Media Sound Hamburg cancels 2020 summer academy

The summer academy is held annually and awards film and game composers as well as sound designers scholarships to travel to Germany for masterclasses, workshops, and special events including the MSH conference. The 2020 edition was scheduled to be held between 11 to 16 August.

"A few weeks ago we still believed that we would be able to celebrate the 10th anniversary of MSH in August as planned," MSH director Achim Esser-Mamat told Music In Africa.

"The current crisis caused by the coronavirus has worsened worldwide. The entry of participants, scholarship holders and lecturers from non-EU countries into Germany is virtually impossible.

"Furthermore, the locations in Hamburg booked for the implementation of events are not available to us for the planned period or are subject to strict security requirements, which we cannot meet for the implementation of Media Sound Hamburg. For this reason, we have decided to postpone this year's International Summer School until next year."

Musician and sound engineer Emmanuel Lamptey-Mills from Ghana was awarded a 2020 scholarship to the academy at the 2019 edition of Music In Africa's ACCES music conference in Accra. The scholarship was as a result of a partnership between ACCES and MSH.

The rest of the scholarship recipients were selected out of an application process where more than 80 applications were sent from 29 countries. They include Thomas van der Burg, Daan Wijnhorst and Daan Hofman (Netherlands), Sara Kaddouri (Morocco), Camila Phagouape (Italy) and Roseline Chidube (Nigeria).

Esser-Mamat said the recipients would join the MSH summer academy next year.