CANCELED: Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society

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Dick Ainsworth

Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society

press release: We would love nothing more than present our 29th season to you live and in person this June as we planned. But, dear friends, a new way of life has intervened! Riches to Rags will be moved to 2021.

Never fear! We, at Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society have always been light on our feet, nimble in the face of challenge, flexible throughout changing fortunes and venues, and we have a few tricks up our sleeve. Stephanie and Jeffrey are already planning for new musical treats as soon as we are permitted. You can look forward to some creative collaborations we’re cooking up for August—if it’s safe to do so—and a special celebratory mini-season over the holidays in late December. We’ll get there together!

All of us in the arts community have been upended by postponements and cancellations, but BDDS will survive this tsunami because of the unending and generous support of so many of you. Stay home and stay well!

Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society (BDDS) presents its 29th annual summer chamber music festival, RICHES TO RAGS, June 7 – 28, 2020. This festival features eight concerts over four weekends, each weekend offers two different programs. The venues are intimate: the state-of-the-art Collins Recital Hall in the new Hamel Music Center on the UW-Madison campus, The Playhouse at Overture Center, and the jewel box historic Stoughton Opera House.

In a rousing four-weekend festival, you'll hear great classical masterpieces and the best of contemporary works. A roster of musicians with national and international reputations guarantees fantastic performances. Concerts are spiked with stories about the music, mystery guests, and even door prizes. It's chamber music with a bang! Artistic directors and performers Stephanie Jutt, flute, and Jeffrey Sykes, piano, are joined by 21 musicians and one visual artist. 

WEEK ONE 

We launch the Beethoven trio cycle with a special concert at the Hamel Music Center’s Collins Recital Hall, the first time BDDS has performed in the new state-of-the-art hall. The only one of our seven programs exclusively dedicated to the Beethoven trios, the program features Beethoven’s first- and last-published multi-movement trios. Entitled “Sow’s Ear, Silk Purse,” the program shows how Beethoven was the supreme master of turning the most banal musical elements (sow’s ears) into towering masterpieces (silk purses). We start with the Piano Trio in E-flat Major, op. 1, no. 1.  This is followed by the great “Archduke” trio, the Trio in B-flat Major, op. 97, the last multi-movement trio Beethoven wrote. The concert will be preceded by an introductory talk and demonstration led by the performers, the San Francisco Piano Trio (Axel Strauss, violin; Jean-Michel Fonteneau, cello; and Jeffrey Sykes, piano).

“Sow’s Ear, Silk Purse” will be performed at Collins Recital Hall, Hamel Music Center, UW-Madison Campus, Sunday, June 7, at 2:30 pm.  Introductory talk and demonstration at 1:30 to 2:15 pm. 

This season will be special for two reasons. First, the RICHES. Concert societies around the world will celebrate Ludwig van Beethoven’s 250th birthday by programming complete cycles of his most famous works: the piano sonatas, string quartets, and symphonies. BDDS is celebrating too, but with a twist: we are stretching our season by a week in order to perform all nine of Beethoven’s piano trios scattered across five programs. We’re pairing the trios with readings from Beethoven’s letters and diaries that give deep insight into his life. The trios, each of which is musically rich, were among Beethoven’s best-selling works during his lifetime. They span a greater portion of his composing career than his sonatas, quartets, or symphonies, ranging from his opus 1 (1795) to his opus 121a (1824). Despite this, they tend to be undervalued and underperformed today, and rarely do you hear all nine trios in close succession.

For the RAGS, we’re ending our festival with the great rags of Scott Joplin and his contemporaries performed by the New England Ragtime Ensemble (NERE).  The great composers of ragtime and early jazz, most of whom were African-American—Scott Joplin, James Scott, and Jelly Roll Morton, for example—never enjoyed even a fraction of the financial success of Beethoven, certainly not the level of success that their artistic achievements warranted. NERE will present two programs showcasing this monumental American musical achievement. Formed by Gunther Schuller in the early 1970s and reconstituted recently by one of its original members, flutist Stephanie Jutt, the ensemble is the leading ragtime chamber orchestra in the world.