Bach Week!

Every other year we celebrate Bach with a week-long Bach Festival in town. Sadly, I attended only one event this year. I would go more often if I had more Bach-ophile friends!

I attended a Monday evening organ concert at the beautiful Basilica of St. Adalbert, which has acoustics that are a little too live ... with lots of reverberation.

The organist was from the historic Trinity Wall Street Church in lower Manhattan (which is a few blocks from "ground zero" and a few blocks from S. & M.'s apartment building), where he is the Director of Music and the Arts. Julian Wachner was the Artistic Director for this year's entire Bach Festival. I trust he had an enjoyable time with the musicians in Grand Rapids. I think our Symphony Director and Symphonic Choir director are top notch but perhaps for him this is small town stuff!

He took suggestions for organ improvisation from the audience. He improvised on both Be Thou My Vision and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. He had the audience sing the hymn tune and they knew all the words ... only in Grand Rapids? And then he combined the tunes in an inscrutably complex improvisational finale.

What was new to me and so interesting is that they had a large screen in front with one camera focused on his hands and one on his feet, projecting the images of either his hands or his feet at all times as he played behind us up in the balcony. Three cameras and three screens were employed in all, making it much more engaging (if somewhat distracting from the glorious music). His wife who was five months pregnant turned pages for him, but no cameras were on her--or her stomach! The close up of his intricate pedal work was the most intriguing aspect of the concert, although his playing was excellent as well.

Members of his choir from Trinity Church also came to town to participate in some Bach cantatas, but I didn't get to hear them ... kind of a sad story. I tried...

My view (of his hands)