Bach Choir rings in 125th anniversary with ambitious projects

BETHLEHEM, Pa. — The Bach Choir of Bethlehem has its 125th anniversary this year, and it's excited to celebrate.

"Not only are we celebrating our heritage, we're looking forward to bringing everybody in," said Leela Breithaupt, the choir's executive director. She said its upcoming projects are "about the human experience."

• The Bach Choir of Bethlehem has its 125th anniversary this year
• It is celebrating with two new projects
• The Bel Canto Youth Chorus and Youth Chorale of the Bach Choir of Bethlehem are holding auditions to recruit new members

In one project as part of the anniversary campaign, the choir will perform Mendelssohn's reworking of Bach's "St. Matthew Passion."

When Mendelssohn was 14 years old, he asked for a copy of the work as a birthday present. His grandmother sent scribes to Berlin to copy the three-hour long oratorio, which is a large musical composition for orchestra, choir and soloists.

Mendelssohn then wrote little notes in the margins, cut arias, which are melodies meant to accompany a single voice, and moved certain arias to different voices, from alto to soprano. He also shortened it by nearly an hour.

The reworking has never been published, but a musicologist, Malcolm Bruno has researched it for the past five years. He's coming out with a scholarly edition on Nov. 4 and has selected the Bach Choir to premiere it that same day.

The performance will be at the choir's gala at Lehigh University's Packer Memorial Church. The choir also will record it live to raise funds.

"For our 125th Anniversary, there’s actually no better project imaginable," Breithaupt said.

A trip overseas

The Bach Choir also plans an international tour for the first time since 1993. It will travel to Austria and Germany in June 2024.

It will sing in the Leipzig Bachfest, the most prestigious Bach Festival in the world. It is where Johann Sebastian Bach lived and worked for the majority of his life.

The chorus will perform in Thomaskirche (St. Thomas Church), where Bach served as cantor for more than 25 years. The chorus also will travel to Potsdam and Herrnhut, from where the Moravians who settled in Bethlehem are from.

"Moravians, they're very active, musically," Breithaupt said.

"This is a pipe dream for many people in the choir to go to Herrnhut hood and rejoice in those connections."

The choir also will visit Berlin, Potsdam, Salzburg and Schwäbisch Gmünd, Bethlehem's sister city during the 10-day trip.

Origins of the Bach Choir

The Bach Choir was founded by John Frederick Wolle in 1898, nearly 150 years after Bach's death. Wolle was an organist at central Moravian at a time when Bach was tied to the singing tradition of the Moravians.

The story is that Bethlehem Steel Chief Executive Officer Charles Schwab wanted a band, an orchestra and a choir. When Wolle moved to California, Schwab followed him and lured him back with the promise of starting the Bach Choir. Bethlehem Steel would guarantee the funding.

In 1900, the choir premiered Bach’s "Mass in B Minor" in North America at Central Moravian Church. The following year, it debuted Bach's "Christmas Oratorio."

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The Bach Choir of Bethlehem

In addition to performing 40 concerts a year and its annual Bethlehem Bach Festival in spring, the choir holds free concerts at noon on the second Tuesday of every month.

This summer, they will be at St. John’s Lutheran Church, 37 S. 5th St., Allentown.

"That's our gift to the community," Breithaupt said.

The choir also does an educational program called Bach to School, which is a concert series for every fifth-grader in Allentown, every fourth-grader in Bethlehem and every third-grader in Easton.

It reaches 5,000 students in the Lehigh Valley a year.

In addition, the choir holds Christmas concerts, and its annual Bethlehem Bach Festival just finished its 115th year.

Community Building

The Bach Choir is made up of 90 volunteer singers. A professional orchestra and soloists come in to perform with it.

"It's such a community-building thing to do," Breithaupt said. "We have a tradition of steelworkers singing with us, generations of steelworkers.

"It just lifts your heart when you when you sing together."

The idea for a youth choir started seven years ago. It ended up merging with an existing choir in Quakertown, the Bel Canto Youth Chorus, founded by Dr. Joy Hirokawa in 1993.

It's now called the Bel Canto Youth Chorus of the Bach Choir Bethlehem.

Kelly S. Rocchi is the new director taking over the Bel Canto Youth Chorus, which is made up of high schoolers and college freshmen. Rocchi also is the choir director at Nazarath Area High School.

She's taking over from Hirokawa, who held the position for 30 years.

Rocchi said she hopes to expand the chorus from a treble choir to a soprano, alto, tenor and bass one.

Alaina Swartz, a Parkland School District music teacher, will be the new conductor of The Bel Canto Youth Chorale, made up of pupils in grades four to eight.

There are just under 30 students in the choirs, but Rocchi and Swartz said they hope to expand that to 50 or 60 students.

"When there's a lot of people singing together, it just really lifts your heart," Breithaupt, the Bach Choir director, said.

In addition to singing Bach, the choirs also sing contemporary music. At their last performance, members of the chorus and chorale talked about their heritage and performed music from their culture.

Youths performed songs from Ireland, Korea and the Caribbean. One performed a song that was Appalachian.

The Bel Canto Youth Chorus and Bel Canto Youth Chorale also are holding auditions. They will be 10 a.m.-noon and 4-6 p.m. Monday, June 12, and Tuesday, June 13; and noon-2 p.m. June 23 at 440 Heckewelder Place, Bethlehem.

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The Bach Choir of Bethlehem

'It came full circle'

Rocchi, the Bel Canto Youth Chorus, moved to the Lehigh Valley in 2003.

"I didn't know anybody and I was homesick and lonesome," she said. She said she looked for an activity to fill her free time and came across The Bach Choir.

When Hirokawa stepped down, Jackson reached out to see if she'd consider filling the position.

"I have a long history with the Bach choir," Rocchi said. "It came full circle."

She said that for her, it was really important that those entering their freshman year of college would have the opportunity to be part of the youth chorus.

She said several of the graduating seniors she oversees as a high school director plan to audition for the chorus.

"I love the idea that there's still a space for them to sing if they're staying in the Lehigh Valley," she said.

She said her hope is those who sing for the youth chorus go on to audition for the Bach Choir.

"The idea that you could have a little kid join the youth choral as a fourth-grader, join the concert choir, sing into their freshman year of college and then potentially join The Bach Choir, going from fourth grade to 85, 90 years old singing, that gave me goosebumps," she said.

So far, she said young people in their auditions have sung everything from Italian art songs to the national anthem. She said she wants students to know they don't necessarily need to have a piece prepared if they're interested in auditioning.

"They're very friendly and no stress," she said.

Rocchi studied Bach as a piano major at Penn State University and has a master's degree in vocal performance from West Chester University.

"His music was rough for me," she said of Bach. "I cried a lot as I was trying to master his music."

She said her goal is to introduce Bach to students in a way that's accessible, but also acknowledges his genius.

She said she's seen students struggle to learn a piece from Bach, then after performing, "They'll say, 'Wow, that really was fun. That really was worth it.'

"They like the music that makes them work."

She's said she sees the impact of music on her students.

"During COVID, music, I do think, saved a lot of my students," she said. "I fought so hard to keep music in my school."

Rocchi said singing also is an antidote to the overwhelming number of screens with which children now grow up.

"The phone, the technology that has been a hard thing for all of us to navigate," she said.

She said her goal is "just bringing kids back to their bodies because singing is a very internal thing. You're not playing the piano, you're not playing the trumpet.

"You're making music with your body. It really is like a therapy session."

Leading with emotional depth

Christopher Jackson, originally from Oklahoma, joined the organization as artistic director and conductor in July 2022.

"The Bach Choir is really a force that brings together community from different parts of the Lehigh Valley, from Germany, out across the world, with the focus of raising our voices together in music and in song," he said.

"It started with this sort of dream project in 1898."

The Bach Choir is made up of 90 volunteers. According to its 2021-2022 annual report, it has an annual operating budget of almost $2 million, with a fifth of that from guarantors and individual donors.

It says it performs for more than 22,000 people a year.

Jackson said he wants to get even more of the Lehigh Valley involved.

"You belong here," he said, "whether you love classical music or not.

"When people watch a choir making music, there's a real sense of communal activity. That's what I think draws people to it, and what is good for people.

"People have really responded to live choral concerts in a way that you can tell it's relieving something inside of them."

"Bach is undeniably powerful music. It is emotional music, as well as intellectual music. The Baroque era was about strong feelings and immediate feelings. There's this tendency to look at Bach and over-intellectualize what's happening."

He said his approach as a conductor is to lead with emotional depth, looking for immediate sensations and bringing that to the audience.

'It transcends language'

"You're connecting with the people that you perform with, but you're also connecting with people who are listening," said Jackson. "It transcends language."

He said one of his favorite memories from the past year was the Christmas concert in 2022.

Though everyone was wearing coronavirus masks, the choir and audience came together to sing "Stille Nacht (Silent Night)."

"I got tears in my eyes," Jackson said. "It was so moving that a community could sing like that together, in a language that's not their own.

"It's like a gravity that pulls people together, the core of the Earth, and everybody scattered all around it.

As a professor at Lycoming College, he said he noticed "we're really mobile as a culture now."

"The tendency for us to feel lonely is extremely high," he said.

He said for him, music is the antidote to loneliness.

Bringing Bach to everyone

Breithaupt said that while part of the goal is "focusing on Bach and the composers who influenced him and who were influenced by him — which, by the way, is everybody — what we want to do is open the tent flaps really wide, and invite everybody in, to be touched by this kind of communal singing.

"If you're singing together, it's an act that just nurtures your spirit. We want to share that with everyone."

Breithaupt said she often is asked, "How do you expand your demographic when your mission is a dead white European?"

She said for her, the goal is to "increase the diversity of not only the choir, the kids, but our audiences."

Part of that for Breithaupt means diversifying the staff, as well as bringing in people for training.

"If you are primarily one demographic, then it's hard to understand the diverse culture that's around you," she said. "It's where the arts have to go. Not only the arts, I think that we all have to go there.

"You don't have to know anything about classical music. You can just be swept away by the emotions of it."

"It starts with service," said Jackson. "We serve the community, and then see what happens, see what needs anyone actually wants or has.

"Like how can we be useful? If people want it, then we can be a part of their lives."