Mission

The Carmel Bach Festival celebrates the works, inspiration, and ongoing influence of J.S. Bach worldwide by immersing audiences in a festival experience integrating music, education and ideas, and by meaningful community engagement throughout the year.

The Big Idea

The Festival brings the transformative, community-building, restorative, and joyful impacts of exhilarating performances by its 100 musicians to the Central Coast in a packed schedule of more than 50 events in 14 days.

The 2023 Festival celebrated the inaugural season of Grete Pedersen as Artistic Director and Principal Conductor, The experience bodes well for the Festival as musicians and audiences were pleased and inspired by her superb musicianship, collaborative style, diversity of programming, and accessibility. Build on this momentum will keep the Festival fresh and relevant to the community.

The Family Concert was especially successful, attracting a record audience of more than 500. We offered free admission and invited 8 community partnering organizations to showcase their programs and bring their constituents, a great way to add value to the community in July. The Festival intends to restore more of the year-round community engagement infrastructure that was curtailed by the pandemic.

“…the Festival is, of course, about music, it is also about relationships between the musicians and the community…”

- Melanie Silva