Our Mission is to celebrate 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.
Crossing Cultures is a program that brings chamber ensembles for grades 3-12 to school and afterschool music program sites on the Monterey Peninsula, Salinas, and South County. Our multicultural school assemblies and clinics inspire young people who see themselves reflected in the arts. Young people who observe and hear performers up close in an intimate setting are transformed and inspired to reach deeper in their learning. Teachers report a profound change in their students after our performances and clinics with their students. Our chamber ensembles will also perform community concerts.
Sing Out Loud! is a song-writing program for 5th graders that spans two weeks under the guidance of a team of professional singers, composers, and lyricists.
Working with a classroom of students on a curriculum subject chosen by the school, the team guides them in writing lyrics, creating melodies, and finally adding harmony/chord changes to create six original songs.
The Bach Festival has been instrumental in providing high-level musical exposure to the music students at Carmel Middle School. They offered gratis brass coaching to beginning and intermediate brass students both in the form of private lessons and sectionals. One year they dove deeper by providing a brass coach to form the CMS Brass Ensemble. Over the course of 8 weeks the brass ensemble worked on fundamentals, executed independent parts, and learned a brass arrangement of Simple Gifts which was performed on the CMS Winter Concert. This was an uplifting experience for that particular group, all of whom felt inspired to continue with Concert Band at the high school level (and beyond!). Moreover, two of those students gained the confidence to audition for the local youth orchestras, Youth Music Monterey. The Bach Festival intends to restart and expand this coaching program going forward and CMS wholeheartedly accepts their support!
- Sarah Wadsworth
