As proven by the roughly 300 individual listings in the 2022 Guide, the phrase summer "camp" no longer applies strictly to children at play, nor does "institute" imply young artists at work. You can study lied in Vienna, practice yoga in Belgium, sing your heart out in Mandarin in China, play tennis in Peoria, or learn the Taubman Method at the Golandsky Institute in California.

Students of the arts once sought only to train to achieve artistic excellence, but now that's not enough. On the heels of the pandemic and the move to streaming, an artist must also be an audio/video producer, winning onscreen personality, social media expert, and marketing whiz.

Music schools and conservatories are attempting to meet the challenge with solutions ranging from mentoring faculty, technology, and internships and fellowships, to name a few. Pay close attention to the Guide's “Career/Post Graduate Assistance” section

Hope is in the air, vaccinations are in (many) arms, and our hardy crop of mountain, lakeside, and pastorally sited music-makers appear to be in recovery mode from a very long year. The latest Guide lists 100-plus entries, some still in the throes of program planning, others with their schedules nailed down, one or two strictly online, and most a combination of the above. We are thrilled on many levels to deliver the Guide and look forward to a summer season of music.

With the arrival of the vaccines, a bit of light has emerged at the end of a long tunnel for musicians and competitions. It is a testament to competition organizers that, whether postponing deadlines, changing venues, or being forced to make any number of other alterations, these competitions have persevered. Their commitment to bringing new, exceptional talent into the limelight persists, and with that, their continued nourishment and renewal of the field.

Summer 2021 holds promise: by then, having waited for COVID-19 to dissipate, artists will be hungry to perform, rehearse, teach, and/or listen to live music in a shared environment. Fortunately, there are many opportunities being planned, and our annual Guide to Summer Camps, Institutes, and Programs lists nearly 300 possibilities.

The Guide is always a substantial undertaking, even under normal circumstances.

Needless to say, we are not in normal circumstances. Looking into what is still a very cloudy crystal ball, we have added a few practical, pandemic-caused questions this year: Will you be starting in the fall as planned? Later? Will classes shift online? Will masks be required on campus? What about testing? Will classes be smaller? Any academic changes in store? Will on-campus housing be altered? Tuition change?

Consider: a new generation of musicians who are not only learning their craft, but also developing new coping skills, learning how to go with the flow, and, perhaps most importantly, become video producers par excellence.

While the 2020 Guide to Summer Festivals is packed with more than 100 festivals, this Guide is also as much an expression of hope as it is of planning in this unpredictable time.

Festivals’ status and schedules are in continual flux, as you might imagine, so this Guide accurately reflects everyone’s plans for the coming season. We urge you to check with the individual events to confirm; we will be updating these pages as we receive new information.

Musical America’s 2020 Festival Guide offers a wealth of robust programming plans and we hope to see them come to fruition.

Competitions have many moving parts—application deadlines, eligibility rules, artistic disciplines, frequency, dates, fees, jury members. We've gathered and filtered them all to present the sixth Guide to Competitions, our largest yet.

In addition, each part has subtleties and iterations. For instance, jury members may be teachers and, if so, the question arises as to whether their students will be allowed to compete (always a sharp discussion point after the winners are announced).

We run all those disparate elements through our filter to make the result as useful as possible. We hope it’s helpful, both to aspiring talent and to those trying to find the bright future stars.

We gathered all the important details you need to make decisions for your 2020 summer. From a villa in Tuscany to a log cabin in the Colorado Rockies, summer programs are popping up everywhere—and we have details on nearly 300 of them.

These relaxed, often bucolic settings also provide vast opportunities for networking and for just plain making new friends. Some of them offer regular camp activities, such as hiking and swimming; one program provides archery instruction along with master classes in string playing and chamber music. In virtually all cases, the chance to mix and mingle with the faculty is a given—meals are often served in a common dining room and the attire, except perhaps at those evening events, is strictly casual.

We hope you enjoy perusing your summertime music options, no matter your age, expertise, or geographical preference.

For our largest Music Schools Guide, we culled about 60 institutions from our data base of nearly 1,200 schools. We focused on quality and reputation, and paid little attention to school size.

The result: the 2019-20 Guide runs the gamut from the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia (23 students) to the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University (1,600 students).

While a school’s size doesn’t necessarily impact its quality, it can impact the breadth of options. Large university music programs will more likely offer, say, a double degree in trombone performance and business. However, some of the smallest schools are tuition-free, and most schools in the Guide offers some training in the music business.

For the student of the arts, it seems the field is rich in options.

The promise has been there for a while: streaming your live performances to a vastly expanded worldwide audience. But only recently have all the elements come together, such as Internet speed, ecommerce tools, reduced video creation costs and audience comfort with the digital streaming medium.

Is it time to take a serious leap into live digital streaming? Musical America asked the bellwethers how they did it and interviewed experts to discover the best ways to get started (and where the pitfalls are).