Archive for the ‘News’ Category
New Year, New News, Big Plans
It’s true that most of the energy of the Society and our staff is going into preparing for our 75th Anniversary celebration next month. However, the world has kept turning, and other exciting things have taken place that we want to share with you.
At the beginning of the month our Artistic Director and Conductor John Sinclair traveled across I-4 to Tampa to conduct the Men’s Choir at the Florida Music Educator’s Association All-State Conference. In addition to performing a piece by choir alum Jamey Ray, Dr. Sinclair took Bach Festival Orchestra members with him to accompany the singers in their performance.
Pride swelled in the Bach Festival office last week when we received the news that Curtis Rayam was recognized by the National Opera Association as the winner of the “Lift Every Voice” Legacy Award. Bach Festival President Eric Ravndal III commented, “How delightful that one of our own has been recognized with this high honor from such a well-respected national organization. His distinguished career has enriched the lives of music lovers throughout the world. We are most proud of his receiving this honor.”
Curtis began his long association with the Bach Festival Society as a student at Jones High School in Orlando, has performed as soloist with the choir and orchestra, and more recently serves as a member of our Board of Trustees. He travelled to Atlanta to accept his award. Congratulations, Curtis!
As we move into February, the calendar is full of exciting events we are working hard to make memorable. We hope a few of these programs make it onto your calendar, and we look forward to seeing you at the historic 75th Annual Bach Festival.
Ticket Guru FAQs and my take on the Festival
This year’s festival has been wildly popular, and with good reason. However, that means tickets are scarce. With that, I decided that it would be best to give you, my favorite patrons, an update with good information to know while ordering tickets. It’s like an FAQ.
02/10/10 UPDATE: Mendelssohn & Mozart is officially sold out. To be added to a waiting list, email boxoffice@bachfestivalflorida.org your full name, phone number, mailing address and number of tickets desired.
Online Ticketing
Yes, I know online tickets can be tricky. I promise you the online ticketing system will show you the best available seats for each performance. The only time you might want to call the office instead is if you prefer balcony seating. If you keep trying to get different seats, I can guarantee that they will only appear further back in the venue – any seats that are shown to you as available and you decide not to purchase are held for 20 minutes. That means, even if you call the office, we can’t sell them to you for 20 minutes. Have faith that what it shows you is really the best available.
If there are not enough seats available for purchase in a specific tier, it will not let you move on to the next screen. Either try a new tier or try looking for fewer tickets. If you’re OK with having your party split, often you can get pairs in different places.
When purchasing tickets for more than one event, you can do it all in one transaction, thanks to the handy shopping cart feature. Once your seats have been selected for one performance, click on the Event Schedule link under the logo and select your next performance. Easy as pie.
When it’s time to enter in your contact information, you must put a title in (i.e., Mr., Ms., Mrs.), and the CVV number on the back of your credit card. If you don’t remember these two details, you’ll be kicked back to the payment screen. Also, I encourage you to please use proper capitalization when filling out this form.
You must use your billing address when purchasing tickets. If you would like them mailed someplace else or held at will call, just email boxoffice@bachfestivalflorida.org and tell me. You may also reply to your confirmation email.
Performance Nitty Gritty
Mendelssohn & Mozart on February 27th is sold out. To be added to a waiting list, email boxoffice@bachfestivalflorida.org our full name, phone number, mailing address and number of tickets desired.
The Mass in B minor is nearly sold out too, but there are a handful of General Admission seats still available. To give fair warning, General Admission tickets are partial view seats along the perimeter of the chapel and in the side chapel. If you don’t snatch up those tickets soon, they will gone.
The Anniversary Mass is the best of the Bach Festival, our board president sits in every rehearsal and just raves about it. That should be a big poke to you to get seats for this concert. Since it’s a double showing, there are lots of great seats left.
Finally, James David Christie sent in his program yesterday, and let me tell you it is shaping up to be a really cool program. The whole venue is General Admission for that performance, and it’s only 20 bucks. Give it a shot.
xoxo,
Devin
Fun Facts About the Bach Festival Society
The Bach Festival Society of Winter Park will present its 75th Annual Festival in February 2010. Here are some facts from the Society’s history that we’d like to share with you!
FACTS
• Each choir member donates approx 150 hours of time over a complete performance season—with over 160 Choir members, that totals over 24,000 hours
• 12% of choir members travel more than 50 miles round trip to sing with the Choir
• A book published in 1942 was titled The Bach Festival Murders.
• Fred Rogers of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood sang with the Choir while he was a music student at Rollins, and he frequently attended performances later in his life
• Conductor Dr. John Sinclair is the longest-serving conductor in the BFS history. He is celebrating his 20th anniversary this year.
• In the 1940s and 1950s local Boy Scouts ushered at Bach Festival performances
• 1940—First full performance of Bach’s Mass in B minor. The 2010 performance will be our 25th performance of this work.
• 1960—Haydn’s Coronation Mass was performed on the Bach Festival’s Silver Anniversary—the first time the work of another composer was performed.
• In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the Annual Bach Festival was broadcast on national radio.
