CANCELED: Bach Dancing & 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 FOUR

In the fourth weekend of concerts, BDDS turns to ragtime and the great New England Ragtime Ensemble (NERE). In “Share the Wealth,” performed at the Stoughton Opera House and Madison’s Collins Recital Hall, the focus is on the “classical” composers of ragtime like Scott Joplin, Joseph Lamb, and James Scott—and also on famous classical composers they influenced, like Claude Debussy and Samuel Barber. Pianist John West, another original member of NERE and a brilliant ragtime performer, will join Jeffrey Sykes in a performance of Samuel Barber’s ragtime-influenced Souvenirs for piano four-hands.

“Share the Wealth” will be performed at the Stoughton Opera House on Friday, June 26, at 7:30 pm; and at Collins Recital Hall, Hamel Music Center, UW-Madison Campus, on Sunday, June 28, at 2:30 pm. 

In “Buried Treasure,” the focus is on lesser-known composers of ragtime, like Louis Chauvin, James Scott and Joseph Lamb, and lesser-known classical composers influenced by ragtime like George Gershwin in his elegant Lullaby for string quartet. Jeffrey will perform a set of ragtime-inspired piano solos by one of our favorite Czech composers, Erwin Schulhoff, with titles as intriguing as “Tempo di Fox a la Hawaii.” John West and Jeffrey Sykes will again collaborate on Kattenburg’s “Tapdance” for piano four-hands—a rag written to accompany a tap dancer!

“Buried Treasure” will be performed at Collins Recital Hall, Hamel Music Center, UW-Madison Campus, on Saturday, June 27, at 7:30 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.