Celebrating one year of virtual Bach cantata workshops

In the summer of 2020, Paul Flight came up with a wonderful concept for exploring Bach cantatas via Zoom. In each virtual workshop, participants would study the choral sections, learn about the meaning behind the cantata, and listen to soloists perform the recitatives and arias live from their homes.

We held the first of these workshops in July 2020 for current CBS members only. It was a great success, and we soon realized we wanted to share the joy of delving into a Bach cantata this way with Bach lovers all over the world. Thanks to fantastic team-work behind the scenes, participants were able to join us from all over the US, Canada, Europe, and South Africa. Over the course of seven workshops, soloists joined us from Portland, Oregon; Columbia, Missouri; Los Angeles, California; our own San Francisco Bay Area; and as far as the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.

Here is an overview of the cantatas we explored over this past year:

With many thanks to all of our fabulous soloists, our wonderful participants, and to everyone who made these workshops happen: Paul Flight, Nalini Ghuman, Kristie Boering, Sigrid Mueller, Wieneke Gorter, Ann McCown, Matthew Forman, John Gale, Michele Baroody, Melinda de Jesus, Steve Siegelman, and Margaret Wootton.