Performances
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The Bach Institute
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Who We Are
Our Mission
Emmanuel Music engages with audiences and musicians to explore the enduring questions of our shared human experience, building on our core commitment to the music of J.S. Bach.
Historical Narrative of
“Boston’s Bach Ensemble”
“Boston’s Bach Ensemble”
In 1970 Craig Smith founded Emmanuel Music to perform the complete cycle of sacred cantatas by J.S. Bach in the liturgical setting for which they were intended. The entire cycle of more than 200 cantatas has been performed twice and Emmanuel Music remains the only organization in the world to present this type of weekly Bach cantata series.
Craig Smith believed in developing the careers of promising young musicians. As he put it, “In creating a nurturing environment for artistic development, Emmanuel Music has always crossed generational lines, with young musicians rubbing shoulders in rehearsal and performance with more experienced players and singers. Over the years, we realized that the works of Bach in particular are the best training for the musician's technique and soul.” Smith had a good eye for talent and gave musicians opportunities to develop their skills. As a result, many Emmanuel musicians have become among Boston’s best, their familiarity with each other providing cohesion to other local ensembles. Several singers, including Sanford Sylvan, James Maddalena, and Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, became renowned at the national and international level.
Early in its history Emmanuel Music began presenting a wide range of concerts outside the cantata repertoire, from large-scale and operatic works by Bach, Handel, Schubert, and Mozart, to smaller scale but in-depth explorations of chamber works by composers including Debussy, Brahms, Schubert, Schumann, and Beethoven to new works by living composers such as our Principal Guest Conductor Emeritus, John Harbison.
Under Craig Smith’s leadership, Emmanuel Music became a significant and valued part of Boston’s musical life. The ensemble has won critical and popular acclaim for its music, perhaps summed up best by Jeremy Eichler of The Boston Globe: “He (Smith) instituted weekly performances of Bach Cantatas at Emmanuel Church, and his charismatic presence drew a committed core of local musicians to the ensemble at the same time as his expansive programming established Emmanuel Music as a hub of local concert life.”
Upon the death of founder Craig Smith in 2007, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and longtime Emmanuel collaborator John Harbison stepped in as Acting Artistic Director, with the collaboration of Michael Beattie, who retained his role of Associate Conductor. A two-year search ended in 2009 with the selection of Ryan Turner as the second Artistic Director of Emmanuel Music. Turner is a testament to Smith’s philosophy of developing young talent: He performed as a tenor with Emmanuel Music since 1997 and was chosen by Smith to conduct a number of cantatas, particularly in the last year of Smith’s illness.
Under Turner’s leadership Emmanuel Music has taken on bold challenges and reached new heights, finally incorporating the St. Matthew Passion into Emmanuel’s regular rotation of Bach masterworks along with the Christmas Oratorio, St. John Passion and Mass in B minor. The organization has continued to foray into opera: Stravinsky’s Rake’s Progress, Harbison’s The Great Gatsby, Mozart’s Abduction from the Seraglio; Sondheim’s A Little Night Music; a COVID-era livestream of Handel’s La Resurrezione; Britten’s Beggar’s Opera; and the East Coast and modern instrument premiere of Errolyn Wallen’s Dido’s Ghost. In 2024, as the culmination of years of preparation, Emmanuel Music made a “pilgrimage” to the Leipzig Bachfest, performing four cantatas and two newly commissioned motets in Bach’s home church the Thomaskirche, to enthusiastic standing ovations from a discerning international audience.
Founded in 2011 by Emmanuel musicians oboist Peggy Pearson and soprano Kendra Colton as a young artist workshop, and under the direction of Pamela Dellal since 2021, The Bach Institute of Emmanuel Music is now a year-round destination for education, intellectual resources, and community engagement. Our Notes & Translations is a global resource and our partnership with the Boston Public Library brings monthly live music to 6 neighborhood branches.
Emmanuel Music occupies a unique niche in the Boston arts community and on the global stage: a living and evolving laboratory for the music of J.S. Bach. We continue to highlight connections between Bach and not only the artists that he influenced, but also new voices from diverse and multicultural lived experiences.
Craig Smith believed in developing the careers of promising young musicians. As he put it, “In creating a nurturing environment for artistic development, Emmanuel Music has always crossed generational lines, with young musicians rubbing shoulders in rehearsal and performance with more experienced players and singers. Over the years, we realized that the works of Bach in particular are the best training for the musician's technique and soul.” Smith had a good eye for talent and gave musicians opportunities to develop their skills. As a result, many Emmanuel musicians have become among Boston’s best, their familiarity with each other providing cohesion to other local ensembles. Several singers, including Sanford Sylvan, James Maddalena, and Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, became renowned at the national and international level.
Early in its history Emmanuel Music began presenting a wide range of concerts outside the cantata repertoire, from large-scale and operatic works by Bach, Handel, Schubert, and Mozart, to smaller scale but in-depth explorations of chamber works by composers including Debussy, Brahms, Schubert, Schumann, and Beethoven to new works by living composers such as our Principal Guest Conductor Emeritus, John Harbison.
Under Craig Smith’s leadership, Emmanuel Music became a significant and valued part of Boston’s musical life. The ensemble has won critical and popular acclaim for its music, perhaps summed up best by Jeremy Eichler of The Boston Globe: “He (Smith) instituted weekly performances of Bach Cantatas at Emmanuel Church, and his charismatic presence drew a committed core of local musicians to the ensemble at the same time as his expansive programming established Emmanuel Music as a hub of local concert life.”
Upon the death of founder Craig Smith in 2007, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and longtime Emmanuel collaborator John Harbison stepped in as Acting Artistic Director, with the collaboration of Michael Beattie, who retained his role of Associate Conductor. A two-year search ended in 2009 with the selection of Ryan Turner as the second Artistic Director of Emmanuel Music. Turner is a testament to Smith’s philosophy of developing young talent: He performed as a tenor with Emmanuel Music since 1997 and was chosen by Smith to conduct a number of cantatas, particularly in the last year of Smith’s illness.
Under Turner’s leadership Emmanuel Music has taken on bold challenges and reached new heights, finally incorporating the St. Matthew Passion into Emmanuel’s regular rotation of Bach masterworks along with the Christmas Oratorio, St. John Passion and Mass in B minor. The organization has continued to foray into opera: Stravinsky’s Rake’s Progress, Harbison’s The Great Gatsby, Mozart’s Abduction from the Seraglio; Sondheim’s A Little Night Music; a COVID-era livestream of Handel’s La Resurrezione; Britten’s Beggar’s Opera; and the East Coast and modern instrument premiere of Errolyn Wallen’s Dido’s Ghost. In 2024, as the culmination of years of preparation, Emmanuel Music made a “pilgrimage” to the Leipzig Bachfest, performing four cantatas and two newly commissioned motets in Bach’s home church the Thomaskirche, to enthusiastic standing ovations from a discerning international audience.
Founded in 2011 by Emmanuel musicians oboist Peggy Pearson and soprano Kendra Colton as a young artist workshop, and under the direction of Pamela Dellal since 2021, The Bach Institute of Emmanuel Music is now a year-round destination for education, intellectual resources, and community engagement. Our Notes & Translations is a global resource and our partnership with the Boston Public Library brings monthly live music to 6 neighborhood branches.
Emmanuel Music occupies a unique niche in the Boston arts community and on the global stage: a living and evolving laboratory for the music of J.S. Bach. We continue to highlight connections between Bach and not only the artists that he influenced, but also new voices from diverse and multicultural lived experiences.
in memoriam
Remembering Craig Smith
For 37 years Emmanuel Church and Emmanuel Music stood at the center of Craig Smith’s musical and spiritual life. Craig arrived at this church on Newbury Street as choirmaster in 1970. A visionary even then, he probably could not have imagined how the organization he created would grow in reach and in expertise; he could not have imagined some of the obstacles it would have to overcome, or the exemplary role in the community and indeed the world that it would eventually come to play. Like Bach, he was doing his job. And like the greatest creative figures, he believed profoundly in the connections music makes between things seen and experienced, and things invisible, ineffable and no less real. He believed in the connections music makes among individuals and between music and the society that surrounds it, nourishes it, opposes it, and desperately needs it.
Tribute to Craig Smith by Richard Dyer