acknowledged the difficulty of doing this but encouraged his students to study and perform ‘old’ music, saying it would make ‘an appeal to their intelligence which is bound to turn out to their advantage if they will only take the trouble to deepen their studies.'”
“In other words, whether you’re playing Castello, Mahler, Xenakis, or Jessie Montgomery, you will become a better musician by studying baroque repertoire and the means baroque musicians used to interpret it,” he concludes. “These include dance and its various elements, the absence of dogma and love of creativity and imagination, and most importantly a reliance on spoken language and music’s similarities to it. As Corelli once asked about his own playing, ‘Do you not hear it speak?'”