BEMI 2025

Bloomington Early Music (BLEM) , the Historical Performance Institute (HPI), and now also the Historical Performance Academy (HPA) at Indiana University have joined together for this free day camp experience for young musicians. Bloomington Early Music Immersion (BEMI) offers a first experience in early music performance for middle-school aged string players and recorder players from Bloomington and surrounding communities, providing them supportive, expert instruction from professional-level players and experienced music educators at the world-renowned HPI. From Tuesday, May 27th to Friday, May 30th, BEMI Players will explore music from the seventeenth and eighteenth century, meeting daily from 9:00-3:00 for baroque orchestra, small ensembles, individual coaching, and conversations with early music experts. A BEMI Players concert at the Bloomington Early Music Festival will cap off the workshop, with an ice cream celebration with families and instructors the following day. Free BEMI t-shirts and yummy snacks will also be provided.

For students to be able to enjoy and learn during BEMI, the following skills are necessary-

Be comfortable playing:

• in the keys of D Major, G Major, C Major, E minor, and G minor

• in first and third position (violins and violas)

• in first and second position (cellos)

• with multiple note slurs

• in compound and simple time signatures (such as 6/8 and 4/4)

Music will be distributed in early April and must be learned and ready for the first rehearsal on Tuesday, May 27th. Workshop instruction focuses on period style and technique, so these young musicians can go far beyond just learning the notes. Repertoire selection will be selected by BEMI Director Sarah Cranor and advised by the Director of the HPI and BLEM ex-officio board member, Dana Marsh, in collaboration with the instructors.

Parental permission is required for participation. A permission form will be distributed for signature.

BEMI will give young musicians an understanding of how performance changes over time, connect them to the historical context of the music, and show them that learning history can be an embodied experience through performance. The opportunity to learn from experts and perform alongside professionals will show them that they can strive for greatness in whatever they do--they belong with the best!

Violinist Sarah Cranor is passionate about sharing both historical and contemporary music with live audiences.  Sarah can be heard with the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra, Sphere Ensemble, Omaha Symphony, Arizona Bach Festival, and Duo Anthracite.  Sarah is a part of Chaski Quartet, bringing music to incarcerated individuals in Colorado Department of Corrections facilities, as well as public concerts across the US.  She served as acting Concertmaster / Principal Second Violin with the West Texas Symphony, guest concertmaster of the Bloomington and Lafayette Symphony Orchestras, and Bach Series at Duke University.  

Sarah directs Tonos del Sur, a historically-informed chamber ensemble whose aim is to bring music of lesser-known, anonymous, and indigenous composers, and music in indigenous Latin American languages from across the Americans to today’s audiences.  Tonos values partnerships with scholars to bring cathedral and convent archival music to life, and with tribal Elders for linguistic assistance with music from mission archives in Chiquitano-Besiró.  

Sarah holds a Doctor of Music from Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music, where she studied with Stanley Ritchie, Grigory Kalinovsky, and Mimi Zweig.  She has presented lectures at EAFIT in Colombia, UNAM in Mexico, University of Nebraska Omaha, and Indiana University.  Sarah runs ultra-marathons, and always looks forward to exploring new trails!

Dr. Kevin Flynn is Visiting Assistant Professor at the Oklahoma State University Greenwood School of Music, Assistant Principal Cello in the Oklahoma City Philharmonic, and Acting Principal Cello in the Oklahoma Baroque Orchestra. He is cellist in the groundbreaking historically-informed chamber ensemble Tonos del Sur and the prize-winning Cercis String Quartet. Flynn earned Doctor and Master of Music degrees in Violoncello Performance from Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music as the Eva Heinitz Memorial Fellow. He earned Bachelor of Arts degrees in Music and in Philosophy from Grand Valley State University. Flynn’s primary teachers include Emilio Colón, Pablo Mahave-Veglia, Joanna Blendulf, Helga Winold, Stanley Ritchie, and Edward Kelsey Moore.

Danur Kvilhaug is active as a lutenist and vocalist, performing regularly throughout North America. Recent engagements include performances with the Newberry Consort, Les Delices, Bourbon Baroque, Tonos del Sur, and the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra. Additionally, he has performed at the Madison Early Music Festival, the Bloomington Early Music Festival, and with the Red River Lyric Opera’s 2019 performance of Francesco Cavalli’s La Calisto. In addition to performing, he has held several teaching appointments, teaching courses in music history and music theory at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music and The University of Oklahoma. He received his MM in Musicology from The University of Oklahoma, as well as an MM and Performance Diploma in historical performance at Indiana University under the tutelage of Nigel North. He is currently pursuing a doctorate in historical performance practice at Case Western Reserve University under the tutelage of Charles Weaver.

Esteban Hernández Parra is a mestizo musician from Colombia who is grateful for his musical interactions across various territories in Abya Yala (the Americas). It is thanks to the work of Esteban’s mentors, ancestors, colleagues, family, students, and friends, that he has the honor of learning to enjoy life: through listening and sounding to each other. His music making is powerful, rebellious, and healing: Parra is honored to take part in activist and pedagogical initiatives such as the Visionaries Ensemble, the Bridges Musical Arts Youth Org., the Colombian Association at IUB, the JAVA at the Dominican Republic, and the Academia de Música Antigua de Medellín. He also nurtures the seed of decolonial work as doctoral research, finding and sharing bowed string practices that honor local identities and ancestral territories within Abya Yala, towards dignifying our lives and educations. Parra learns and shares decolonial work by performing as violist with the Terre Haute Symphony, IndyBaroque, and Bach Collegium Fort Wayne, and teaching at the public Elementary Strings program.

German- American violinist Miranda Zirnbauer is an active performer and passionate teacher. Having earned her bachelor’s degree in modern violin with Kevork Mardirossian and her master’s degree in baroque violin with Stanley Ritchie and Ingrid Matthews at Jacobs School of Music, she is currently pursuing her doctoral degree in historical violin at Indiana University. A lifetime of extensive ensemble leading experience and membership in Germany’s National Youth Orchestra led to her performing in concerts with Sir Simon Rattle, Kirill Petrenko, Sabine Meyer, Ani Schnarch, Elizabeth Wallfish. Through Germany's youth competitions she won consecutive first and second prizes and stipends from Zonta, Rotary Club Saarbruecken, Landespaarkasse NRW, and the Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben. This summer she will lead a week-long music festival for teenagers in Germany in partnership with her mother, Michaela Zirnbauer, that focuses on historical performance practices.

Established in 1992 by renowned violin pedagogue Stanley Ritchie and his associates, Bloomington Early Music (BLEM) began as an inspiring community concert series under the name Early Music Associates. Two years later, a group of enterprising students from Indiana University’s Early Music Institute—now the Historical Performance Institute (HPI)—joined this community effort to establish the Bloomington Early Music Festival. Over the next three decades, our organization has brought to south central Indiana some of the world’s most significant performers of music of the medieval period through the early nineteenth century, many of whom themselves have deep artistic roots in this region. BLEM has partnered with national organizations such as Early Music America, sponsors local ensembles and educational outreach, and collaborates with the HPI, the IU Latin American Music Center, and leading music scholars at IU’s Jacobs School of Music. The support of emerging talent and of music that is global and multicultural stands alongside our commitment to societal engagement through music as the most cherished values of our organization. Our mission to enrich, educate, and inspire audiences and performers is most broadly expressed through the annual Bloomington Early Music Festival, a weeklong, free-admission series of concerts, workshops and talks given by internationally esteemed performers and scholars, alongside the many celebrated early musicians of our community.