Washington Bach Consort

ABOUT THE CONSORT

Founded in 1977 by the late Dr. J. Reilly Lewis, and since 2018 headed by Dr. Dana Marsh, the Washington Bach Consort is a nationally preeminent vocal and period-instrument ensemble based in Washington, DC. While the group is especially renowned for its historically informed performances of 18th-century music on period instruments, the entire breadth of its offerings spans the 14th to the 19th centuries. The Consort has also made regular appearances alongside prestigious groups such as the National Symphony Orchestra, the Post-Classical Ensemble, Washington Performing Arts, and the Washington Cathedral Choral Society.

In May 2019, the Council of the District of Columbia honored the Washington Bach Consort in recognition of the 30th anniversary of the group’s free classical-music performances through the popular Noontime Cantata Series. Recordings and printed programs of these performances are now archived in the permanent collection of the Library of Congress.The Council’s 2019 proclamation acknowledged the Consort’s commitment to enriching the lives of audiences through making Bach’s music accessible to the widest possible range of listeners. Emphasizing the transformative power of music, all educational outreach programs (reaching 3,000 D.C. public school students) are given free of charge. The impact has been consistently evident in evaluations from DC teachers, who praise the ensemble’s role in providing one of the few live classical music education experiences available to their students.Noteworthy ensemble recordings include Bach’s complete motets, magnificats by both J.S. and C.P.E. Bach, the first American recording of the F major and G minor masses, an album of solo cantatas featuring opera luminary Elizabeth Futral, and most recently in 2022, the album “Myths Contested,” which has received effusive critical acclaim from numerous media platforms.

The Washington Bach Consort has been nationally recognized for the visionary excellence of its work: in 2020, an SMU DataArts study identified the Consort as the nation’s 8th highest-performing arts organization and 2nd highest-performing music organization, among thousands of nonprofits. In 2023, Spur Local (formerly the Catalogue for Philanthropy) continued its tradition of recognizing the Bach Consort as one of the best small nonprofits in greater Washington since 2004.

In October 2023, the Bach Consort released its first album in more than 15 years. Myths Contested, on the Acis label, offers both an historical and a modern-day look at perspectives and values that society connects to music. It features Consort musicians performing Bach’s The Contest between Phoebus and Pan and Trevor Weston’s A New Song, a Consort commission that had its world premiere in 2022.