AMHERST — Whenever you have two or more J.S. Bach performances occurring together in one place, you are getting closer to a full-blown Bach festival than you might think. Case in point: It all started innocently enough with one or two numbers, and now the UMass Amherst Department of Music and Dance will host its fourth Bach festival and symposium, titled “Late Style and the Idea of the Summative Work in Bach and Beethoven” April 20–25. UMass students and faculty will join top performers and researchers, virtually, to celebrate the music and legacy of Johann Sebastian Bach.
The multi-day event will include a day-long scholarly symposium on April 24, via Zoom, featuring a slate of distinguished international scholars, with keynotes by Robert Marshall of Brandeis University and Scott Burnham from Princeton University and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). There is no cost to view the symposium. You can find presenter abstracts, bios, and registration information at umass.edu/bach.
Throughout the week, UMass faculty and students will present pre-recorded performances of Bach’s music, along with world premieres of related works composed by department chair Salvatore Macchia and the faculty duo of Jonathan-Hulting Cohen and Lauren Cox. These performances will be available at no cost on YouTube each evening at 7:30 p.m., starting April 20 and ending April 23.
The festival’s final program, streaming live April 25, is titled “Bach Listening Room.” It will feature cellist Matt Haimovitz performing Bach’s “Suite No. 6 in D major,” the prelude to “Suite No. 2 in D minor,” plus two world-premiere works: “Suolo” by Mt. Holyoke College music professor David Sanford, and “Diaphanous Graces” by Luna Pearl Woolf, a 2021 Grammy nominee in the category of “Best Classical Compendium” for her album “Fire and Flood.” Following the concert, UMass professor of violin Elizabeth Chang and UMass Associate Director of Programming/Asian Arts & Culture Michael Sakamoto will moderate a question-and-answer session.
