Welcome to our 2024–2025 Concert Season

When the Bach Consort plans a new season, it is a creative process that, while being logistically complex, gives us an undeniable feeling of excitement as we anticipate both new and familiar live musical experiences. When we live and breathe through music as performers, the chief inspiration bringing out our best is our audience’s response and interaction. The Bach Consort is immensely fortunate to enjoy the ongoing presence of a devoted group of human beings who truly hang on to every note that we play or sing. Why is this the case? Well, it is because of our undying, shared love of music’s power to transform and to heal. That’s the true dream scenario of virtually every performer and audience member alike—and that wonderful meeting point of interaction is felt by all, whether on stage or in the audience.

We have much, much more to share with you in the forthcoming Director’s Series performances, and while there will be reprises of favorites such as the great St. Matthew Passion and Christmas Oratorio, every experience of this music brings out in us a fresh sense of renewal. Given the success of our Bach Motet venture this past season (in which we performed all seven!), we will offer a concert focused on the motet itself—from the Middle Ages to today—celebrating perhaps the most historically omnipresent musical genre in Western Music. Complementing these programs in 2025 will be our second installment of Concerti Virtuosi, featuring instrumental soloists from the Bach Consort in an array of baroque concertos. Concluding the season will be Joseph Bologne’s (Chevalier de Saint-Georges) Violin Concerto in G major, played by concertmaster Andrew Fouts, followed by Mozart’s iconic Requiem.

We are proud to begin a new tradition, presenting annually the winner of the Lillian and Maurice Barbash International Bach Competition, in which you’ll hear the world’s finest Bach solo performers. The Chamber Series will find us offering the American premiere of a work composed for the founding of the Jewish Synagogue in Amsterdam in 1675, with further baroque works by composers within the Western Sephardic diaspora. Cellist, Wade Davis will play a selection of Bach’s Cello Suites, our Vocal Polyphony program will include selections from the motet cycles of Heinrich Schütz, and a performance focused on French and English baroque works will give us something of the musical supernatural in the 17th and 18th centuries. And, of course, there is always our free Noon Cantata Series featuring Bach’s organ works, several very special solo cantatas, as well as Bach’s audition cantata for the post in Leipzig where he lived and worked for most of his life.

All in all, we cannot wait to welcome you into what promises to be a very exciting season!

Es lebe Bachs Musik!

Dr. Dana T. Marsh
Artistic Director