GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. — The Berkshire Bach Society (BBS) opens its 2025-2026 season with events in Great Barrington and Stockbridge on back-to-back Saturdays.  

 

On Sept. 13, 3pm, the group presents Bruce Adolphe, Resident Lecturer and Director of Family Concerts of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in Systems, Symmetry, and Mystery in the Music of J.S. Bach at Saint James Place in Great Barrington. On Sept. 20, 3pm, Kenneth Weiss opens the BBS Harpsichord Festival with his first solo recital for The Society, performing J.S. Bach's complete "Goldberg" Variations at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Stockbridge.

 

According to a press release:

 

Bruce Adolphe is a creative thinker whose spontaneity and wit make him a talent impossible categorize.  He holds bachelor and master of music degrees from the Juilliard School in New York City and has composed works for Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman, Joshua Bell, Sylvia McNair, the Beaux Arts Trio, the National Symphony Orchestra, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and others, as well as for young audiences. In 2002 he started his popular Piano Puzzlers series based on evenings improvising for his friends and now meticulously composes the musical puzzles—well-known tunes disguised in different styles or as mash-ups of familiar pieces—for contestants to solve in a call-in format on American Public Media's Performance Today.   In addition, he has contributed essays to anthologies about the neuroscience of music and creativity, and is the author of several books including What To Listen for in the World (2004), a consideration of the role that memory and imagination play in creative expression, and The Mind's Ear: Exercises for Improving the Musical Imagination for Performers, Composers, and Listeners (2013), a diverse set of games, exercises, and essays designed to spark imagination, creativity, inspiration, and above all, fun.

 

Kenneth Weiss is Professor of Chamber Music at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris, a former assistant to William Christie at Les Arts Florissants, a performer with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and since 2019 Berkshire Bach Society harpsichordist for the popular Bach at New Year's concert series.  He earned a performance degree from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and went on to study harpsichord with the legendary Gustav Leonhardt at Holland's Amsterdam Conservatory.  Based in Paris since 1985, he performs extensively in Europe, North America, and Asia as an accompanist, vocal coach, opera continuist, chamber musician, conductor, and soloist.  In 1996 and again in 2008 he recorded Bach's "Goldberg" Variations, the latter in a live concert at the Théâtre à Pau, France. In 2013 he recorded the complete Well-Tempered Clavier—Bach's "gift to humanity," as he calls it—and in 2021 he completed the trifecta with his recording of the Art of Fugue, Bach's "alternate world of majesty," playing the 1782 Taskin harpsichord at the Museu Nacional da Música at the Centro Cultural de Belém, Portugal. Berkshire Bach audiences may remember his spellbinding performance of the "Goldberg" Aria at Bach at New Year's this past December in a tantalizing preview of the full work.

 

Join Berkshire Bach for Bruce Adolphe in Systems, Symmetry, and Mystery in the Music of J.S. Bach at 3pm, on Saturday, Sept. 13, at Saint James Place in Great Barrington and Kenneth Weiss in the "Goldberg" Variations on Saturday, Sept. 20, 3pm, at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Stockbridge. Tickets for each event: $45 Nonmembers: $40 Berkshire Bach Members: $10 Card to Culture.  Children and Students under 25 with valid ID are admitted free.

 

Visit berkshirebach.org/events for more information and to purchase tickets.