Luke Ming, the program director of Blackburn Music Academy. (Courtesy photo)

Blackburn Music Academy is looking for host families for musicians performing at Festival Napa Valley this summer.

Blackburn Music Academy, now in its second year, is a tuition-free music education experience in which pre-professional musicians from around the world train with renowned performers from such collectives as the San Francisco Opera, Vienna Philharmonic and Russian National Orchestra. Ming Luke— a conductor who has worked with the Berkeley Symphony, San Francisco Ballet and Merced Symphony—is the academy’s program director.

“Since these amazing musicians are coming for the summer, they do some educational services and work with some of the most promising conservatory students in the U.S.,” he said.

The academy is for collegiate and graduate musicians who Luke describes as “the next generation of musicians.” Students come from institutions throughout the world, including the Juilliard School, Curtis Institute of Music, New England Conservatory of Music and more. The musicians’ motto is “Music is not something that can be taught in a book,” thus the students sit side by side with the professional musicians and learn by playing and being instructed in a master class during sectionals. According to Luke, there are several components to it.

“They give chamber music concerts, they have orchestral concerts and they also have orchestral concerts side by side with festival musicians,” he said.

Luke said the main goal of the academy is to provide aspiring performers further exploration into what life is like for professional musicians.

“They are doing many smaller concerts as well as larger concerts, and performing with soloists,” Luke said.

One of the concerts will be comprised entirely of concertos performed by the likes of Ludwig van Beethoven, Bela Bartok and Sergei Prokofiev.

“They basically are getting full skills to what it’s like to be a professional musician and the types of activities that they do whether it’s chamber music, orchestral or solo,” Luke said.

While the academy is being hosted from July 13 to 29, families will be hosting students at their homes. The houses of some host families were destroyed in the Wine Country Fires last October, so the academy is looking for new host families for students between the ages of 20 to 25. The families must live within a one-hour radius of the Napa Valley, so host families from Benicia would be allowed. The hosts will only be responsible for providing places to sleep, not food or transportation. Host families may also be invited to academy-related events and festival concerts.

“One of our favorite things is the connections that come through with the hosts,” Luke said. “We make music for people, and orchestra concerts obviously aren’t the same without the audience. Having a deeper connection by having host families that’s not only participating in the festival events and having certain tickets at concerts but to host them just like with Brahms and Haydn, I think, is something that really connects the patrons with the music.”

For more information on hosting musicians, go to festivalnapavalley.org/support/host or email  housing@festivalnapavalley.org.

Blackburn Music Academy will culminate with a finale concert at 3 p.m. Sunday, July 29 at the Napa Valley College Performing Arts Center, located at 2277 Napa Vallejo Highway in Napa.  Performers at Festival Napa Valley concerts will include violinist Joshua Bell, trumpeter Arturo Sandoval and Broadway singer and actress Kristin Chenoweth. For more information, visit festivalnapavalley.org.

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