Midwinter Festival: Refracted Bach
Dessoff is pleased to present its inaugural Midwinter Festival — a series that offers the unique opportunity to experience choral masterworks in a larger cultural and historical context. This year’s festival centers on J.S. Bach’s majestic B Minor Mass and explores both how he absorbed myriad musical styles as well as how his astonishing legacy has inspired later composers.
The five-part Refracted Bach Festival features diverse musical events taking place across Manhattan:
- The “greatest musical artwork of all times and peoples” — Bach’s transcendent B Minor Mass with period-instument ensemble Arcadia Players. [details]
- “Stile Antico” — a concert of the choral and instrumental works that inspired Bach and that Bach inspired. [details]
- The New York première of Gilded Goldbergs — Robin Holloway’s virtuosic two-piano reimagining of the Goldberg Variations, featuring pianists Steven Ryan and Catherine Venable. [details]
- A Sing-In for all choral singers, exploring the cantata movements Bach refashioned to immortalize in the B Minor Mass. [details]
- A lecture by renowned Bach scholar George B. Stauffer. [details]
Click here for tickets and discount ticket packages.
In anticipation of the festival, Music Director Chris Shepard has been writing about Bach on his blog, verba docent. Take a look!
Press coverage for Refracted Bach
Refracted Bach: The Dessoff Choirs’ 2012 Midwinter Festival is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
