“Bach at the Sem,” presented by Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, and the American Kantorei, is preparing to begin its 21st season with a full schedule of 3 p.m. Sunday concerts on Oct. 20, Dec. 1, Feb. 16 and April 6.
The concerts are held in the seminary’s Chapel of St. Timothy and St. Titus. There is no charge, but free-will offerings are accepted.
The Oct. 20 concert offers two cantatas of J.S. Bach: a Reformation cantata, “Gott der Herr ist Sonn’ und Schild” and “Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben,” which contains the well-known chorale “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.”
The concert features guest conductor and organist Bálint Karosi, a Hungarian composer who is minister of music at First Lutheran Church of Boston. Karosi, first-prize winner of the 2008 International J.S. Bach Competition in Leipzig, Germany, has performed throughout the United States and in Europe.
The American Kantorei, the performing group of Bach at the Sem, was founded in 1969 by its first musical director, the Rev. Robert Bergt, a member of the Concordia Seminary faculty. Following a hiatus of some 20 years, the Kantorei was resurrected in 1993 and has since presented nearly 100 concerts of the music of Lutheran composer Johann Sebastian Bach, as well as music of Schütz, Buxtehude, Mendelssohn and others.
In this period of guest conductors following the death of Bergt in 2011, the chorus is prepared for each concert by Interim Music Director Dr. Jeral Becker, director of choral and vocal activities at Saint Louis University.
To see the musical selections for each concert, visit http://bach.csl.edu. For more information, call 314-505-7009 or send an email to brewerm@csl.edu.
