All My Children: Baroque Performance Institute Features Music of the Bach Family

The Baroque Performance Institute (BPI), America’s premiere summer workshop for baroque instruments and voice, marks its 32nd season this summer by celebrating the music of the Bach family, from Johann Sebastian’s ancestors through his sons. The institute is held for two weeks each summer at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music at Oberlin College.

This year’s institute, Music of the Bach Family, begins Sunday, June 22, and runs through Saturday, July 5. Many of the concerts associated with BPI are free and open to the public; select concerts require a ticket, which can be purchased at the door for $10. Concerts are held in the Conservatory’s Kulas Recital Hall, Warner Concert Hall, and Fairchild Chapel.

The first faculty concert, Friday, June 27, at 8:00 p.m. in Kulas Recital Hall, is one of two rare opportunities for audiences to hear BPI’s world-class faculty members perform. In keeping with this year’s theme, the chamber music program includes music of four different members of the Bach family: Carl Philipp Emanuel, Johann Christian, Johann Michael, Wilhelm Friedemann, and, of course, Johann Sebastian.

The second faculty concert, Friday, July 4, at 7:00 p.m. in Warner Concert Hall, will feature works of Johann Sebastian and his two most famous sons: Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel.

Throughout the first week of BPI, musicologist-in-residence Michael Marissen of Swarthmore College, one of America’s leading Bach scholars, will examine the lives and music of Bach family members in a series of one-hour lectures (Monday through Thursday) beginning at 1:30 p.m. in Kulas Recital Hall.

BPI’s participants--who range from young high-school musicians to young professionals and adult amateurs--receive intensive instruction in voice, choral conducting, and a variety of baroque instruments, including violin, viola, cello, viola da gamba, flute, recorder, oboe, bassoon, trumpet, lute and theorbo, organ, and harpsichord from an international faculty of acclaimed performers and scholars.

Members of the Oberlin Baroque Ensemble (Michael Lynn, Marilyn McDonald, Catharina Meints, and Lisa Goode Crawford), all members of the Oberlin Conservatory’s permanent faculty, comprise BPI’s core faculty. A distinguished roster of visiting musicians and music scholars join them in conducting daily master classes, private lessons, coached ensemble work, lectures, baroque dance classes, and concerts.

BPI participants have access to the Conservatory’s extensive historic instrument collection, and the music and book collection of the Conservatory library.

For more information about the program and concert tickets, contact Anna Hoffmann at 440-775-8044, or visit the BPI web site.