Ilumina

ILUMINA
From farm to stage and to the world, Ilumina creates bridges that change the flow of talent around the globe.

A diverse community of artists and thinkers with a transformative social mission, Ilumina is writing a new narrative for 21st-century music-making, where worthy talent gets an equal chance to shine, no matter where they come from.

Violist and director Jennifer Stumm founded Ilumina on a coffee farm in Brazil in 2015. Its creator-led model unites young artists from diverse origins with global leaders in the field, develops new leaders by opening doors to top quality education, and builds lasting community, all while bringing joy to the world stage. Already, nearly 150 young artists from Ilumina projects have embarked upon performing careers, having attended world-leading conservatories at a 96% acceptance rate. Thousands more benefit from Ilumina’s digital education projects. Artists in the Ilumina community include Christian Poltera, Paul Lewis, Liza Ferschtman, Tai Murray, Anthony Marwood, Julian Steckel, Boris Brovtsyn, the Danish Quartet and many more, who commit their time to amplify opportunity for young people from very different backgrounds.

Ilumina performances immerse listeners in diverse musical worlds, radically fueled by the freshness of cultural exchange and the power of community, whether in a warehouse, on a farm, or in one of the legendary concert halls of the world. Internationally, Ilumina made a highly lauded Lucerne Festival debut in 2022, followed by invitations around the world. In 2024, it became the first Brazilian ensemble to have a full residency at the Edinburgh International Festival, made its large hall debut in the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, toured in Germany, Austria and Italy and will release its debut album, “Transfigurada,” recorded at the Grafenegg Festival. On September 26, 2024, the prestigious Kronberg Academy (Germany) awarded Jennifer Stumm the Pablo Casals Award - For a Better World in recognition for her visionary work in cultivating worthy talent from Latin America through Ilumina.

The annual Ilumina Festival every January in São Paulo is firmly established as one of the most significant and innovative music festivals in Latin America, with a majority of its large audience coming from urban and agricultural peripheries and hearing classical music for the first time. Ilumina is a sought-after creator of new festivals, having replicated its innovative model in Austria, Bolivia and Bahia, and, in 2024 it will build its newest musical immersion in the mountains above Bogotá, Colombia.

Since 2019 Jennifer Stumm has regularly spoken at NASA about how thinking like an artist inspires solutions for the world’s grand challenges. Moreover, there has been much interest in Ilumina’s model of efficient musical and social development. During the global pandemic, Ilumina’s digital project, “Equal Music,” united 1,000 musicians around the world to offer private lessons for those who lack access to arts education, leading to multiple full scholarships to universities for its young participants. In 2022 it launched “ECO,” in partnership with the pioneering sustainable coffee farm Fazenda Ambiental Fortaleza, connecting music and sustainability and democratizing access in agricultural communities to quality of life in all forms.

The Philosophy of Ilumina
by Jennifer Stumm, Founder and CEO of Ilumina

The source of Ilumina’s creative energy, where it all began, is a sustainable coffee farm in Brazil’s Atlantic Rainforest. Fazenda Ambiental Fortaleza is a magical place teeming with life, where every organism resonates, from giant trees to tiny hummingbirds. You change one tiny detail, and the entire system evolves, for better or for worse. Just like the farm, Ilumina is an ecosystem. When I founded the project in 2015, first as a grassroots festival project, the dream was to build a new kind of global community of artists and thinkers, driven by social ideals, where people from very different backgrounds inspire and help each other, leaving traditional hierarchies behind and building powerful new creative paths. From the very start, when we were playing a few concerts in a sawmill for farm workers, we could feel something transformative happening between us.

My grandmother, a self-taught pianist with an ear far better than mine, had no chance to study music as a Cherokee person in depression-era Appalachia. The only difference between her story and mine is that I had the chance to be heard. The reality of global inequity is that everywhere in the world there are talented and brilliant people with ideas, creative solutions and unique voices but the vast majority of them are not heard in the halls of power. We at Ilumina believe that talent does not choose where it is born. If we want greater equity and diversity in the world, and the world of music, there must be equity and diversity in the process of creation. That means looking honestly at the intrinsic barriers that keep diverse voices from the mainstream, how systems and traditions can be full of inequities, even with the best of intentions. For example, in classical music it is assumed that a violinist must start playing as a small child to be successful. But a large number of Ilumina musicians start playing in their teens and within a few years are accepted to study at top conservatoires.

Education, sustainability, community, equity, world-class performance and boundary-shifting creativity —these elements of our universe enrich and depend on each other. We don’t prioritize one over the other but view interdependence as proof of a healthy cultural ecosystem. We don’t see concerts on big stages as more important than education and community. A young artist might come to the Ilumina Festival for a couple of years or participate in digital lessons, receive support and a scholarship to study at a great conservatoire, and years later perform on tour as part of our artist collective. Further down the line, they might build their own collective or social project and invest onwards in new communities. Or an established artist might come to our festival or perform on tour with us and make friends with people they never would have otherwise, gaining new perspectives on social and educational inequality, and perhaps ultimately changing the way they view and value audiences. They might start to make different creative decisions, pick up the phone for people who might not have equal access, or notice who is sitting at the tables of power.

On stage, we think diversity is something you should hear. An Ilumina rehearsal might begin with freestyle Brazilian funk dance while improvising on a Baroque bass line but could equally dive so deep into a Ludwig van Beethoven score that we spend an hour working our way into the rhythmic identity of a few bars of music. We use movement and rhythm as connectors, a way to read each other on stage, to stretch our emotional vulnerability and flexibility. Our collective is a rich mix of humans with strong points of view and individual talents, and we lean into the inspiration and friction born from that. We try not to fear looking deeply at hard things. And while for sure there is joy in performing on the world’s big stages, the heart of Ilumina will always be our community. Artists, thinkers, agricultural workers, the amazing people who work on the farm and know every musician by name. Our large urban audience, who fill every seat in the biggest hall in São Paulo no matter how wild and adventurous the program. It’s human connection that powers our creativity.

Ilumina derives from the Portuguese verb ‘iluminar’, meaning ‘to enlighten’. We believe the future is multi-disciplinary and that music is a great illuminator for every other part of life. Music is language, science, emotion, history, and all the complexities of being human. It’s one of the most powerful connectors of both hemispheres of the brain, allowing us to link what we think with how we feel at the same time, to see the world and each other with deeper compassion and clarity. Just like the ecosystem of the forest, music helps us understand why the inclusion of diverse voices is not just a nice ideal but an imperative for the health of the global community. If we believe inclusion is right and true, we should expect better, more challenging and life-changing impact, on stages, in boardrooms and governments, and in ourselves.