Midsummer’s Music hosts “Coffee Talk” lectures on music topics by its ensemble members, staff, and friends during the summer season and occasionally throughout the year. The free lectures often relate to Midsummer’s Music concert themes, music pieces, composers, and to Griffon String Quartet activities. Composer-in-Residence Will Healy, who returns in mid-July for a free-wheeling, Bach-inspired program, leads a Coffee Talk titled “J.S. Bach Reimagined: Generations of Transcriptions.”

For hundreds of years, composers have been taking the works of J.S. Bach and inspiring new creations for piano, orchestra, and countless other configurations of acoustic and electric instruments. Healy will perform and discuss some of the most stunning transcriptions of Bach’s work, from Rachmaninoff’s version of the “Preludio for Violin” to Franz Liszt’s setting of the A Minor Organ Prelude and Fugue. He will also give a sneak preview of his “Fantasy on Wachet Auf”, which will be performed at the “Bach to the Future” concerts on July 18, 19, and 21.

Healy is a composer, pianist, and improviser, whose work across genres is characterized by textural richness, thematic depth, and vibrant experimentations. Based in Brooklyn, he composes music drawn from the musical traditions of New York City and the collaborations it inspires. Healy is the founder and artistic director of ShoutHouse, a collective of hip-hop, jazz, and classical musicians. Recent ShoutHouse performances have taken place at the Kennedy Center, Jazz at Lincoln Center, and (le) Poisson Rouge, and their music has been featured on WNYC’s “New Sounds,” among other radio programs. Their debut album, Cityscapes, was released in 2019 by New Amsterdam records, and Healy’s recent 30-minute piece for chorus and ShoutHouse, Orbits, was premiered at Roulette Intermedium in 2022. Healy was awarded the 2023 Leonard Bernstein Award from the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) Foundation.

The J.S. Bach Reimagined Coffee Talk is at 1:00pm, July 19 at Shepherd of the Bay Lutheran Church in Ellison Bay. Seating is limited. Please reserve tickets at midsummersmusic.com or (920) 854-7088.

The 2024 concert series is sponsored by the Jean Berkenstock Family Fund and the Susan DeWitt Davie Legacy Fund, and the season is dedicated to the memory of Jean Berkenstock.

A complete 2024 summer brochure can be downloaded at www.midsummersmusic.com.

Midsummer’s Music was co-founded in 1990 by Jim and Jean Berkenstock, long-time Door County summer residents and principal orchestral players with the Lyric Opera of Chicago. What began as two concerts among friends has become one of the Midwest’s most anticipated chamber music series, bringing thousands of chamber music enthusiasts from around the globe to the magical Door County Peninsula.

For more information visit www.midsummersmusic.com.

Will Healy (credit Jenny Davis): https://www.midsummersmusic.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/will-healy-composer-in-residence.jpg

Other high-resolution photos can be downloaded at https://www.midsummersmusic.com/photos/

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