Faculty Spotlight 💡 Xavier Díaz-Latorre, musician We are excited to welcome Xavier Díaz-Latorre back to the lute faculty in the first week of the 2025 Amherst Early Music Festival! Xavi is one of the world’s foremost players of the lute, theorbo, and Renaissance and Baroque guitar. In addition to performing all over the world, Xavi teaches at the Schola Cantorum in Basel, and has generously shared numerous performing and pedagogical videos on Youtube. At the Festival Xavi will join Mark Rimple, Chris Morrongiello, and Jason Priset for the Lute Society of America East collaboration with the Amherst Early Music Festival. Xavi will also present a solo concert on Tuesday July 1, performing a program entitled Stolen Roses, with music by Bach, Weiss, Telemann, and others for Baroque lute. Rehister here: amherstearlymusic.org/festival (fb)

Faculty Spotlight 💡 Team Recorder / Sarah Jeffery We are excited to welcome Sarah Jeffery to the second week of the 2025 Amherst Early Music Festival! Sarah is one of the world’s foremost promoters of the recorder, and a passionate champion of both early and contemporary music. Recorder players the world over know her for her teaching videos on her Team Recorder Youtube channel, which has a community of over 210,000 recorder players! At the Festival Sarah will offer a technique class for intermediate recorder players, an introduction to contemporary techniques for upper intermediate to advanced players, and a German Baroque Consort class for upper intermediate to advanced players. Sarah will also present a concert with other AEM Festival faculty on Thursday July 10, performing early and contemporary repertoire for solo recorder and for recorder ensemble. Register here: amherstearlymusic.org/festival_2025_registration (fb)