Due to the Corona situation, neither the European Summer Music Academy (ESMA) nor the Western Balkans Youth Orchestra could operate in 2020 as planned. Physical meetings to make music together were impossible in 2020. But the orchestra refused to accept the limitations of travel and joint music-making as a reason to rest.

In order to maintain the momentum and offer the young musicians of the Western Balkans an opportunity to make music together even in these difficult times, Artium Eudora, the supporting NGO behind both initiatives, started the project “Building Musical Bridges 2020 – ESMA and WBYO go virtual”, a cooperation with the sister project European Summer Music Academy. This allowed a virtual cooperation. Building Musical Bridges consisted of virtual master classes for violin, viola, violoncello, double bass, flute, piano and singing and resulted in the production of a number of video recordings now available on the Youtube channels of ESMA and WBYO.

For WBYO, the first recording marked a milestone: It was the first joint musical exercise of the young musicians across the Western Balkans borders, and at the same time it was its first distributed recording and assembly of the instruments for a joint production – a substantial technical challenge. See videos.