Bach Festival

The Bach Festival is a Kalamazoo College sponsored, community driven festival that seeks to foster appreciation for vocal, choral, and instrumental music. Founded in 1946 by Music Department chair Henry Overley, the warm reception received after the first event led to the creation of the Bach Festival Society to better support the event, granting the festival a budget and better organization. Originally consisting of a series of concerts over one weekend, it has expanded over the decades to a multi-weekend music extraordinaire with a wide variety of musical experiences, including the integral Christmas Concert which was added to the program in 1971. The other important part of the Festival is the Young Artists Concert, featuring around 20 highly gifted young musicians from the Midwest who are selected by a panel through an audition process. The main concert has typically ended with a performance of a major Bach piece, though since the 1990s there has been more effort to incorporate the work of other major composers. Additionally, there has been a shift away from classical music as folk, spiritual, and other diverse music has been incorporated into the program. Guest artists have been a key part of the festival since its inception.

There have been 6 directors of the Bach Festival: Henry Overley (1946-1961), Russell Hammar (1962-1984), Judith Breneman (1984-1990), Peter Hopkins (1990-1996), James Turner (1996-2017), and Chris Ludwa (2017-Present).