For Bach lovers, a suite week ahead
Plus: The news of the week — Stadium deal advances; New city budget raises taxes; Historic school reopens for tours; Turkish Airlines eyes service to Charlotte
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Bach Festival returns to Charlotte with performances, lectures and masterclasses focusing on the composer and his contemporaries; events geared toward both avid Bach lovers and the Bach-curious
The Charlotte Bach Festival’s closing concert at Myers Park Presbyterian Church in 2019 (shown here) featured Bach's St. Matthew Passion, in which the composer set the 26th and 27th chapters of the Gospel of Matthew to music. (Photo courtesy of Bach Akademie Charlotte)
by Cristina Bolling
One of the richest weeks in Charlotte classical music is Bach.
Some of the country’s top performers, scholars and aficionados of Johann Sebastian Bach and his contemporaries are in Charlotte this week for the fifth in-person Charlotte Bach Festival, a 9-day celebration of the Baroque-period composer who is considered to be one of the greatest musical minds in the history of Western music.
Bach Akademie Charlotte, a nonprofit devoted to musical scholarship and performance that “advances the spirit of community” through Bach’s legacy, is the organization behind the festival, which consists of more than a dozen events at venues in uptown and in other areas of Charlotte.
They range from a chance to watch a master organist give a masterclass to local organ players, an orchestral performance of Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons,” vocal and orchestral Bach performances and a cello concert.
The festival kicked off Friday and runs through June 22. Events will take place in multiple venues across Charlotte, including at Queens University, Holy Comforter Episcopal Church on Park Road and uptown at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church and the Brooklyn Collective.
The Bach Akademie Charlotte holds performances and educational programs during the year, in addition to the annual festival.
The Ledger’s Cristina Bolling caught up with Bach Akademie Charlotte Executive Director Garrett Murphy last week to hear about how the festival got started, what audiences organizers hope to reach, and to understand … why Bach?
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q. Tell me about Bach festivals. How did Charlotte get one, and do they happen in other cities?
Mike Trammell, a singer who’s a native of Charlotte, had attended a couple of Bach festivals in Germany, where almost every city of any size has a Bach festival each summer centered around the music of one of Germany’s most celebrated composers and minds.
He then came back to Charlotte and had the idea with some friends: Wouldn’t it be amazing to produce something like that here? So this is an entirely independent organization that Mike founded [in 2017].
Right from the get-go, it has been ambitious, bringing in the most top-notch, world-class musicians from around North America who are experts in this genre of Baroque music.
Q. What is it about Bach and his music that inspires entire week-long festivals devoted to him — even here in Charlotte, North Carolina?
Bach is sort of — there’s something for everyone on the surface. It’s beautiful music. It’s exciting. There are parts of it that are deeply spiritual. He was a very spiritual man, and prolific, and so there’s an abundance of music that we can pull on for our audiences.
But then as the audience gets more familiar with it, there’s a lot of intricacies there — a lot of deeply meaningful things behind the music. And so we hope to not just share the notes, or perform it, but to really sort of unpack for our audience what this is all about — why they should enjoy it, why they should love it.
It is truly something that I think exists in a number of composers, but for us, this is an opportunity to experience the timeless insight into the shared human experience through this music.
Q. What will be notable about the music this week’s audiences will hear, as opposed to Bach music they might have heard previously?
We’re bringing to the region a way of playing Bach and his contemporaries that is the way that Bach intended it to sound, so we’re doing what they call “historically informed performance.”
Many of our musicians are playing on instruments from the 1700s. [Bach lived from 1685-1750.] So it’s an incredibly sort of historic scholarly practice, and at the same time, some of the most dynamic playing of this music you’ll ever hear.
At the end of the festival, we’re doing Monteverdi’s Vespers. He was an Italian baroque composer, so a contemporary of Bach, although they never met. This is one of the biggest pieces of Baroque music that we’re performing. It may be a Charlotte premiere, in its entirety.
And we’re bringing two instruments that rarely see the light of day. One is called the cornetto, or the cornetti, that is a precursor to the trumpet — there are no valves, so everything is done with your lips. It’s a real virtuosic thing, and to do it well is very rare, and we were bringing in the best in the world to do this. … And then the other instrument is called the sackbut. That is kind of a precursor to the bassoon.
Q. It seems like when some people think of classical music, they can feel a little bit intimidated, because they can’t identify a composer, or they don’t feel like they understand the genre. But it seems like your approach is trying to meet people where they are?
I will go as far as to say, I think we’re trying to create a movement in Charlotte for this music. And there is such a sophisticated audience, in many ways, a very worldly audience, in Charlotte, that we’re just opening a door for folks to really see some exciting ways of playing music that has really existed since the inception of it.
The creation of this music was not meant to be staid and sterile, but really exciting and invigorating and inspiring. And in almost a spiritual way, we’re seeking to make sure that society has access to this music in a way that can inspire an audience, and in a way that inspires us as performers.
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➡️ Want to go? The Charlotte Bach Festival runs through June 22 at various locations in Charlotte. Admission is available through an all-festival pass or a la carte tickets. All-festival passes are $250 to $350; tickets to single events range from $15 to $60. Information here.
Cristina Bolling is managing editor of The Ledger: cristina@cltledger.com
Today’s supporting sponsor is VIA Health Partners, formerly Hospice & Palliative Care Charlotte Region. New name, same exceptional care for families in 32 counties across North and South Carolina.
This week in Charlotte: Nonprofit pledges laptops to students heading to HBCUs; Regulators extend watch over Aldersgate; Townhome construction booms
On Saturdays, The Ledger sifts through the local news of the week and links to the top articles — even if they appeared somewhere else. We’ll help you get caught up. That’s what Saturdays are for.
Education
Davidson’s E2D gives laptops to HBCU students: (Observer) The nonprofit E2D is providing a free laptop to every Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools graduate heading to an HBCU this fall.
Reporter retirement: (WFAE) WFAE education reporter Ann Doss Helms, one of Charlotte’s best-known and longest-serving journalists, announced on Facebook that she is retiring in August after a 43-year career. She has covered local education for the last 22 years.
Politics
Stadium deal advances: (Ledger 🔒) City officials are holding a special public hearing on Monday so citizens can weigh in on a plan to spend $650M renovating Bank of America Stadium, but the speed and discourse surrounding the deal seem to signal it’s likely a foregone conclusion. The city’s economic development committee voted unanimously Wednesday to send the plan to the full council for a June 24 vote.
New leadership coming on county commission: (Fox 46) Mecklenburg County commissioners chair George Dunlap said he won’t serve another term as the leader of the board after serving in the role for six years. He plans to continue as a commissioner.
City Council approves budget with tax increase: (WFAE) The Charlotte City Council approved a 2024-25 budget that boosts employee pay and raises property taxes by 1.37 cents per $100 of valuation, or about $49 a year for the owner of a median-priced home.
Local news
State extends its watch over Aldersgate: (Ledger 🔒) State regulators on Monday extended their supervision of Aldersgate’s finances for another 150 days, saying the east Charlotte retirement community had made some progress in improving its finances but still had challenges, including owing more in entrance fee refunds.
Grand re-opening for historic school: (QCity Metro) The Charlotte Museum of History has restored the historic Siloam School, originally built in the 1920s to educate Black children in Mecklenburg County. The grand reopening is set for today and will feature a ribbon-cutting at 11 a.m. and public tours starting at noon.
Business
Flight to Turkey?: (Ledger 🔒) The chairman of Turkish Airlines said the carrier is looking into expanding service to more cities in the U.S., including Charlotte. The airline now serves 14 U.S. cities, all with service to Istanbul.
Townhome boom: (Ledger 🔒) Construction of single-family homes is waning in Charlotte, and new townhomes are taking their place. In 2023, for the first time, the number of building permits for townhomes surpassed the number for single-family detached homes in Mecklenburg County.
From the Ledger family of newsletters
Urgent care after-hours: A new urgent care in Pineville is open until 1 a.m. most nights, giving patients an option to avoid the emergency room, as nearly all Charlotte urgent care offices close at 8 p.m.
Plus: Lee Jones is retiring as head of Mecklenburg County’s Park & Recreation Department; a Wall Street Journal article about how to financially vet a continuing care retirement community calls Aldersgate in Charlotte “a cautionary tale”; Lawrence Toppman reviews a rainy Charlotte Symphony Orchestra Pops in the Park concert
Wednesday (🔒)
Companies pack on pet perks: Employers are ramping up pet-related benefits like pet insurance, “pawternity leave” and bring-your-dog-to-work days as recruitment and retention tools for employees who are passionate about their pets.
Plus: Backers of Charlotte’s $650M stadium deal doubt economists’ take that public investment in sports stadiums do little to help economic growth; 🎧New podcast with “Charlotte Squawks” co-creator Brian Kahn
Friday (🔒)
🎭‘Squawks’ review: Ledger arts critic Lawrence Toppman took in Wednesday night’s performance of “Charlotte Squawks,” the SNL-style musical parody show that takes aim at the city’s institutions, politicians and sports teams.
Half-season check-in: Carroll Walton checks in on Charlotte FC at the halfway mark of its season — with 5 things to watch for down the stretch as the team hopes to make the playoffs.
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Executive editor: Tony Mecia; Managing editor: Cristina Bolling; Staff writer: Lindsey Banks; Business manager: Brie Chrisman, BC Creative