The National Early Music Association of the United Kingdom was founded as the result of a conference in 1977 entitled The Future of Early Music in Britain. At that time there was a strongly-felt need for a coordinating body for the many strands of early-musical activity in Britain and elsewhere and Nema was set up to meet this need and to promote the appreciation and performance, amateur and professional, of Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque music.

In the intervening quarter century, the ‘early music movement’ has grown out of all recognition and the needs of scholars, performers and listeners have changed. Today Nema works alongside the regional Early Music Fora, which run practical workshops and courses, the National Centre for Early Music in York, and the Early Music Network which promotes professional performance of early music and is especially involved with the encouragement of young artists through competitions and showcases. Nema has also established links with early music organizations throughout the world.

Nema is still conscious of its role as a voice for the early music community in the UK when this is needed, for instance in the present debate on the possible forthcoming changes to UK law on licensing of performance spaces.

Nema, in conjunction with Ruxbury Publications, produces two important publications, which the Association’s members receive as part of their annual subscription.

The Early Music Yearbook is an invaluable handbook including
- a Directory listing sources of information, societies, music publishers, providers of performing material, concert promoters and artists' agents, record companies, early music fairs and courses, including summer schools.
- a Buyers' Guide to some 450 makers of early musical instrument worldwide.
- a Register giving names and addresses of over 2200 individual early-music enthusiasts, including details of their instruments and interests.

Early Music Performer is Nema’s twice-yearly magazine, edited by the Leeds University musicologist Dr Bryan White, with an editorial board of well-known scholars and performers; this successor to Nema’s former magazine, Leading Notes, makes available the most important new scholarship to practising early musicians, and keeps its readers up to date with the latest news from the world of historically informed performance.

In recent years, Nema has organized conferences on early keyboard instruments, the hornpipe, on the development of wind instruments and the change from renaissance to baroque, and has established an annual Nema Day, in November, with a practical workshop directed by a leading performer, the Margot Leigh Milner Lecture, named after a driving force in the foundation of Nema, and a concert by a young professional group. While previous Nema Days have been held in London, in future years the event will be hosted by the various Early Music Fora, beginning with the Eastern Early Music Forum in November 2003 and the Midlands in 2004.

NEMA’s founder president was Dr John Mansfield Thomson, the New Zealand-born writer, editor and musicologist, whose enthusiasm and vision for early music also led to the foundation of the magazine Early Music which he edited until his return to New Zealand in 1983. John Thomson died in 1999.

COMMITTEE

President
Christopher Hogwood

Chairman
Peter Holman
peter@parley.org.uk

Secretary
Jane Beeson
jane@nema-uk.org

Treasurer and Administrator
Mark Windisch
mark@nema-uk.org

Patron
Sir Richard Powell

Consejo de NEMA
Clifford Bartlett
John Bence
Keith Bennett
Richard Bethell
John Briggs
Stephen Cassidy
Alison Ede
David Fletcher
Nancy Hadden
Glyn Russ

Publisher of the Yearbook and Early Music Performer
Jeremy Burbidge
jerry@recordermail.demon.co.uk
Ruxbury Publications Ltd,
Scout Bottom Farm,
Mytholmroyd,
Hebden Bridge HX7 5JS

Editor of "Early Music Performer"
Bryan White
b.white@leeds.ac.uk