PIMF’s Music in the Mansion winter break mini-camp for strings was at capacity again in Miami as twenty talented young musicians gathered to rev up their skills and start 2024 on a high note. While stretch limousines were NOT deployed to bring arriving students from the airport, as soon as they entered the grounds of Casa Tranquila, they entered a world of elegance and pampering designed to elevate their entire educational experience. “There’s really nothing like it in the country,” PIMF President and co-Founder Sandy Marcucci says. “It’s a specialized, intense music program much more like ‘gl ..read more

We hope all our PIMF friends and family enjoyed the recent 4th of July holiday; perhaps you took in some dazzling fireworks displays? PIMF student Mio Imai made fireworks of her own: she took the concerto she polished at PIMF with Kimberly Fisher, Principal Second Violin of The Philadelphia Orchestra, just two weeks earlier to Italy and handily blew away the field as well as the adjudication panel to win the Grand Prize at the “Piccolo Violino Magico” international violin competition. We are bustin’ all our buttons over this hard-working young violinist and thrilled to be part of her journey ..read more

SHOOTING STAR ALERT: Philadelphia Orchestra Conducting Fellow Tristan Rais-Sherman will be at PIMF in June, guest conducting the Senior Orchestra, guest coaching the Chamber Music Program, and leading the full camp sight-reading sessions. If you haven’t heard of him, welcome out from under that rock! JK, we’re lucky to be up to our chin-rests in classical music superstars on the PIMF faculty, so it’s easy to lose track sometimes. Please accept these fun facts on Maestro Rais-Sherman: He started out on cello in 4th grade but his first real passion was ELECTRIC GUITAR. “I really wanted to be a ..read more

The prestigious Philadelphia International Music Festival awarded over $20,000 in scholarships and performance opportunities to talented young musicians who participated in PIMF’s semi-annual Online Concerto Competition. The Grand Prize Winner is 14-year-old pianist Celicia Thendean of Pleasanton, California, who won a full scholarship to PIMF’s intensive classical music training program this summer, a featured performance on PIMF’s YouTube channel, and an invitation to perform in the annual PIMF Winners’ Circle Concert with several members of The Philadelphia Orchestra. The Amador Valley High ..read more

There are many ways an organization can mark a Silver Anniversary: splashy advertising, promotions, signage… We could have done that. Instead, The Philadelphia International Music Festival notched its 25th year in 2022 with enhanced online programming that drew record numbers of participants; a beefed-up curriculum at its summer camp as it welcomed students from overseas again as well as from all over North America; and a dazzling work-hard play-hard Solo Music Intensive for violin and cello at a luxurious south Florida estate to end the celebration year on a high note. And such a high! Violin ..read more

It may be a rewarding grind, but let’s face it, preparing for a life as a professional classical musician can be a GRIND. Violinist Ezekiel Sokoloff maintains a cheerfully unrelenting pace of study, practice and performance by keeping the potential payoffs as close as his music stand. “What keeps me going is knowing what opportunities and experiences I can get when I work hard,” the 17-year-old Utahn told us. “I have met so many wonderful people in my youth orchestra, as well as those I’ve met at camps like PIMF and competitions around the United States. I’ve gotten to travel a lot as well. I ..read more

For a serious instrumental music student, making progress means maintaining training momentum, a topic we’ve recently addressed here. Looking for an outstanding adjunct to the lessons, practice, rehearsals and solo/ensemble performances that form a musician’s regimen? Competitions! In the 20th century, winning a major classical music competition was a career-launcher. Van Cliburn was catapulted to international stardom after winning the Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in 1958 at age 23. So, too, was Martha Argerich at age 24 after winning the Chopin International Piano Competition in 1965. Today ..read more

New York City is a musical town, brimming with skilled musicians on every instrument to be found in a modern symphony orchestra. Now that the pandemic closures are mostly behind us, if you can’t find a live classical music performance on any given day across the five boroughs of the Big Apple, you’re surely not trying hard enough. However, it’s worth sorting through the concert listings to take a seat for the New York Session Symphony, a chamber orchestra not only performing wonderful works since 2014 and a prized partner of PIMF, but bringing the music to audiences who might not otherwise be ..read more

5 Ways to Maintain Musical Training Momentum There are all kinds of blogs directed at music teachers and parents about how to sustain student progress over the summer. Most of them direct the reader to a summer program like PIMF! You only have to glance at our testimonials and press coverage to see how the PIMF summer experience immediately impacts a young musician’s approach to their craft. They leave with a lot to unpack – much more than laundry! The question then becomes: throughout the months between summer festivals, how to maintain that motivation and energy from all the new insights?&nb ..read more

A Mighty Media Spotlight on PIMF and its Virtual Concerto Competition Not to toot our own horn (see what we did there?), but PIMF’s Winter 2021 Virtual Concerto Competition defied expectations as soon as the audition portal opened. It drew nearly 300 submissions on widely varied instruments from 17 countries and garnered more media attention than we could have imagined. While the sheer quantity was gratifying, the quality of the performances was electrifying. “The level this year was very high,” says Hai-Ye Ni, Principal Cello of The Philadelphia Orchestra and one of the competition’s four dis ..read more