Harken Bach: Santa Fe Pro Musica celebrates the composer with holiday concert series

Santa Fe Pro Musica will perform a feast of Bach for the holidays.

Organizers divided the series into three sections, running Dec. Wednesday, Dec. 20, to Saturday, Dec. 23, and Thursday, Dec. 28, to Friday, Dec. 29, at St. Francis Auditorium in the New Mexico Museum of Art.

The festival will open with solo cellist Tanya Tomkins performing the complete set of six Johann Sebastian Bach cello suites on two dates. Each concert lasts one hour without intermission.

The middle concerts will be comprised of a 13-member string ensemble with music by Bach, Arcangelo Corelli, George Frideric Handel and Italian composer and violinist Francesco Geminiani. Organist David Solem will play Bach’s iconic “Toccata and Fugue in D minor.” The concert will end with soprano Clara Rottsolk performing a set of rare Christmas carols.

“It’s all Baroque music,” said Carol Redman, Pro Musica co-founder and senior advisor.

The concerts will span 75 minutes without intermission.

The final concerts will feature artistic director and violinist Colin Jacobsen leading the Pro Musica Bach Ensemble through Bach and his influence on generations of composers, including Philip Glass, Arvo Pärt and Felix Mendelssohn.

“It’s an exploration of Bach’s legacy,” Redman said.

The Bach Christmas concerts began at Santa Fe’s Chapel of Loretto in 1985.

“These concerts have been so popular that we were repeating them 8 to 10 times,” Redman said. “They almost always sold out.”

The Chapel of Loretto seats 120; St. Francis Auditorium can hold 450.

People sometimes ask Redman, “Why Bach?”

“Nearly 300 years after his death, Bach is still the gold standard for classical music,” she said. “He’s spiritual and earthy, glorious and sublime, intimate and magnificent.”

“Our first Bach Festival was in 1999 and since that period of time we’ve done 11,” said Redman.