Boston Bach Birthday 334

First Lutheran’s eleventh annual celebration of the birthday of the greatest of all Lutheran composers, Johann Sebastian Bach, will be on Saturday, March 23. Beginning at 8am and featuring concerts, organ recitals, and of course the famous German lunch (tickets $15, available at the door or from Eventbrite), the day will end with a Lutheran Vespers service at 5pm. All musical events are free and open to the public, and all may come and go as able.

Traditionally the Boston Bach Birthday has showcased First Lutheran’s brilliant Baroque pipe organ, perfect for the music of Bach. For this, the 334th year since Bach’s birth, the celebration will feature organists Lorraine Mihaliak (8am), Robert August (11am), Bálint Karosi (1:15pm), and Boston Bach International Organ Competition prizewinner Adriaan Hoek (3:15pm). Karosi’s program will additionally feature soprano Audrey Fernandez-Fraser. Additional solo recitals will be presented by Nelli Jabotinsky on Baroque violin (9am) and Aaron Larget-Caplan on guitar (2:15pm), and young violinists Sabrina Lang and Linnea Timko will play a movement from Bach’s “Double Concerto” (1:10pm). The prelude to Vespers will feature oboist Michael Ochoa (4:40pm) playing two oboe sonatas by Bach and Telemann.

The annual children’s event (10am) will feature renowned silent film accompanist Peter Krasinski playing a program entitled “BACH and the BALLOONATIC!” Along with the Toccata from BWV 564, Krasinski will improvise to a classic Buster Keaton short silent film as well as an animation about Martin Luther and a Davey and Goliath episode. As usual, all will be invited to the balcony to come view the organ up close after the presentation and to try pressing a few keys or pedals if they like.

The Bach Birthday will conclude with Vespers for the Third Sunday in Lent (5pm), featuring Bach’s motet Jesu meine Freude, BWV 227 and the Magnificat 2i toni by Matthias Weckmann. FLC’s own Reverend Ingo Dutzmann will officiate, and the Reverend Benjamin Ball of St. Paul Lutheran Church and School in Hamel, IL will preach on Romans 8, the source of much of the text for Bach’s motet. The service will incorporate hymnody and music of the sort that would have been sung at such a service led by Bach at his churches in Leipzig.