WHITTIER, CA (January 5, 2011) — Whittier College is proud to present its 74th Annual Johann Sebastian Bach Festival, the oldest collegiate Bach festival west of the Mississippi. This year’s festival will feature three concerts exploring the connection between the music of Johann Sebastian Bach with the flute. Harpsichordist and noted Bach authority Raymond Erickson ’63 is the festival’s artistic director. He will be joined on stage by well-respected flutists Katherine Borst-Jones, professor at Ohio State University and Danilo Lozano, Whittier professor and Grammy award winning performer. For additional information and directions contact the music department at 562.907.4237 or rlitchfield@whittier.edu.
Friday, March 18, 12 p.m.
Bach Musical
Memorial Chapel, FREE
The annual Bach Musicale features Whittier College students performing music by Bach and his contemporaries. Admission is free.
Sunday, March 20, 2:00-5:30 p.m.
Lecture and Masterclass
Ruth B. Shannon Center for the Performing Arts, $10
2:30-3:30 p.m.
Lecture and Demonstration: Raymond Erickson '63, Bach Scholar
4:00- 5:30 p.m.
Baroque Interpretation Masterclass: Katherine Borst-Jones, flutist
Tuesday, March 22, 7:30 p.m.
Chamber Music Concert
Memorial Chapel, FREE
The festival will close with a Bach Chamber Music Concert featuring Whittier College music department faculty and friends performing works by Bach and his contemporaries.
Performers include harpsichord player Raymond Erickson, flutists Danilo Lozano and Katherine Borst-Jones, as well as Leslie Ho, violin; Stephen Billington, trumpet;Â and Neil Stipp, organ.
This program will feature two very popular concertos, Brandenburg Concerto #5 and Brandenburg Concerto #4 in versions rarely heard—both representing premieres at the College's Bach Festival series. These will frame the brilliant Cantata 51, "Jauchzet Gott!" with soloists Melissa McIntosh Landis, soprano and Stephen Billington, trumpeter—both artists-in-residence at the College—backed by a string orchestra.
Raymond Erickson ‘63, editor of The Worlds of Johann Sebastian Bach(Amadeus Press, 2009), is one of the most experienced teachers of historical performance practice in the nation, having taught it since 1975. Recently retired from Queens College and the Graduate Center, CUNY, he has given lectures and master classes on Bach interpretation in the US and Europe, including The Juilliard School, Rutgers University, the University of Washington, University of North Carolina, the Longy School of Music, and Austria's Mozarteum. He was a participant in the first American recording (Smithsonian) of the Brandenburg Concertos on period instruments and has recently been appointed to the Bard College Conservatory of Music as a performance practice specialist. He is a graduate of Whittier College and holds the Ph.D. from Yale.
Katherine Borst Jones, professor of flute, has been at Ohio State University since 1985 and has served as chair of woodwinds, brass and percussion since 1999. She was awarded the Distinguished Teacher award in 1995 and the Distinguished Scholar Award in 2008. She is a founding member and co-principal flutist of the ProMusica Chamber Orchestra, founding member of the flute, viola, harp trio, COSMOS, a member of the Jones/Norton Duo with harpist, Jeanne Norton, a member of the Columbus Symphony Orchestra and principal flute of the New Sousa Band, which has toured Japan, China and the US and performed at the 2009 WASBE and Mid-West Band and Orchestra clinics.
