The Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival, with Kenneth J. Nafziger as artistic director and conductor, continued its tradition of artistic excellence by offering unparalleled classical music concerts with the highest caliber of musicians. This year’s theme, “Bach and Some Admirers,” featured works that reflect other composers’ admiration for Bach.

Dr. Kenneth Nafziger directs the Bach Festival orchestra, chorus and soloists Thomas Jones and Sharla Nafziger in Johannes Brahms’ “Requiem” the evening of June 16.
Photo by Jim Bishop

The ability of music to both inspire and bring healing was exemplified in the appearance on campus of internationally-acclaimed Canadian pianist Janina Fialkowska. She first collaborated with the Bach Festival in 1999 and was diagosed with a cancerous tumor in her left arm in 2002.

Ms. Fialkowska returned to the Lehman Auditorium stage to play Chopin’s “Concerto No. 2 in F Minor for Piano and Orchestra” and “Concerto No. 1 in E Minor for Piano and Orchestra” during the second festival concert June 15. She received a rousing standing ovation for each concerto performance.

In addition to her concert performances, at the Thursday noon concert, June 14, at Asbury United Methodist Church in Harrisonburg.

The monumental Johannas Brahms’ “Requiem” was performed June 16 by the festival chorus and orchestra, with featured soloists Sharla Nafziger, soprano, and Thomas Jones, baritone. It was Ms. Nafziger’s fifth appearance as a guest artist and Jones’ third at the festival.

The opening concert Sunday afternoon, June 10, featured the Bach “Concerto for Two Violins” with soloists Joan Griffing and Susan Black, and music of South American composers Hietor Villa-Lobos and Astor Piazzolla and of Felix Mendelssohn.

Festival performers presented shorter works in well-attended daily noon concerts Monday through Saturday, June 11-15, at Asbury United Methodist Church in downtown Harrisonburg. On June 16, local young musicians were featured.

The festival concluded Sunday morning, June 17, with the Leipzig service, a re-creation of an 18th century worship service at St. Thomas Lutheran Church in Leipzig, Germany, where Bach was cantor and composed a cantata for each week’s service.

“For a brief period each year, Harrisonburg becomes Leipzig, Germany, and Lehman Auditorium is transformed into St. Thomas Lutheran Church,” Dr. Nafziger stated. Bach’s “Cantata No. 100” was the featured work, with Father James Massa, a priest of the Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, N.Y., as homilist.

Some musicians return every year to participate in the Bach Festival; a few, like Harrisonburg native Mark Hartman, have participated every year since the festival began in 1992.

Hartman, who teaches violin, viola and music theory at Cental College in Pella, Iowa, looks forward to playing violin in the festival, noting: “The performers and the music come together and develop a personality under the direction of Ken (Nafziger).

Mark Hartman, now teaching in Iowa, and colleague Philip Stoltzfus, Northfield, Minn., rehearse the Bach “Orchestral Suite.” They return to Harrisonburg every year to play in the Bach Festival orchestra.
Photo by Jim Bishop

“The Bach Festival has become fine-tuned, with a different theme every year, but the basic purpose remains – an opportunity for musicians to perform and audiences to experience a week of great music,” Hartman said.

Suzanne K. (Sue) Cockley of Harrisonburg has sung in the festival chorus several years and read scripture at this year’s Leipzig service. She deemed it a “luxury to immerse myself in a full week of classical music – exhaustive but inspiring.”

“For 14 years I have returned to the Bach Festival for the great music, great performances and great camaraderie. It is one of the most meaningful constants in my life,” said Sandra Gerster of Baltimore, principal oboist in the festival orchestra.

“I come back every year because the trust, respect and integrity that Ken Nafziger brings to the Festival is unsurpassed. He cultivates a safe environment where we are encouraged to take artistic risks, to try to perform something in a new way, where the musical process is valued and where the performances are truly expressions of emotion, not plastic displays of static perfectionism,” she said.

“I return because my colleagues have become my family, and I am constantly inspired, awestruck, heartened and buoyed by them,” Gerster added.

Such sentiments were echoed by Mary Kay Adams, Bach Festival coordinator and principal flutist in the festival orchestra.

Ms. Adams said she relished the chance “to work closely with so many wonderful people who played a vital role in making the festival successful – the musicians, board members, community volunteers, 91短视频 staff, donors, families who house musicians and Ken Nafziger and Joan Griffing.

“This festival continues to exceed my expectations on both musical and personal levels each year,” Adams said. “I’ve played in the orchestra since the beginning, 15 years ago, and have a deep appreciation for the outstanding musical quality. And because of the friendships established with returning musicians through the years, we look forward to working together each summer and renewing those bonds.”

Next year’s Bach festival will be held June 8-15, 2008, on the theme, “Bach and String Things.” Information is available on-line at .

But two years to the day after being diagnosed with a rare cancerous growth, she was once again playing “my beloved Chopin.”

During a noon concert of the Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival at Asbury United Methodist Church, Janina Fialkowska tells of her battle with cancer in her left arm that threatened to end her career as a concert pianist.
Photo by Jim Bishop

Internationally-acclaimed Canadian pianist Janina Fialkowska recounted her miraculous recovery during a noon program June 14 of the annual .

Speaking to an audience as part of the daily noon concerts held at Asbury United Methodist Church in Harrisonburg, Ms. Fialkowska said she feels “almost terrified” in thinking back to what might have been, but if her experience can inspire and encourage others who are going through difficult situations “it is worth it” to share her story.

She returned to the Lehman Auditorium stage at 91短视频 to play Chopin’s “Concerto No. 2 in F Minor for Piano and Orchestra” and “Concerto No. 1 in E Minor for Piano and Orchestra” during the second concert of the festival June 15.

She first collaborated with the Bach Festival in 1999.

An Early Beginning

Born in Montreal to a Canadian mother and a Polish father, Fialkowska started piano studies with her mother at the age of five.

She received advanced degrees from the University of Montreal at age 17 and one year later entered Juilliard School of Music in New York. Her career was launched by Arthur Rubinstein after a prize-winning performance at his inaugural Master Piano Competition in Israel in 1974.

When Fialkowska turned 50 in 2001, “everything was going extremely well” in her life with musical career that spanned the globe. Then, her mother, “my greatest supporter,” died of leukemia, she said.

The 9/11 terrorist attack made touring more difficult for her, but that was offset by marriage to “a wonderful man, Harry Oesterle, from Germany.”

While on holiday, she noticed a swelling in her left arm that wouldn’t go away. In early 2002, she saw a specialist who told her to get an MRI. That test revealed a tumor, a rare cancerous growth.

Aggressive Treatment

She endured five weeks of daily radiation and several surgeries in that arm at Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City – “they played Mozart over the public address system during the procedures,” she told the audience – followed by a rare muscle transfer from another part of her body.

After that, she had to keep her arm “absolutely still” for eight weeks, with “no idea” at the time if the uncommon procedure would prove successful.

Along with regular physical therapy sessions, she began playing concertos arranged for one hand, which helped her regain confidence.

“The doctors never expected me to play again – they didn’t tell me that at the time,” Fialkowska said. “But, I set a goal that exactly two years after the initial biopsy, I would again be performing my beloved Chopin, and I was – in January 2004,” she smiled.

Critics from around the world declare that her playing now exceeds her virtuosity prior to the ordeal, a testimony to the power of music and healing against all odds.

The program opens Sunday, June 10 and concludes with the popular Leipzig worship service June 17.

Dr. Kenneth Nafziger directs the orchestra and choir in Bach’s “Mass in B Minor” to open the 2006 festival.
Photo by Jim Bishop

“Since Felix Mendelssohn’s revival of Bach’s ‘St. Matthew Passion’ in 1829, composers have been inspired by the monumental music of the late Baroque master,” said Kenneth J. Nafziger, artistic director and conductor of the festival. “The circle of admirers includes all who participate in Bach festivals around the world and musicians from many cultures who have made his music their own.”

The opening concert, at 3 p.m. Sunday, June 10, in Lehman Auditorium. will feature Bach’s “Concerto for 2 Violins and Strings in D Minor” with violinists Joan Griffing and Susan Black; “Bachianas brasileiras, No. 1” by Heitor Villa-Lobos, Mendelssohn’s’ “String Symphony No. 5 in B-flat Major” and “Las Cuatro Estaciones Portenas” (The Four Seasons) by Astor Piazzola.

Janina Fialkowska, pianist

Major festival concerts will be held at 7:30 p.m. Friday, June 15 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, June 16 in Lehman Auditorium. Friday’s program will feature the brilliant artistry of pianist Janina Fialkowska in two concertos for piano and orchestra by Frederic Chopin, along with Bach’s “Orchestral Suite No. 1 in C Major and Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach’s “Symphony in E-flat Major.”

Saturday night’s program will draw on the combined talents of the Bach festival orchestra and choir with guest soloists Sharla Nafziger, soprano, and Thomas Jones, bass, in performing Johannes Brahms’ “Requiem.”

Chamber music programs with instrumentalists and vocalists from the festival will be presented noon-1 p.m. Monday through Saturday, June 11-16, at Asbury United Methodist Church, S. Main St., in Harrisonburg. Admission is free; donations are welcomed.

The festival will conclude with the annual Leipzig service at 10 a.m. June 17 in Lehman Auditorium, often cited by many attendees as the highlight of the week. The program recreates an 18th century worship service at St. Thomas Lutheran Church in Leipzig, Germany, where Bach was cantor and conducted a cantata for each week’s service.

The Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival is sponsored in part by the Virginia Commission for the Arts and the Arts Council of the Valley.

Bach Festival tickets are available on-line at or by calling the 91短视频 box office at 540-432-4582.

Adair McConnell, minister of music at St. Stephens United Church of Christ in Harrisonburg, will give a talk highlighting several works to be performed at the Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival, June 10-17. The lecture is set for 2:30 p.m. Tuesday, May 29, in Detwiler Auditorium of Heritage Haven at Virginia Mennonite Retirement Community (VMRC).

McConnell’s presentation will include background information on J.S. Bach and preview his “Orchestral Suite No. 1,” “Cantata No. 100” and “Concerto for Two Violins,” to be performed at the festival by violinists Joan Griffing and Susan Black.

This year’s festival, on the theme, “Bach and Some Admirers,” will feature music written by composers who admired and were influenced by Bach.

Internationally-acclaimed Canadian pianist Janina Fialkowska will perform both Chopin piano concertos during the festival, and the Festival Chorus and Orchestra will perform the celebrated Brahms “Requiem,” along with soloists Sharla Nafziger, soprano, and Thomas Jones, bass. Artistic director, Kenneth Nafziger, will conduct all three of the festival’s main concerts and the Sunday Leipzig service.

An admirer of Bach’s music himself, McConnell specializes in early music, having previously been a lecturer-demonstrator of ancient keyboard instruments at the Smithsonian Institute. A singer, organist, pianist, and recorder player, McConnell stays active in retirement as a church musician, as a member of the Round Hill Recorder Consort, as a board member of both the Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival and Harrisonburg’s First Night, and by involvement with many activities in the local community, where he grew up.

McConnell earned a degree in English and spent 30 years teaching Russian and French in a high school in Fairfax County, while also serving as a computer instructor and online publications coordinator at the national headquarters of AARP, writing computer training manuals for the Department of Defense, building a harpsichord, forming and conducting the Reston Chamber Orchestra and serving as an organist and minister of music at several churches.

The lecture is open to the public free of charge.

“The community is invited to support this exceptional artistic endeavor by attending this 15th annual event at 91短视频 and enjoying the beautiful music of the Brahms Requiem, the Chopin piano concertos, South American music and much more,” said Mary Kay Adams, Bach Festival coordinator.

For more information about the festival, see or contact Mary Kay Adams at mary.adams@emu.edu or 540-432-4652.

She thought she’d never play two-hand piano again. But she is, perhaps with greater virtuosity than before.

Internationally-acclaimed Canadian pianist Janina Fialkowska will return to the Lehman Auditorium stage to perform at the 15th annual Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival to be held June 10-17 at 91短视频. She first collaborated with the Bach Festival in 1999.

A testimony to the power of music and healing against all odds, Ms. Fialkowska will play Chopin’s “Concerto No. 2 in F Minor for Piano and Orchestra” and “Concerto No. 1 in E Minor for Piano and Orchestra” during the second festival concert of the festival 7:30 p.m. June 15.

Her career, the subject of a documentary produced in 1992, came to a dramatic halt in 2002 with the discovery of a tumor in her left arm. She endured several surgeries in that arm to remove the cancer, resulting in paralysis. Later a rare muscle transfer was performed.

After years of performing works for right hand alone and finding the inner strength to recover from a debilitating illness, she “has resumed her two-handed career at the same level of musical artistry as before,” according to Bach Festival coordinator Mary Kay Adams.

In addition to her concert performances, Fialkowska will tell her inspiring story at the Thursday noon concert, June 14, at Asbury United Methodist Church, S. Main St., Harrisonburg, “reflecting on what it’s like for a musician to lose that which gives meaning to her life, specifically, the ability to make music,” Ms. Adams noted.

In light of recent local and world-wide tragedies, this year’s festival explores music as a means of healing for humankind, promoting the musical arts as one manner of reconciliation.

“While music cannot bring back what was lost, it can bring healing to communities,” Adams said. “Music functions as a means of comfort and identity, providing a safe haven for those hurt, displaced or lost.

“When one

Prolific German composer Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) scarcely had time to catch his breath. No sooner did he compose a cantata for the Sunday worship service at the St. Thomas Lutheran Church in Leipzig where he was cantor than it was time to work on the next.

And Bach didn’t have access to computer software to help expedite this major undertaking. The melodies flowing from his mind were committed to parchment by hand and had to be duplicated manually for the orchestral and choral participants in the service.

Not only that, but he had to rehearse and conduct soloists, chorus and orchestra and serve as organist. And that was only a small part of his job description as official musician for four churches in the city of Leipzig.

The program theme, “Mostly Bach,” at 91短视频 highlighted the richness and diversity of the composer’s massive output, opening Sunday, June 11, with his monumental “Mass in B Minor.” Featured soloists were Sharla Nafziger, soprano; Jennifer Cooper, alto; Kenneth Gayle, tenor; and Thomas Jones, bass; with Marvin Mills, organ continuo and the festival choir and orchestra.

The festival concluded Sunday, June 18, with a “Leipzig Service,” a sermon in music modeled after the liturgical pattern of Bach’s time. Many festival attendees deemed the service, which included a portion of Bach’s “Christmas Oratorio,” as a “highlight” of the weeklong program.

Others might point to another distinct feature of this year’s festival, the return of guest artist Jeremy Wall, a pianist and arranger who has recorded a dozen well-received classical-jazz “World Beat” albums with clarinetist Richard Stoltzman.

Wall, a founding member of the 1980’s jazz group, “Spyro Gyra,” first appeared at the Bach Festival in 2004.

“The universal greatness of Bach’s music allows it to be adapted to other idioms,” Wall said during a rehearsal. “The harmonic syntax of Bach’s music has a common ground with the language of jazz that allows one to take some of his musical structures and adapt them into jazz arrangements.”

But, he added, “the process evolved out of a process of living with Bach’s music.”

During the June 17 evening performance of Bach’s “Christmas Oratorio,” audience members were visibly moved as Wall and Pete Spaar, principal bass, and clarinetist Leslie Nicholas took sections of Bach’s “Christmas Oratorio” and segued into a series of jazz improvisations that seemlessly combined the musical languages.

“This may be the first time this particular Bach composition has been performed publicly in this way,” said , artistic director and conductor of the week-long homage to Bach and his music.

With 2006 marking the 250th anniversary of another musical genius, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the Austrian composer’s music was featured on two of the seven daily noon chamber music programs held at Asbury United Methodist Church in downtown Harrisonburg. His “Symphony No. 35 in D Major” opened the June 16 evening festival program.

A recurring phenomenon of the Bach Festival is the diverse group of singers and players who gather in Lehman Auditorium for brief and intense rehearsal sessions and almost immediately sound like they’ve performed together for years.

Violinist Amy Helmuth Glick of Orrville, Ohio, is among the instrumentalists who returns every year to participate in the festival, having missed just one of the 14 seasons.

“I get to come back and stay with my parents, Ervie and Mary Glick, and to make wonderful music,” Glick said. “I especially enjoy the opportunity to play Bach’s choral works.” Glick, who attended 91短视频 1990-91, is a free-lance violinist in the Northeast Ohio area and is a member of the Akron Symphony. Ervie Glick was a member of the festival chorus.

Paul E. Groff, a bass in the festival choir, was intrigued by the fusion of Bach’s music with the jazz improvisations of Jeremy Wall and his colleagues. He felt that the inclusion of two different styles “added life to the concerts and helped make Bach feel more contemporary.”

A graphic designer from Harrisonburg and 1990 91短视频 graduate, Groff relished “the opportunity to sing with top-notch musicians from across the country.”

In opening the Sunday Leipzig service, Dr. Nafziger told the audience that “we’ve spent the week playing and praying Bach,” adding: “Perhaps through this experience Bach is teaching us that at their best praying and playing are one and the same thing.”

“We’re delighted that the community embraces the Bach Festival as ‘our’ music festival,” said Beth K. Aracena, associate professor of music at 91短视频 and Bach program coordinator. “The noon concerts at Asbury United Methodist Church were extremely well-attended, and the strong turnout at Lehman Auditorium demonstrates this community’s commitment to supporting quality performing arts programs,” she added.

Next year’s Bach Festival will be June 10-17, 2007, on the theme, “Bach and Some Admirers.” Renowned pianist Janina Fialkowska will return to the festival with her interpretations of Chopin’s piano concertos.