Singer

Celebrate the 300th anniversary of the creation of this masterwork!

The great Passions of J. S. Bach remain unparalleled in their dramatic impact and universally experienced emotional effects. Bach took the genre to new worlds of expression, incorporating new Italianate operatic elements with the Lutheran tradition of sung chorales. The result is a powerful force of rhetoric that tells the Passion story reinforced by personalized illuminations.

This is music that transcends cultural, religious, and theatrical boundaries between performers and audience members, drawing in listeners as historical participants. Maestro Thomas, one of the Baroque music world’s most celebrated Bach specialists, brings his unique and insightful perspectives to the podium in definitive performances that are profoundly beautiful and moving.

EPSG:4326

Saint John Passion 300th Anniversary

St. Stephen's Episcopal Church

Saint Mark's Episcopal Church

Davis Community Church

St. Mark’s Lutheran Church

Handel’s cantata Apollo & Dafne was written in Venice when he was just 24 years old. It tells the story of Apollo’s vanity as he suggests that even Cupid’s bow is no match for his own. Challenging Apollo’s boastfulness, Cupid shoots his arrows and Apollo falls prey to rapturous yearnings for Dafne. She spurns his advances and, in a desperate effort to escape, is transformed into a laurel tree.
Love brings life to a statue in Rameau's Pygmalion. The protagonist sculptor has carved a beautiful marble figure and has fallen desperately in love with his inanimate work of art. He faithfully entreats Venus to turn his handiwork into a breathing, captivating, and singing creature. Love inspires a miracle and triumphs over longing.

Harmonious Love

St. Mark's Episcopal Church

St. Mark's Lutheran Church, San Francisco

A dramatic account of the fall of Babylon at the hands of Cyrus the Great, the founder of the first Persian empire, and the ensuing freeing of the Jewish nation as told by Daniel, the noble youth of Jerusalem, is the subject of Handel's oratorio, composed during the peak of his creative life. After falling into neglect after Handel's death, 21st-century revivals of this splendid music have been presented in Zurich and Aix-en-Provence. A central and guiding character of Queen Nitocris, the mother of Belshazzar, encourages the story's triumphant ending.

Belshazzar

War Memorial and Performing Arts Center

The galant styles of High Baroque and Rococo music join hands in the mature works by Bach and Rameau. The Missa in A Major is a curious amalgam of the traditional and contemporary, featuring a pair of a relatively “new” instrument on the scene, the flauto traverso. And the ornate wizardry of Rameau's theatrical Dardanus brought the opera acclaim as one of his greatest compositions. A glance back to the Italian roots of the Baroque is revealed in Handel's and Vivaldi's concertos.

Matthew Hill

Tenor

Events

8 - 11 Mar, 2024

Saint John Passion 300th Anniversary · American Bach Soloists

5 - 8 May, 2023

Harmonious Love · American Bach Soloists

Jul 30, 2022

Belshazzar · American Bach Soloists

Jul 29, 2022

Barococo · American Bach Soloists

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