“Touch the light through the voice.”

That’s the objective of Vox Luminis—a Belgian early music vocal ensemble of 8 singers, to introduce people to early vocal music. They were joined last night by members of Quicksilver, an outstanding instrumental ensemble which toured Hawaii a few years ago. I described them as being cheered as “rock stars,” in a previous post I wrote: Quicksilver in Hawaii.

They performed a concert of Bach family composers, more specifically, the line of Bach composers based in Arnstadt, beginning with Heinrich Bach (1615-1692), Johann Michael Bach (1648-1694), and Johann Christoph Bach (1642-1703), all ancestors of Johann Sebastian (1685-1750). Arnstadt was where the young Sebastian was awarded the job of town organist at only age 18, an extraordinary appointment for a young person. It was also here that the 18-year-old was called upon to evaluate organs by established organbuilders aged 60 and higher!

The group also included a cantata by Dietrich Buxtehude, “Herzlich Lieb hab ich dich, o Herr.” That is because during this time in J. S. Bach’s life, it was when he walked over 200 miles to Lübeck to take organ lessons from Buxtehude and to sing in two oratorios he presented.

This last bit of information I learned from the pre-concert lecture by Christoph Wolff, whom we heard the previous night. According to Wolff, there were 74 not 57 Bach musicians, if you count all the part-time musicians. He said that some of the part-timers had other careers.

The reason we know all about the Bach family musicians is that Johann Sebastian was a historian and an archivist. He sought to document all the musicians in his family, as well as to collect their music, because he wanted to pass the information on to his children. The collection of music was passed on to his son, Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach.

Just having participated in the Bach family concert, “Think Outside the Bach,” made this concert all the more interesting, and to hear it performed at such a high level made it an extraordinary event. I know I’ve used that word already but I don’t know what else to call it! What I found fascinating, though, was how they changed configuration (whom they stood next to) to change the tone of the group. For example, at one point, the four sopranos sang in unison, but they were separated by a good 4-5 feet with other voice parts in between. That distance actually made the sound “lock in,” and the unison singing sounded even stronger! How incredible!

What I really enjoyed, though, was that the program concluded with Cantata 4, “Christ lag in Todesbanden,” the very same piece I played with the Oahu Choral Society a month ago! Vox Luminis’ rendition of this favorite cantata was excellent, to be sure—very clean, light textured, and exuberant tempos. (I neglected to mention that last night’s St. Matthew Passion had whirlwind tempos, and they kept it altogether!)

Vox Luminis performed an encore, “Jesu, meines Lebens leben,” as the applause and sustained standing ovation could not be ignored!

Oh, I saw Maria and Charles Coldwell at the concert! They visited Hawaii last year when they purchased a condo. She is the former Executive Director of Early Music America—I see her via videochat quarterly since we are both on the board of the Peter Hallock Institute. It was nice to see her in person this time!

I also heard two excellent student groups today, one from Case Western Reserve and the other from the University of North Texas. The quality of these two groups was at a professional level — early music has a bright future (Is that an oxymoron?!) if these young people are any indication!

I was able to visit for a few minutes with Julie Andrijeski, who is the director of the early music program at Case Western Reserve. She is a member of Quicksilver, who played with Vox Luminis.

At the University of North Texas concert, I sat next to and had a nice visit with Kathryn Sparks, wife of Richard Sparks, who is retiring in August.

And you’ll never guess where I spent dinner: a Japanese restaurant less than a block from Jordan Hall, called Symphony Sushi, with baritone Jeremy Wong! He took an impromptu trip to the East Coast to take in a couple events at the Boston Early Music Festival!