by Daniel Hathaway
Though the composer wasn’t around to blow out the candles on his 333rd birthday cake in March, Johann Sebastian Bach’s music lives on in both traditional and surprising ways. The Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival, whose 86th edition will be celebrated in Berea on April 20 and 21, will touch both the historic and the innovative poles of all things Bach, hosting a period instrument ensemble as well as a saxophone quartet.
“Chatham Baroque sits at the center,” Festival director Dirk Garner said in a telephone conversation. “They’ll be doing their own concert of music by Bach and earlier composers on Friday night, and they’re sharing their expertise by helping prepare the orchestra for Saturday evening’s performance of the St. John Passion.”
This year, the Bach Festival has hired a professional orchestra for the major Bach work. “Chatham’s Andrew Fouts will be the concertmaster, Scott Pauley is playing lute, and Patricia Halvorsen viola da gamba. They’re great musicians and really cool people,” Garner said. [Read more…]
“In reality — in the wild — musics interact,” said Josh Ryan of Africa→West Percussion Trio. “Sometimes we play folkloric music, sometimes we play what sounds like experimental concert music, and sometimes we play a mix of the two. That’s just the reality of being a 21st-century person and percussionist, and it’s really fun.”
1935, 1936, 1940, 1946, 1947, 1951, 1955, 1959, 1963, 1967, 1971, 1975, 1979, 1983, 1985, 1989, 1993, 1997, 2001, 2005, 2007, 2011 — and now 2015. Those are the 23 years in which the 83-year-old Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival has featured Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Great Catholic Mass,” as his sons described it. That makes it a tradition, for sure, but Dirk Garner’s concept in his first year as the festival’s new artistic director was notable for its infusion of new energy and vitality into a work that needs a regular shaking-out in order to remain fresh.