Pop-up performances bring Bach to the public

The past couple of years have been all about expansion for the Northwest Bach Festival.

Last year, for instance, festival organizers scheduled performances in a shopping mall, in a small North Side event center, and in intimate historic buildings. They added a film series as well.

This year, they’re adding the element of surprise. Six “Flash Bach” concerts will be held in various public spaces at noon – banks, government offices, hospitals – and will be announced the morning of through the festival’s Facebook page and other social media.

The idea, said festival artistic director Zuill Bailey, is to further the festival’s mission to expose as many people as possible to the artistry of Bach. Bailey, an acclaimed cellist, will perform these six short – and free – concerts.

“The idea was to take our namesake and insert it into unique locations, locations that will be inspiring, that are not normal locations,” he said in a phone interview Monday. “We play in churches, we play in concert halls, recital halls, universities, and this is a way to bring music to the people outside the concert hall and hit them when they’re not ready for it.”

Two concerts will be at the festival’s traditional home, St. John’s Cathedral. But the most frequent venue this year is Barrister Winery.

“The wonderful thing about chamber music and recitals and our series is we can flex depending on how we would like to present the music,” Bailey said. “A lot of this music should not be in the grand, grand, grand concert halls. It was built for very small chambers. … We are all about making things accessible, about making this music accessible.”

A place such as Barrister, Bailey said, allows people to enjoy music in an intimate setting, with a little food and a glass of wine, “and enjoy a different kind of concert, a little bit shorter setting, but more of a social thing, which actually is the way it used to be done. We’ve kind of come full circle in our presentations because a lot of times when this music was written way back when, it was presented at parties or gatherings and celebrations. It wasn’t a formal concert.”

In essence, Bailey said, the festival is saving the big orchestral pieces for the big venue, St. John’s. “It’s a lovely space,” he said. “Just walking in you hear music.”

The festival kicks off Tuesday with the first of this season’s Twilight Tour performance. Over six performances, violinists Kurt Nikkanen and Soovin Kim will tackle one of the J.S. Bach Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin in six different historic landmarks. Nikkanen will perform Sonata No. 2 at Barrister Winery, Partita No. 2 at the Patsy Clark Mansion and Sonata No. 3 in the Davenport Hotel’s Elizabethan Room Tuesday through Thursday next week. The following week, Kim takes over, performing Sonata No. 1 at Barrister, Partita No. 1 at Nectar Tasting Room and Partita No. 3 at Churchill’s Steakhouse.

On Feb. 28, Bailey, Nikkanen and the Catalyst String Quartet will collaborate on a concert at Barrister called “A Passionate Affair: From Boccherini to Piazzolla Tangos.”

Also on the Festival Classics schedule are performances of Bach’s famed Goldberg Variations and the Glenn Gould String Quartet, both by the Catalyst Quartet at St. John’s on March 1.

On March 7, pianist Awadagin Pratt will perform the Johannes Brahms Variations and Fugue on Theme of Handel, the Bach-Busoni Chaconne and the Liszt Sonata in B minor, also at Barrister.

The festival’s finale, on March 8 at St. John’s, will feature Bailey, Kim and Pratt, and the Bach Festival Orchestra conducted by Piotr Gajewski, of the National Strathmore Music Center in Maryland. They’ll perform the Bach Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D Major, W.A. Mozart’s Symphony 35 in D Major and Ludwig von Beethoven’s Concerto for Violin, Cello and Piano in C Major.

Bailey is hopeful that this, his second year as the festival’s artistic director, will be as successful as his first.

“I think we’re going to have capacity crowds,” he said. “I hope people know this festival is for them, and the musicians who come in are special people. And they don’t just come in for one day, they’re here for essentially a week, so get to know them, talk to them. They’re lovely people who will become their friends for sure.”