The Bach stops here
For the past 8 years, a project has been quietly whirring away in one of Sydney’s oldest concert venues in Darlinghurst, the Big Schoolroom at Sydney Grammar School.
In 2005, the Sydneian Bach Choir embarked on project to perform every single one of J S Bach’s 200 extant cantatas. This month, that project finally comes to an end with a festival of the music of Bach culminating in the final cantatas concert.
The concerts have been conducted by Chris Shepard who inaugurated the project and taken over by Greg Platt. Soloists over the years have included sopranos Belinda Montgomery, Mina Kanaridis, Josie Ryan and Jodie McGuren; mezzo-sopranos Jennu Duck-Chong and Jo Burton, counter-tenors Derek Ward and Timothy Chung, tenors Simon Gilkes, Nathan Gilkes and Pascal Herrington and basses Timothy Collins and Alex Knight. Also performing have been specialist Baroque instrumentalists and choristers, some of whom have participated in every concert of the project. During this musical odyssey, the choir travelled to Leipzig on its Bach pilgrimage and to Venice where it participated in Vespers in the Basilica of San Marco in Venice. In Boston, they attended an exclusive lecture delivered by Bach scholat Christoph Wolff.
In the first concerts the Cantatas BWV 47, 109, 115 and 180 will be performed. In the second concert you can hear the Cantatas BWV 5, 70, 139 and 140 (“Wachet Auf”).
Tickets: For Sunday 2 June, tickets can be bought at the door ($25/15).
For further information, please call 9332 5895 or email mbb@sydgram.nsw.edu.au
