The EU-funded project ECMA Pro offered ADDITIONAL TRAININGS DURING ECMA SESSIONS and beyond that provided ECMA ensembles with skills to better and more autonomously plan and implement their careers.
Lectures, workshops and coaching sessions during ECMA sessions and online:
Ensembles were invited to participate in:
Travel grants for ensembles:
Ensembles were invited to apply for travel grants to participate in the individual trainings and sessions. Ensembles to receive these travel grants were selected by a board of experts and ECMA Artistic Directors.
In addition to these activities, several online platforms were developed in order to provide ensembles with relevant information and the possibility for promotion.
Digital platforms developed include:
ECMA Digital Knowledge Centre of Teaching Chamber Music: video tutorials and further teaching and learning materials on teaching Chamber Music – online since June 2024
ECMA Career Development Switchboard: promotion platform to connect ensembles & concert promoters and concert and festival organizers – online since June 2023
ECMA Digital Career Skills Platform: learning material on Career Skills trainings – online since June 2023
Two unique online platforms aiming to support young Chamber Music Ensembles to start off their careers have been developed by the ECMA community within the EU-co-funded project ECMA Pro – International Career Development and Socially Engaged Outreach in Chamber Music:
The ECMA Switchboard presents ECMA ensembles to an international professional audience on the lookout for young talent, providing essential information for concert organizers, festival curators and agents.
See more: The ECMA Switchboard
The ECMA Career Development Platform provides material for young musicians to actively and autonomously work on their projects and further develop their careers.
See more: The ECMA Career Skills Platform
In addition to the artistic training at ECMA sessions, ECMA Pro provided further TRAININGS during the sessions and beyond.
Career skills trainings are intended to provide the ensembles and individual artists with the essential career skills needed to develop and grow their careers in a rapidly changing professional environment. A general aim of ECMA Pro career skills trainings was to change the mindsets of the ensembles and individual artists, and to create an awareness of the necessity of acquiring skills to actively and autonomously plan and develop their artistic careers.
Career skills trainings were offered in thematic areas such as business planning, project management, marketing online and offline, legal questions, networking, communication and self-presentation, performance training, the music industry and general professional preparation.
Online Workshop What’s the point of MY music?
What is our source or our spirit? What makes us burning for what we do? Do we as an ensemble have a common “why” that motivates us to make important career decisions and take career steps together that will take us where we want to go?
Pre-session online workshop and plenary discussion during the live session.
Facilitator: Kirsten Peters, intakt Coaching
Videos and workshop Communication – presentation – self-management
Pre-session videos and hybrid workshop during the session.
Facilitator: Claudia Vilanek
Hybrid hands-on workshop during the session Video marketing
Three ensembles were placed on stage in a concert hall, while Peter Maniura was visible on a large screen, teaching from London. The stage was fitted with microphones to facilitate direct interaction. Ensembles were given instruction on how to communicate a message through media. Through a myriad of examples, they learned which modes of communication can be sticky, memorable, or inspiring. The ensembles were then assigned to create a video for social media within just a few hours. The workshop ended with a presentation of the videos and a discussion of the outcomes.
Facilitator: Peter Maniura, IMZ
Workshop / Conversation: Career development for young Chamber Music ensembles
What can we do as an ensemble to boost our careers? Which activities are favourable to succeed in the current music market? How can we best make use of the interaction between us as an ensemble and concert organizers, agents and other parts of our network?
Facilitator: Sonia Simmenauer, founder of Impresariat Simmenauer (www.impresariat-simmenauer.de)
Interactive Blog & online lecture Promotion and Marketing I
Topics covered include Visual identity – Website development – Social Media promotion (focus on FB, IG, YT, SPOTIFY) – Digital Marketing (web, mail & social media integrated) – Management and Digital PR
View the online lecture in the ECMA Career Skills Platform
Lecturer: Tiziana Tentoni, founder and creative director of Amusart | classical music creative agency
Workshop Career Management
The profile of a classical musician has shifted and the musical abilities became part of a now required 360-degrees-profile. The participants of this workshop will get a solid overview about the various factors of a career and how to get work on them: Management processes, marketing skills, getting an overview of the market as well as necessary know-how for implementing projects and careerstrategies.
Content: The players of the classical music market; Artist management, Self-management; Networking; Positioning and branding; Individual projects; Artist Materials and Website; etc.
Lecturer: Andreas Vierziger, artistic and strategic consultant
Individual training lessons – online conference Finding your Uniqueness!
In 19 short videos, Tiziana Tentoni, gives insights into topics such as The Power of Uniqueness, Finding your Identity, she presents four case stories – Leonard Bernstein, Yuja Wang, Anna Lapwood and Ray Chen – as well as giving practical tips on how to present yourselves online and offline.
View the online lecture in the ECMA Career Skills Platform
Lecturer: Tiziana Tentoni, classical music marketing
Public lecture Career Management
Austrian music curator and strategist Andreas Vierziger delivered a lecture on Career Management. Drawing from his extensive experience collaborating with prestigious organizations like the Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, Paris Opera Competition and Netflix, Andreas shared valuable insights on navigating the classical music industry.
Lecturer: Andreas Vierziger, artistic and strategic consultant
Public lecture Marketing Strategy Pro (in 1,5 hours)
Lithuanian expert Inga Uus led a session on Marketing Strategy, offering a professional overview. With a PhD in Business Management and over 20 years of experience, Inga discussed strategic development, marketing, and innovation for start-ups and cultural initiatives. Her expertise in creative techniques like Design Thinking added depth to the session, making it highly relevant for those involved in the arts and culture sectors.
Lecturer: Inga Uus
In addition to the artistic training offered at ECMA sessions, ECMA Pro provided further TRAININGS during the sessions and beyond.
New Performance Format trainings within ECMA Pro were intended to provide students with insights into innovative or unusual concert formats; the opportunity to explore new ways of performing and/or engaging with their audiences; and support them to develop their own specific approaches to perform both in traditional as well as in unusual concert venues. ECMA ensembles should be made aware that they need the full ECMA experience, that it makes sense for them to work on every part of their careers – not only the artistic quality, but also the quality of the ensemble’s portfolio, their marketing, business, presentation skills etc.
Hands-on workshop Let’s Play
The workshop encouraged the participating ensembles to harness playfulness in their musical and interpersonal collaboration. Thomas Toppler: “To play entails nothing more than to look: What’s in the text? How softly can we play, how well can we serve the leading part, how closely can we listen to the intonation? If I define all that as a game, it makes me more open and more daring. There’s no longer any fear of failure: we just try things out, and if we like the game we’re playing, then everyone knows what to do.” More information here.
Facilitator: Thomas Toppler, percussionist and director
Input and discussion with Alexander Lonquich, artistic director of Scuola di Musica di Fiesole, IT/DE
Input and discussion with Ricardo Castro, pianist and conductor, BRA
Workshop New Audiences and Performance Formats
Hands-on workshop during the session: Renee zoomed in on how to create new presentation formats, and how to use music programming skills to create different responses from audiences. Ensembles created a live performance on stage that would be new or surprising to an audience. The ensembles presented their innovative formats, with one of the ensembles creating a auditory field on stage that audience members could move through to explore different sonic perspectives.
Facilitator: Renee Jonker, KC
Lecture/Workshop Creative Concert Production and entrepreneurship. About concert dramaturgy and project development for performing arts. Or: How to make a professional career of being a musician/establishing an ensemble. Artistic, ideal, and commercial goals and methods.
Facilitator: Andreas Sønning, Norwegian Academy of Music
Individual workshops The voice is a constitutive element of the theatrical dimension
By virtue of its apparent intangibility, vocal gestures connect us with unconventional and therefore poetic as well as functional spaces and gestures. The action of the voice connects the body to multiple spaces that multiply its resonant and communicative power. The spaces found the quality and breadth of the gesture and connect to the physical, relational and logical dimension. Our body and therefore our gestures change if we consider only the frontal space and not, for example, the peripheral and rear spaces. The eloquence as well as the sonority of our vocal gesture changes if we consider only the direct interlocutors and not also the indirect interlocutors and our body reacts differently compared to a simple or complex proposition. The vocality also confronts us, precisely because of its communicative and narrative function, with the need for a re-meaning of what is said, recited or sung. Re-signification that passes through the physical and psychic experiences of the narrator. Finally, the story of the voice teaches us not to ignore the power of co-authorship of the listener and establishes a sharing space between artist and audience. The voice is a constitutive element of the theatrical dimension and becomes a linguistic possibility in contemporary musical practice, in which the semantic horizon of the instrument dialogues with the voice of the instrumentalist.
Lecturer: Francesca Della Monica
Workshop New Concert Formats and performative Models in Classical Music
New performative formats in classical music gain increasing amounts of acclaim and make room for new markets. Many successful examples get international recognition and create new situations for the audience, conquer new venues, create new content and disciplines and cross borders to other disciplines such as performance, dance, visual art and new technologies.
These new approaches are becoming more and more interesting for both common concert presenters as well as more experimental platforms.
Content: Alternative venues; Adapting the audience situation; Use of high-tech; Combination with other disciplines and genres; Scenic productions; Changing the parameters of the content; Installations and reaching over to contemporary art
Lecturer: Andreas Vierziger, artistic and strategic consultant
Chamber Music Project Joseph Haydn, Die sieben letzten Worte unseres Erlösers am Kreuze
For this project, the Quartetto Alioth has been undergoing musical preparation with renowned professors such as members of the Cuarteto Casals and Heime Mueller for several months. The dramaturgical aspect of the project has been entrusted to Francesca Della Monica, professional singer and developer of new approaches to music on the stage; her vision for the performance of this work will explore a completely new format with respect to the traditional one. Lessons, general rehearsal and the concert (20 July) are open to all ensembles, and Francesca will discuss her approach in an open conference for all ensembles (21 July).
View a documentary video of the rehearsal process or the recording of the concert.
Facilitator: Francesca Della Monica
A series of showcases within the scope of ECMA Pro provided a unique opportunity to present ECMA ensembles to representatives from the music industry – to agents, concert promoters and festival organizers as well as to the general public. Showcases have both been hosted during regular ECMA sessions and at the international festival in Ghent and the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest. They included coaching by renowned teachers and performances during the concert programming of the festivals and academies.
Trio Bohémo – Chaos String Quartet – Kebyart Saxophone Quartet – Selini Quartet
Karla Haltenwanger – Patrick Jüdt – Johannes Meissl
Trio Bohémo – Chaos String Quartet – Echéa Quartet – Trio Incendio
Hatto Beyerle – Minna Pensola
Trio Hélios – Zorá Quartet – Trio Carmine
Patrick Jüdt – Karla Haltenwanger
Flanders Festival Gent 20-23 September 2022
Nerida Quartet – Trio Ernest – Trio Pantoum
Patrick Jüdt – Johannes Meissl – NN
ECMA Session Paris October 2022
Nordic Trombone Quartet – Quatuor Métamorphoses – Trio Chagall – Trio Heathcliff
Patrick Jüdt – Louise Hopkins
Munich Tetra Brass – Trio Pantoum – Quatuor Métamorphoses – Moser String Quartet
Johannes Meissl – Louise Hopkins
De Beauvoir Trio – Munich Tetra Brass – Trio Hannari
Bjørg Lewis – Henning Kraggerud – Johannes Meissl – Karla Haltenwanger
Trio Bohémo – Quatuor Métamorphoses – Mettis Quartet
Johannes Meissl – Minna Pensola – Patrick Jüdt
NOVO Quartet – Quasi Trio
Vebjørn Anvik – Ellen Corver – Arisa Fujita – Patrick Jüdt – Janet Krause – Johannes Meissl – Lech Uszynski – Asdis Valdimarsdottir
NOVO Quartet – KamBrass – Trio Pantoum – Trio Ernest
Minna Pensola – Patrick Jüdt
Tetra Brass – Osimun Quartet – Paddington Trio – Modulor Quartet
Vida Vujic – Minna Pensola – Avedis Kouyoumdjian – Patrick Jüdt – Sibila Konstantinova – Johannes Meissl
Musethica was an integral part of several ECMA sessions between 2020 and 2024: at each of these sessions, one ensemble took part in the Musethica training. Each ensemble had the opportunity to play between 10-14 concerts of solo and chamber music works. After two days of rehearsals and masterclasses, the ensembles performed concerts in different parts of the community: in social institutions such as hospitals, nurseries, schools for children with special needs, psychiatric institutions, refugee homes, homeless centers and prisons among many others. The audience of these concerts was diverse, honest and demanding.
The concerts are the basis of Musethica’s approach to teaching of classical music performing: As long as the students consider each concert as the most important concert, they will see a notable positive change in their performing in public concerts at traditional halls.
Quatuor Magenta (FR)
Avri Levitan
Artel Quartet (AT) – Zorá Quartet (US)
Avri Levitan – Are Sandbakken
Rubik Quartet (AT) – Duo Cinqordes (LT) – Hans Christian Aavik (EE)
Avri Levitan – Povilas Jacunskas
Zorá Quartet (US)
Avri Levitan
Cong Quartet (NL/PRC)
Alexander Pavlovsky
Doré Quartet
Eckart Runge
Motus Quartet
Avri Levitan
Tetra Brass
Stefan de Leval Jezierski
