Overview

“One of the most unique experiences for a young musician, and I would recommend the festival to any student with ambitious dreams in music!”
– 2024 Meadowmount Student

Founded in 1944 by legendary violin teacher Ivan Galamian, the Meadowmount School of Music is a seven-week summer program for violinists, violists, and cellists. Musicians ages 10 to 30 from around the world gather at the school’s campus in the Adirondack Mountains in northern New York to immerse themselves in an environment where they can focus on personal and artistic development through intensive training with leading faculty, individual practice, chamber music, and performance opportunities.

Meadowmount has long been regarded as the premier destination for young musicians and has helped create some of the greatest artists of our time. Meadowmount alumni are well represented internationally among soloists and chamber musicians, principal players of leading orchestras, and distinguished teachers. Notable alumni include Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma, Pinchas Zukerman, Kyung-Wha Chung, Lynn Harrell, Joshua Bell, Jaime Laredo, James Ehnes, and Ani and Ida Kavafian, among others.

With a capacity enrollment of 180 on the 49-building, 240-acre campus, the school retains an intimacy that provides for personal attention and fosters camaraderie among the students. Many students return year after year and alumni retain strong connections and return as faculty and guest artists, ensuring the continuity of the Meadowmount teaching tradition. The faculty roster that has over the years included Gregor Piatigorsky, Josef Gingold, Isaac Stern, Leonard Rose, Sally Thomas, and Dorothy DeLay, has recently featured violinists Ann Setzer, Gerardo Ribeiro, I-Hao Lee, Paul Kantor, and Janet Sung, violists Ayane Kozasa and Caroline Coade, and cellists Hans Jørgen Jensen and Thomas Landschoot – a lineage that is unmatched in the field.