Classical Music Festival New York City, Alexander Buono International

The Alexander & Buono Festival of Music (ABFM) is a series of four eight-day symposia that offer classical musicians studying Piano, Voice, Strings and Flute the opportunity to hone repertoire, refine technique, and enhance their professional, marketing, performance, and career skills. Structured as a musical laboratory where musicians work with distinguished professors and established artists, the Festival promotes artistic and professional growth designed to facilitate performance skills and career advancement.

Now in its twenty-fifth year, ABFM provides sessions during July and August consisting of daily private lessons, private practice time, master classes, and performance and business seminars. Each session concludes with a recital featuring all the participants of that session. Dates for 2013 are:

All sessions of the Festival are held at Steinway Hall, 109 West 57th Street, New York. Each session is limited to a total of twelve students, chosen on the basis of their application, performance CD, and a phone interview.

As part of our 25th Anniversary celebration, we are pleased to announce the inauguration of two new intensives, one for Chamber Music, and another for Opera.

ABFM began in 1988, in response to a need Cosmo Buono and the late David Bradshaw saw was prevalent among accomplished musicians to “try out” new repertoire in small settings, while also being able to work with talented professors who would coach the artists, and help them refine their performances of works to the fullest extent possible. Having originally been established in Tolentino, and later Venice, Italy, artists came from all over the world to take advantage of the daily instruction, practice time, and performance opportunities that were offered. Performers left the Festival with new ideas and approaches to works, and insights into how to perform them more effectively. A quarter-century later this tradition continues, with many of the Festival participants returning year after year to further their artistic and professional growth.

The establishment of New York City as the new and permanent seat of the Festival comes in response not only to a desire on the part of the Festival board to take advantage of all the cultural opportunities New York has to offer, but to also give artists the most substantial performance credentials possible.

ABFM is focused on helping artists be fully prepared for a career. Knowing that every musician must be well-acquainted with the fiscal and marketing aspects of their work in order to ensure success, seminars on career business management and performance have been incorporated into the daily schedule of the Festival. Instruction is given in areas such as how to audition, creating press kits, how to get management, and generating leads for performance opportunities. Performance seminars allow students to take what they have learned in classes and practice periods and perform before other Festival participants in a collegial atmosphere that encourages positive feedback from an audience, thereby helping to refine the overall quality of performance.

In their new book, The Classical Musician Today: Getting and Keeping the Career You Want, Barry Alexander and Cosmo Buono guide classical musicians along the path to a successful career on stage and in concert halls...This book is the gold standard for classical musicians who yearn for a career doing what they love.

LAUNCH YOUR CAREER AS A CLASSICAL MUSICIAN