Bach to the Future: Bite-Size Bach 

This year’s Bach marathon is a sprint!

Click to listen to a short-and-sweet audio version of our traditional J. S. Bach extravaganza! This online Bach to the Future presentation packs all the tasty goodness of our annual overnight event into a one-hour wafer-thin ‘Bach in bite-size’ form.

PERFORMER BIOS AND PROGRAM NOTES:

ENIGMATICA is a New England-based mandolin ensemble directed by Marilynn Mair. Part chamber orchestra and part plucked-string double-quartet, Enigmatica performs a variety of music: Baroque, Brazilian, eclectic contemporary, and music written by group members and friends. The ensemble features instruments of the mandolin family — mandolin, mandola, octave mandolin and mandocello — and 6- and 7-string guitars. Ensemble members come from Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire.

CHLOË KLINE is CMW’s Education Director. Chloë’s practice focuses on the intersection of creative youth development, equity and inclusion, and the field of classical music. She believes deeply in the importance of inquiry and creative practice for young people as individuals and as community members. She holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in viola performance from the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University, where she was a student of Martha Katz. Chloë earned a Master’s degree in Arts in Education from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education in 2005, and joined CMW the following year as a member of the Fellowship Program’s pilot class. Chloë is also a faculty member with the Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles National Institute.

EDEN RAYZ is a Boston-based cellist and composer. She’s most known as a session cellist and as the extreme vocalist for death metal bands Scaphism and Angel Grinder. She’s set to self-release her first EP called Corpus Vice in the coming months.

Notes from the performer on “Cello Suite No. II in D minor IV: Sarabande, Destabilized”: This version of the first half of Bach’s D minor Sarabande from his Cello Suites is improvised using Bach’s content, but Rayz’s timbral, formal, and microtonal language. Though it was recorded in roughly 3 parts, it’s still imagined as a solo cello performance, contributing to what she describes as “an additive hell.” The discomfort of the exposition slowly gives way to catharsis.

JOE DEGEORGE is a composer, musician, and sound artist living in Providence, Rhode Island. He is a member of the bands Harry and the Potters and Downtown Boys. His performances of “Switched-Off Bach” and “In Glove With Bach” are always a highlight of Bach To The Future.

Notes from the performer on “Variations on Some Invention Riffs”: In March, Kara took me to a weekend rental somewhere in rural New York that had a 19th century pipe organ installed in a barn haunted by an old organ mechanic and a sad dog. I brought my tape recorder hoping to make some tapes of my own organ performances. I had been developing a practice through the pandemic of spontaneous improvisation. I had never really spent any significant time playing a pipe organ so this was really my first intimate encounter with such an instrument. I made an hour long tape recording of spontaneous improvisation. I selected a six minute chunk of that tape in which I was riffin’ heavily on a few phrases Bach had penned in his Inventions. Maybe we can call this “Variations on some Invention Riffs?” Who knows what it actually sounded like when Bach was riffin’ on his own keyboards and writing music, but maybe this recording has some fraction of an essense of Bach’s moments of creation; a piece of the joy of inventing.

PEDRO REIS studies piano with Manabu Takasawa.

MANABU TAKASAWA is a Professor of Music at Rhode Island College.

KAMYRON WILLIAMS, a cellist and Teaching Artist Fellow at CMW, is originally from Tampa (FL) where his musical training started when his best friend persuaded him to join the middle school orchestra program in order to have a class together. This spontaneous entrance into the orchestra community has since led him to an abundance of opportunities as a performer, collaborator, and educator. While Kamyron has performed on stages across the Midwest and New England, his work with diversity-oriented arts organizations, ensembles, and initiatives has garnered significant attention, in the “American Black Journal” series on PBS and NPR Michigan Radio. After both performing and leading community outreach for the Sphinx Organization, he has dedicated his musical passion to tackling the challenges of equity, attendance, and enthusiasm that classical music still struggles to overcome. Kamyron holds degrees from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music (B.M.) and the University of Michigan School of Music, Theater & Dance (M.M. and Specialist Degree).