Boulder Bach Festival

This album from Sono Luminus is the culmination of an extraordinarily fruitful artistic collaboration that took place at the 2022 Boulder Bach Festival in Boulder, Colorado. The recordings were made immediately after the public concerts concluded. They document four of the many memorable musical interpretations at the Festival, which occurred not just because of the many talented artists, but also thanks to the kindness and generosity of countless members of the community and region. Although many musicians converged on Boulder from all over the globe, the Festival also featured several remarkable local artists. The entire project took place against the backdrop of some of the most majestic natural scenery in the world. Under the leadership of directors Zachary Carrettin and Mina Gajić, the artists – all of whom had extensive experience performing on period instruments or singing in historical ensembles – experimented with a novel interpretative approach: realizing historical idioms on modern setups. Nevertheless, some period nuances were mixed in, such as a baroque bow for the double bass and a classical viola bow. These musical decisions were made by ear and with the formidable professional experience of each player influencing each choice. Instead of calibrating musical interpretation to a specific historical setup, musicians took the opposite approach by calibrating their setup to the overarching interpretation. This strategy recaptured the radically authentic spirit of discovery, experimentation and risk that was the hallmark of the historical interpretation movement, now in its seventh decade.