Plans for 2024 American Bach Summer Festival

Tickets are now available for the 36th Season of American Bach, led by Artistic Director Jeffrey Thomas. The season will begin next month with the annual Summer Festival. Some readers may recall that last year the Festival had been pared down to only four concerts. This year the offerings will be reduced by half, with only two performances taking place over the course of a single weekend. Both will be held in St. Mark’s Lutheran Church at 1111 O’Farrell Street, on the southwest corner of Franklin Street, beginning at 7:30 p.m. Ticket prices will range between $44 and $106. They may be purchased online through Tix hyperlinks attached to the specific dates as follows:

Jacob Ashworth, Tatiana Chulochnikova, Tomà Iliev, and YuEun Kim in the banner for the Viva Vivaldi event page

Saturday, July 27: The title of the first concert will be Viva Vivaldi. Readers may recall that last year saw a performance of the four violin concertos by Antonio Vivaldi known collectively as The Four Seasons. What made the occasion somewhat different from the usual approach was that each concerto featured a solo performance by a different ABS violinist. In order of appearance these were as follows:

1. Spring: Tomà Iliev
2. Summer: Tatiana Chulochnikova
3. Autumn: Jacob Ashworth
4. Winter: YuEun Kim

Next month that lightning will strike again, although I am not sure whether the assignment of violinist to concerto has yet been finalized. Cellist Gretchen Classen will then perform the composer’s sonata in A minor (whether this will be RV 43 or 44 has not year been specified). This will be followed by a sonata for two violas and continuo in E minor (which may be the RV 67 trio sonata originally composed for two violins). The soloists will be Ramón Negrón-Pérez and Yvonne Smith. The “Four Seasons” violinists will then return as soloists for the RV 549 concerto for four violins in D major, the first concerto in the Opus 3 (L’estro armonico) collection.

Sunday, July 28: Theater of Fate will be a program of three solo cantatas in Italian, the first by George Frideric Handel and the other two by Antonio Vivaldi. The vocalists for this program will be soprano Maya Kherani and mezzo Sarah Coit. The program will then conclude with the third (in the key of C minor) of the twelve concerti grossi collected in Arcangelo Corelli’s Opus 6.