ECMA Pro – International Career Development and Socially Engaged Outreach in Chamber Music, co-financed by the Creative Europe Programme of the EU, the mdw – the University for Music and Performing Arts, Vienna – is, as the project coordinator, able to realise a new, top-class training programme for European chamber music ensembles despite the coronavirus crisis.
ECMA – the European Chamber Music Academy, offers the first Interinstitutional European Master chamber music programme: the ECMAster. ECMA Pro was launched last winter semester as a cooperation project involving several music colleges and festivals, and is an extension of this programme, co-financed by the EU’s Creative Europe Programme.
The main ECMA Pro aims are the possibility to enhance the transnational mobility of artists, to strengthen the social relevance and raise the awareness of the social responsibility of musicians as individuals, to foster capacity-building in the field of chamber music. Beside artistic training and education it tackles career-skills training, audience development and societal outreach, ECMA Pro will enhance digitization and encourage students and teachers to use new technologies.
The project organises numerous ECMA sessions, lectures, workshops, trainings and showcases for over 30 ensembles from 16 countries. Besides the mdw and the ECMA itself, the total of 12 partner institutions also include the Grafenegg Festival and the Flanders Festival Ghent, as well as conservatories and music colleges from The Hague, Paris, Oslo, Fiesole, Budapest and Vilnius and AEC. With Musethica, a further partner brings a strong social dimension to the project: Musethica organises concerts in social institutions ranging from “problem schools”, homeless hostels and prisons to neonatal wards, palliative wards and facilities for people with severe disabilities. These concerts help ensemble members to develop a greater awareness of their role in society and of their social responsibility as musicians.
