The Oregon Bach Festival is tuning up for its 2024 season. The two-week classical music event begins in Eugene this Friday.
The 55th Oregon Bach Festival pays homage to the prolific composer, Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 –1750.) And it’s also a living tradition—with performances from conventional to crossover—imagine Bach-inspired Led Zepplin and Taylor Swift!
This season’s theme is “Ascending Voices.” Festival Programming Director James Boyd said audiences could experience an arc of emotion.
“Opening night, it’s an all-Bach program, and it opens with Bach’s Cantata Number 21," said Boyd. "Which I guess the English translation would be, ‘I have much grief.’ And then by closing night on July 14th we arrive at Beethoven’s Ode to Joy.”
The 2024 Oregon Bach Festival begins Friday, June 28, in Eugene, with events at the Hult Center for the Performing Arts, Beall Concert Hall on the University of Oregon campus, and local churches.
Boyd said the Oregon Bach Festival will continue the long-standing tradition of presenting the finest choral-orchestral works, new music, illuminating lectures, and unique community events. “This season, audiences can expect everything from a traditional Bach cantata to a jazz piano and bass concert, a percussion quartet to the large orchestral performances,” Boyd said.
A proverb printed on a Bach Festival poster reads: Grief shared is halved. Joy shared is doubled.
Free opening night celebration
Oregon Bach Festival celebrates its opening night on June 28 from 6pm-7pm at Beall Concert Hall on the University of Oregon campus.
Free and open to the public, the opening celebration features live music from nonesuch.reed quintet, a land blessing by Kalapuya tribal elder Jan Michael “Looking Wolf,” free OBF merchandise, and sweet treats from Euphoria Chocolate Company, Nico’s Ice Cream, and Nothing Bundt Cakes.
Following the opening celebration, audience members can attend the 7:30p ticketed performance of “Bach: Ascension Oratorio” in Beall Concert Hall.
Oregon Bach Festival 2024 program descriptions
The OBF opens with Bach’s biblical and poetic “Ascension Oratorio.” The cantata, not performed at OBF in more than a decade, features trumpet-driven choruses and exquisite vocal solos. The event will go on the road for an encore performance at Mount Angel Abbey on the afternoon of June 29. Both performances are led by John Butt.
On July 2, John Butt joins forces with the lauded OBF Berwick Academy Orchestra for a new spin on the iconic festival Discovery concert. Berwick Academy also offers an afternoon of chamber music led by London Haydn Quartet Catherine Manson on July 8, and a Classical era program led by Portland Baroque Orchestra artistic director Julian Perkins on July 10.
Composer and conductor Eric Whitacre – one of today’s most popular musicians – serves as an artist-in-residence during OBF 2024. The grammy-winning multi-hyphenate presents this year’s Hinkle distinguished lecture and a community sing on July 6. Whitacre conducts the OBF Chorus in a performance of his “heartbreaking” (Los Angeles Times), hauntingly beautiful, and intimate, “The Sacred Veil” on July 12.
Paul Jacobs returns to Oregon Bach Festival to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the OBF Organ Institute. The centerpiece of the anniversary celebration is the co-commission and west coast premiere of a new organ concerto from Lowell Liebermann on July 11 in Silva Concert Hall. Liebermann, renowned as one of the most distinguished living American composers, will have his work brought to life by Jacobs and the OBF modern orchestra. The program, which also includes the Saint-Saëns Organ Symphony and new Bach transcription from composer Damien Geter, is conducted by 2023 OBF standout Gemma New.
Rising violin and piano stars Claire Wells and Pualina Lim partner for Vaughan Williams’ “The Lark Ascending” on July 1.
OBF continues its tradition of Saturday crossover events at the Hult Center. On June 29, Portland Cello Project brings their signature mix of classic and modern sound to an evening of Bach, Led Zepplin, and Taylor Swift.
Praised for his “traditional sound with a sophisticated contemporary spin” (The Guardian), pianist Aaron Diehl presents a jazz program featuring Sir Roland Hanna’s 24 Preludes on July 6.
Sandbox Percussion, called “pure as magic” by the New York Times and “jaw-dropping” by The Washington Post, joins OBF for the world-premiere weekend of John Luther Adams’ “Prophecies of Fire.”
Following his sold-out performance in 2023, Grammy-winner Craig Hella Johnson returns with Sarah Kirland Snider’s “Mass for the Endangered” – a prayer for voiceless animals and the imperiled environments in which they live. “Imaginative and spontaneous” (New York Times) Dutch conductor Jos Van Veldhoven follows his triumphant 2023 OBF debut with a turn at Mozart’s iconic, unfinished “Great” Mass, and Russian conductor Alevtina Ioffe, known for her “admirable precision” (The Washington Post), leads the OBF modern orchestra in Gustav Holst’s epic and cinematic “The Planets” – an HD odyssey accompanied by stunning NASA footage of the cosmos.
OBF ends the “Ascending Voices” season when the “fearless [and] bold” (San Diego Union-Tribune) Ken-David Masur conducts the unmistakably joyful Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.
Oregon Bach Festival (OBF) and the University of Oregon School of Music and Dance work in collaboration to celebrate the 2024 season.
Here's more information on events and tickets.
