Emmanuel Music embarks on a season that explores the affinities between the music of J.S. Bach and contemporary practice. From our weekly cantata series to oratorios, resplendent with orchestra, chorus, and soloists, we will be traversing the broad range of Bach’s work throughout this season — music both profound and joyful. Our commitment to new works is renewed this season with the presentation of five newly commissioned motets, intentionally presented alongside selected cantatas.
Saturday, October 1
at 7:30pm
Emmanuel Church
Emmanuel Music opens its 53rd season with a program devoted to the theme of unity and neighborly love.
In Reena Esmail’s “This Love Between Us”, Eastern and Western musical traditions collide — a traditional Bach orchestration enhanced with sitar and tabla — in an exploration of the seven Indian religious traditions, looking for common ground in a spiritual journey towards unity, harmony, and kindness.
Sunday, December 18
at 3:00pm
Emmanuel Church
J. S. Bach’s radiant Christmas Oratorio has become a holiday favorite at Emmanuel Music. The six cantatas that comprise this work fully set the festival mood for the Christmas season. Bach engages us with exquisite pastoral soundscapes, profound arias and chorales, and dazzling choruses with trumpets and drums.Come experience this masterpiece in one exhilarating evening as we create our own holiday tradition.
April 29, 2023
Emmanuel Church
In the spring, Emmanuel Music continues an exploration on the wilder boundaries of the theme of love. Through three cantata-inspired works of Britten – Phaedra, Serenade, and Les Illuminations – the orchestra and soloists of Emmanuel Music will guide you from the heights of Greek melodrama to the libertine Bacchanalias of Arthur Rimbaud, in an expression of the everlasting theme of intemperate and unrestrained love.
The students of the Bach Institute January Intensive present a complete Bach cantata and selected obligato arias as the culmination of their immersive study.
