Students at the Eastern Music Festival.
In Monday’s (10/6) WXII 12 (Winston-Salem, North Carolina), Christian Petersen reports, “After 64 years, the Eastern Music Festival is disbanding. The organization focuses on educating young musicians and hosts a five-week music festival each year at Guilford College [in Greensboro, North Carolina]. The organization’s board of directors says a labor disagreement with faculty musicians forced them to dissolve the nonprofit that educated more than 10,000 musicians in its storied history. The Eastern Music Festival is a nationally recognized summer educational music program for young, gifted musicians. It was a place for faculty and students from all over the world to learn and strengthen their skills during the five-week course at Guilford College. In 2023, the faculty voted to unionize, and since that time, the festival has been in negotiations with the American Federation of Musicians. Chris Williams, the executive director of the festival, says the two sides had different visions about the future of the program. Rather than continue to negotiate, the board voted to disband the nonprofit…. [The television station] reached out to the American Federation of Musicians for a comment but [has] not heard back.” In February, the organization announced the cancellation of the 2025 festival when management and faculty, represented by AFM, were unable to agree on contract terms.
