The Oregon Bach Festival has announced its 2016 season, which will open on June 23 with Artistic Director Matthew Halls conducting a performance of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Mass in B minor on period instruments. Halls will also lead the premiere of James MacMillan’s Requiem, commissioned by OBF, and the festival will conclude with another requiem on July 10, when more than 230 orchestra members, soloists, and choir singers perform Brahms’s Ein Deutsches Requiem. Other OBF performances include the classical-bluegrass fusion quintet the Punch Brothers; organist Paul Jacobs; tenor Nicholas Phan; and violinists Monica Huggett and Rachel Podger. Pianist/conductor Jeffrey Kahane will return to OBF as a soloist in Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 and as conductor for Gabriel’s Guide by his son, Gabriel Kahane. Now in its second season, the Berwick Academy will continue to coach young musicians in historically informed performance. Academy members will perform works by Mozart, Beethoven, and Haydn with pianist and musicologist Robert Levin. The 2016 Discovery Series lectures will examine parts IV, V, and VI of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio and include the OBG Vocal Fellows and the OBF Master Class in Conducting.
Posted February 2, 2016
