Chicago’s Bach in the City to Open Debut Season with ‘Music in Heaven’s Castle’ October 3 at St. Vincent de Paul Church

Period-instrument program to feature rare
and celebratory works by Bach,
Telemann, and Muffat

CHICAGO, September 15, 2025 — Bach in the City, Chicago’s newest Baroque period-instrument organization, will launch its debut concert season with “Music in Heaven’s Castle” at 7:30 p.m. October 3, 2025, at St. Vincent de Paul Church, 1010 W. Webster Avenue, Chicago. 

“With a title inspired by the breathtaking features of the Himmelsburg (Heaven's Castle) chapel in Bach’s Weimar, Germany, and our home, St. Vincent de Paul Church, this program features both beloved and rarely heard gems by three giants of the Baroque period,” says Jason J. Moy, Bach in the City’s associate music director and the program’s curator. 

The program offers works by Bach, his close friend and musical colleague Georg Philipp Telemann, and French-born German composer Georg Muffat, an older contemporary of Bach. 

Festive overture 

Telemann’s Overture Suite in D Major, TWV 55:D7, for trumpet, strings, and harpsichord will open the first concert of Bach in the City’s debut season in a bright, festive, and celebratory spirit. 

The Overture Suite displays the prolific and widely travelled composer’s English, French, German, Italian, and Polish influences. “Concertgoers will be charmed by its contrasting dance movements and character pieces,” Moy says. 

Soloist is Ryan Berndt, on natural trumpet. Berndt is principal trumpet of Chicago’s Haymarket Opera Company and performs regularly with Apollo’s Fire. Recognized for his artistry on both modern and Baroque trumpet, his credits include more than a decade with the Gaudete Brass Quintet. Gramophone magazine acknowledged his “versatile, superb, and committed” musicianship. 

‘Exuberant’ triple-harpsichord concerto 

The inclusion of J.S. Bach’s crowd-pleasing Concerto in C Major for 3 Harpsichords, BWV 1064, with its intricate interplay among the keyboard soloists, pays homage to Bach in the City’s predecessor, the Bach Week Festival, Moy says. 

Bach Week’s inaugural program in 1974 included Bach’s concerto for four harpsichords. Moy says the logistical difficulties and expense of moving and tuning multiple harpsichords make multi-harpsichord concertos a rare treat. 

Of the Concerto BWV 1064, Moy says, “An introspective slow movement in the key of A minor provides a musical foil to the exuberantly joyful opening and closing Allegros.” 

Harpsichordists are Moy, Jacob Reed, and Richard Webster. 

In addition to his associate music directorship with Bach in the City, Moy is artistic director of Ars Musica, serves on the faculty of Roosevelt University’s Chicago College of Performing Arts and at DePaul University. At DePaul, he was awarded in 2022 the School of Music’s first-ever endowed chair as the Monsignor Kenneth J. Velo Distinguished Professor of Music. As a harpsichordist, he performs regularly with The Newberry Consort, Haymarket Opera Company, Grant Park Symphony Orchestra, and Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. 

Reed is lecturer in harpsichord at the University of Wisconsin­–Madison and a doctoral student in music history and theory at the University of Chicago, where he is Organ Scholar at Rockefeller Memorial Chapel. He plays organ and harpsichord with The Newberry Consort, Haymarket Opera Company, Bella Voce, and other Chicago-area ensembles. 

Webster is music director of Bach in the City, successor to the Bach Week Festival in Evanston, Illinois. Webster helped organize and performed in the first Bach Week in 1974 and was music director for its ensuing 50 seasons. He is lecturer in sacred music at Yale, having retired in 2022 as director of music and organist at Boston’s historic Trinity Church on Copley Square. He is an honorary fellow of the Royal School of Church Music and organist and choirmaster emeritus of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Evanston, where he served from 1974 to 2003. He is also a composer whose works are available from Advent Press. 

Rarely heard cantata 

One of the first works Bach presented at Himmelsburg was his Cantata No. 54, ‘Widerstehe doch der Sünde’ (Do resist sin), comprising two arias and a recitative for alto soloist. It’s considered one of Bach’s earliest cantatas for solo voice. 

“Bach intended to make a splash through the dissonant chords, representing sin, that open the piece,” Moy says. “Its shocking dissonances and chromatic harmonies expressing the temptations of sin would have astonished its original audience.” 

Moy calls it “one of Bach’s most striking and innovative cantatas.” 

Soloist in this rarely heard work is countertenor Marco T. Rivera Rosa. The 21-year-old Honduran-born singer is in his senior year at DePaul University’s School of Music, where he studies with Viktoria Vizin. In 2025 Rivera Rosa won DePaul’s Concerto Competition and made his European debut as the titular role in “Giulio Cesare” with the Vienna Summer Festival. 

Cornerstone concerto for violin 

A cornerstone of the violin repertoire, Bach’s Violin Concerto in A Minor, BWV 1041, weds the virtuosic flair of an Italian concerto with complex German Baroque counterpoint. It boasts a fiery opening movement, a contemplative inner movement, and an exuberant finale. 

Violin soloist is Emily Nebel, assistant concertmaster of the Lyric Opera of Chicago and associate concertmaster of the Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center in New York. She has toured South America and Spain as a co-leader of the period ensemble Arcangelo, performed as second violin with the Dunedin Consort, and frequently plays with Baroque ensembles in Chicago. 

Lush string sonata 

Muffat’s Sonata No. 5 from “Armonico Tributo” blends French elegance, Italian showmanship, and German counterpoint. It employs a lush-sounding, five-part string orchestra, an instrumental configuration favored by his contemporary, French Baroque composer Jean-Baptiste Lully, whom Muffat greatly admired. 

In addition to the aforementioned soloists, musicians performing in “Music in Heaven’s Castle” include violinists Sallynee Amawat, Amelia Sie, and Rachel Smith; violists Melissa Trier Kirk and Beatrice Chen; cellist Ana Kim; and double-bassist Ian Hallas. 

Tickets and information 

Single tickets for “Music in Heaven’s Castle” are $45 for VIP admission, which includes reserved seating; $30 adult general admission; $25 seniors 65 and older; and $10 students (with valid ID). 

Tickets and information are available at bachinthecity.org and by phone, 312-273-9834. 

Bach in the City 

Organized in 2024, Bach in the City is an independent, nonprofit musical organization based at St. Vincent de Paul Church in Chicago. The primary purpose of the new enterprise, heir to the long-running Bach Week Festival in Evanston, Illinois, is to present the choral, orchestral, and chamber music of Johann Sebastian Bach and other composers whose music would come to life in the splendid acoustic and visual setting of the historic Lincoln Park church. 

Choir director, organist, and composer Richard Webster, who helped launch and performed in the first Bach Week in 1974 and was its music director for the next 50 seasons, serves in the same capacity for Bach in the City. 

Bach in the City debuted with a pilot-project concert, “Bach and the Venetians,” in March 2025 to gauge audience and donor interest. Critical and box office success prompted the organization to move forward and commit to a multi-concert season in 2025-2026. 

Chicago Classical Review proclaimed: “’Bach and the Venetians’ offered a promising and well-attended pilot performance for the city’s newest music organization. … Webster presided over it all with a welcoming, supporting poise that evinced his decades of experience.” 

In July 2025, Bach in the City announced that all future performances would be on period instruments.

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