Chock-full of Bach

The term “awesome” seems to have been invented for Johann Sebastian Bach.

More than 1,000 of his works survived; some scholars estimate he wrote several times that many. And he showed great versatility with music of all sorts, both big pieces and small ones.

The 30th annual Northwest Bach Festival seems determined to be just as versatile.

This weekend, a jazz quartet and a visiting horn virtuoso will explore the interconnection of Bach and jazz.

And on Feb. 24, the festival will feature a performance of Bach’s monumental “St. Matthew Passion.”

Saturday’s performance at the Spokane Athletic Club will feature the Brent Edstrom Trio – pianist Edstrom, bassist Eugene Jablonsky and percussionist Rick Westrick – along with guitarist Paul Grove and Los Angeles-based French hornist Richard Todd.

“The first half of the program is built around Bach’s Partita in B-flat,” Edstrom says. “I will play each movement as it was written, then Richard Todd and Paul Grove will play a version of the movement with improvisation for guitar and French horn, and then we will play a version for jazz trio.

“For the second half of the program we’ll play some jazz standards.”

Edstrom, a classically trained pianist with a degree from Washington State University, coordinates the music theory and composition program at Whitworth University. Both Jablonsky and Westrick have classical training and jazz credentials.

The trio has been working together for six years and can be heard regularly at Ella’s Supper Club and other local venues.

Grove teaches guitar at both Whitworth and at Gonzaga University, and holds degrees from the Peabody Conservatory and the University of Arizona.

Todd is principal horn of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and teaches at the University of Southern California. He can be head on the soundtracks of more than 1,000 films and has played with artists as varied as Madonna and Leonard Bernstein.

The festival will close in a big way with a performance of the “St. Matthew Passion,” conducted by Gunther Schuller with the Festival Orchestra and Chorus.

Vocal soloists include sopranos Janet Brown and Kendra Colton, mezzo soprano Barbara Rearick, tenor Rockland Osgood and baritone James Maddalena.

Pulitzer Prize-winner Schuller has led the Northwest Bach Festival since 1993. Those years have seen performances of Bach’s largest masterpieces, such as the St. Matthew and St. John Passions; medium-sized works, including many of the cantatas; and tiny pieces Bach wrote for his wife and children.

“I have known the ‘St. Matthew Passion’ since I was a kid,” Schuller said in a telephone interview from his home in Boston. “And I conducted it in Spokane (at the Bach Festival) in 1995.

“But I have spent the past month totally re-immersed in it,” he said. “I think it may be the the greatest masterpiece of them all.

“Sure, there are other very great pieces: Beethoven’s Ninth and Stravinsky’s ‘Rite of Spring,’ or some of the symphonies of Mahler. But when it comes to the combination of sustained complexity, perfection, versatility, and astonishing innovation, I can’t think of any other work that is so great.”

The composition uses two choirs and two orchestras and is made up of 68 separate movements.

“Some of the movements are six or seven minutes long, and others last only seconds,” Schuller said.

“But the variety! Some of those movements call for both choirs and as many as 42 instrumentalists, others a solo singer and three instruments. Even in movements that call for the same number of performers, there are different combinations of voices and instruments. I have been constantly amazed at it.”

In all of Bach’s many works, he never wrote an opera.

“None of his jobs called for him to write one,” Schuller said. “But when you think about it, the ‘St. Matthew Passion’ is an opera. It has the drama, the characters, the musical variety – the only things missing are costumes and staging.”

Schuller’s Spokane performance will emphasize the dramatic nature of the work by having the recitatives sung in English, and the arias and choruses in the original German.

“The storyline is carried forward in the recitatives, and the arias and choruses are comments on the story,” he said. “There have been earlier conductors who have done it this way, too.”

Even before he accepted the leadership of the Bach Festival, Schuller was no stranger to Spokane.

He came here first as a guest conductor of the Spokane Symphony in 1983, returned as interim music director in the 1984-85 season and led the orchestra at The Festival at Sandpoint.

At 82, Schuller himself can claim a versatility as a trademark. He became principal horn of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra by the time he was 24. During the same time, he was recording “Birth of the Cool” with a combo led by Miles Davis.

Schuller’s works have been played by a range of performers, from pianist James Levine, the Metropolitan Opera’s music director, to jazz saxophonist Joe Lovano.

He has written classic studies on the technique of horn playing, the art of conducting and the history of jazz.

“During the preparation of this ‘Passion,’ I’ve had to let my own composition and writing go,” Schuller said. “But it has been inspiring to be in Bach’s company all that time.”