Dr. Dana Marsh, Artistic Director of the Washington Bach Consort, was kind enough to drop by the WETA Classical studios recently to have a conversation with me about the Consort’s 2026–2027 season.
He prefaced his overview of the coming season by pointing out that 2027–28 will be the fiftieth anniversary of the WBC, so in 2026–27 we’ll see a growing intensity of focus upon the society’s namesake — though, of course, composers other than Johann Sebastian will continue to be featured as well.
The Washington Bach Consort has long offered three different series each season; in 2026–27 those offerings will look something like this:
The Director’s Series will continue its longstanding tradition of performing larger-scale works in high-capacity venues. 2026–27 will include beloved favorites as well as some less familiar works.
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Chorale Architecture will focus on four Bach chorale cantatas — liturgical works in which a hymn tune (familiar to the congregation) figures prominently throughout the piece. Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland (BWV 61) will be among them; Dr. Marsh half-jokingly (or was it less than half?) warned me that their performance of the cantata Nimm von uns, Herr, du treuer Gott (BWV 101) might need to be preceded by a disclaimer that its surprising dissonances are, in fact, correct. The familiar Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme (BWV 140) is also on the program, as well as Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben (BWV 147), which contains one of Bach’s most familiar compositions, known for generations in the English-speaking world as “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring”.
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Bach’s Christmas Oratorio will be performed twice: one rendering at National Presbyterian Church and the other at The Falls Church Episcopal.
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The St. John Passion will be performed in March.
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Voices of Easter: Heaven’s Jubilant Fire is the title of the final program in the Director’s Series, featuring four Bach cantatas composed for the liturgical calendar from Easter Sunday to Pentecost.
Chamber Series
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As has been the custom over some years now, the WBC will continue to feature the winner of the Lillian and Maurice Barbash International JS Bach Competition: the 2025 winner is baroque violinist Danqi Zeng, who will perform some of the unaccompanied violin works of Bach.
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Dolcissima Speranza will feature tenor Thomas Cooley in a program of seconda pratica music from seventeenth-century Italy, including works by Peri, Caccini and Monteverdi.
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The annual WBC tradition of a Vocal Polyphony concert continues this season with music that Bach had programmed at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig composed by hands other than his own. It includes Palestrina and Schütz and other members of the Bach family in a program curated in collaboration with Dr. Daniel Melamed.
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The second iteration of the Annual Celebrity Organ Recital (I interviewed the inaugural artist, James O’Donnell, this past February) will feature Kola Owolabi, playing at St. George’s Episcopal Church in Arlington, on the very same Pasi organ upon which he played the dedication recital in 2022 when that instrument was completed. An internationally renowned organist, composer and workshop clinician, Dr. Owolabi is on the faculty of Sacred Music at Notre Dame.
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Trio Sonatas Transformed will feature trio sonatas Bach composed for the organ, performed in arrangements for chamber ensembles.
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Harpsichordist Lillian Gordis will perform some of the Bach pieces featured on her most recent album, just released in January, including preludes and fugues from The Well-Tempered Clavier and the Partita No. 6 (BWV 830). She teaches at the College of Music at the University of Colorado Boulder and was recently a guest conductor with the Dunedin Consort.
Noontime Cantatas will, of course, continue!
Visit bachconsort.org for tickets and more information.
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