Bach Cantata Choir presents Bach's St. John Passion

From the Press Release:

Bach Cantata Choir Presents Palm Sunday Concert

Featuring J. S. Bach's St John Passion

Sunday, April 2, 3pm (with Pre-Concert lecture at 2pm)

The Bach Cantata Choir of Portland will present a concert on Palm Sunday, April 2 at 3pm at Rose City Park Presbyterian Church, 1907 NE 45th Ave in Portland, Oregon. The concert will feature J. S. Bach's great masterpiece St John Passion, a 2-hour work originally written for a Good Friday service in 1724. Tickets are $30 and are available through the choir's website at www.bachcantatachoir.org. The concert will be under the direction of conductor Ralph Nelson. Masks are recommended but not required at this concert. The concert, which tells the story of the arrest, trial, and crucifixion of Christ as related in the Gospel of St. John, features the 45-voice Bach Cantata Choir, a 15-piece orchestra, and vocal soloists. A pre-concert lecture, entitled “Troubling Voices in Bach's Sublime St. John Passion” will be given at 2pm by noted Bach scholar Michael Marissen.

The featured soloists are: Arwen Myers, soprano; Laura Beckel Thoreson, alto; Les Green, tenor; and Jacob Herbert, bass. In the St John Passion, there are also a number of soloists who play “roles” in the Passion – these being: Les Green as the Evangelist; Kevin Walsh as Jesus; Kyle-Ross Hall as Pilate; Paul Butler as Peter; Cameron Herbert as a maid; and Brian Haskins as a servant to the High Priest. The chorus also plays various roles in the Passion as well – most notably Roman soldiers or an angry mob. Bach, however, also gives the chorus 11 beautiful and inspirational German chorales which serve as both commentary and reflection on the action that has occurred.

The Bach Cantata Choir is delighted to welcome to Portland one of the world’s most acclaimed Bach scholars – Dr. Michael Marissen, Professor Emeritus at Swarthmore College. Dr. Marissen will give a pre-concert lecture at 2pm concerning the often-perceived antisemitic themes that are found in the St. John Passion.

The St. John Passion was originally written by J. S. Bach for Good Friday services at St. Thomas Church in Leipzig in 1724. Bach revised the work and performed it a number of times between 1724 and 1750. It remains one of greatest and most powerful masterpieces in all choral music.

For tickets or more information – please go to the choir’s website at www.bachcantatachoir.org

Bach Cantata Choir, Portland, Oregon

The mission of the Bach Cantata Choir is to sing the entire set of sacred cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach over 30 years. Rehearsals are on Sunday afternoons 1:30pm-3:30pm. The choir. Made up of 45 singing members and 15 orchestral members, performs four cantata concerts per year – one or two cantatas per concert – as well as an annual Holiday Baroque Concert. Cantatas are chosen to closely match the liturgical time of the year for which Bach wrote them. Concerts are scheduled for Sunday afternoons at 2pm. Singers come from many different choirs in the Portland area. The common denominator is a love for Bach and prior experience singing Bach in German with another choir. The Bach Cantata Choir has received a prestigious invitation as one of five American Choirs to be invited to sing in the June, 2024 Leipzig Bach Festival in Bach’s hometown – Leipzig, Germany.

Michael Marissen

Michael Marissen is Daniel Underhill Professor Emeritus of Music at Swarthmore College, where he taught from 1989 to 2014. He has also been a visiting professor on the graduate faculties at Princeton University and the University of Pennsylvania. His publications include The Social and Religious Designs of J. S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos (Princeton, 1995), Lutheranism, anti-Judaism, and Bach’s St. John Passion (Oxford, 1998), An Introduction to Bach Studies (co-author Daniel R. Melamed; Oxford, 1998), Bach’s Oratorios (Oxford, 2008), Tainted Glory in Handel’s Messiah (Yale, 2014), Bach & God (Oxford, 2016), Bach against Modernity (Oxford, 2023), and essays in Harvard Theological Review, The Huffington Post, Lutheran Quarterly, and The New York Times. Current projects include producing, with Daniel R. Melamed, annotated translations of all the librettos from Bach’s vocal works.

Ralph Nelson, artistic director

Named Young Audiences’ “Artist of the Year” in 2011, composer/conductor Ralph Nelson is in demand as an Artist-in-Residence throughout the Portland area. A graduate of Amherst College and subsequently a composition and conducting student of Nadia Boulanger in France, Nelson has served in many capacities since moving to Portland over 40 years ago. For 22 years, he was a member of the administrative staff of the Oregon Symphony. Nelson was also the Executive Director of the Portland Symphonic Choir from 2002-2004. In 2001, Nelson conducted the Oregon Symphony and children’s chorus in a live broadcast concert at the Waterfront in “Portland, A Musical” – his acclaimed musical about Portland. Nelson studied conducting with Dr. Bruce Browne at Portland State University and with Helmuth Rilling at the Oregon Bach Festival. Nelson is a former board member of the Oregon Division of the American Choral Directors Association. In 2018, Nelson led the Bach Cantata Choir on its first European tour. The choir sang in locations important in the life of Johann Sebastian Bach – Erfurt, Weimar, Leipzig, and Dresden.