The Dessoff Choirs open Refracted Bach: Mid Winter Festival with 'Why Bach Matters' January 31, 2012

The Dessoff Choirs, under the musical direction of Christopher Shepard, will kick off the Refracted Bach Midwinter Festival on Tuesday, January 31 at 7:30pm with an opening lecture entitled Why Bach Matters, at Liederkranz Concert Hall. Given by George B. Stauffer, Dean of the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, the lecture is intended to place Bach in an historical context and to frame the festival’s centerpiece, the Mass in B Minor, which closes the festival on March 3. Following the lecture, on Friday, February 3 at 8pm, at the Church of St. Paul the Apostle, will be Stile Antico, a concert that presents an intriguing snapshot of J. S. Bach as a musician who absorbed the lessons of his predecessors, and, in turn, had a profound and enduring influence on generations of musicians who came after him. The program opens with early choral works, which Bach knew and performed, by Palestrina and Polish baroque composer Grzegorz Gerwazy Gorczycki, and then moves forward in time to showcase choral pieces he inspired — by Mendelssohn, Schumann, Reger, and living composers Sven-David Sandström and William Hawley, including the American premiere of his Tota Pulchra es Maria. It also includes two recent works for solo instruments by the contemporary American composer Ingram Marshall, played by the artists for whom they were composed, oboist Libby Van Cleve and violinist Todd Reynolds.

Tickets: $10-20; children 12 & under, free. Order at dessoff.org or (212) 831-8224
Sponsored, in part, by the Thiemann-Wicker Foundation.