Balancing Bach

What happens when Bach becomes a point of departure rather than a destination?

For violists, Bach’s six Cello Suites are inheritance. We study them, perform them, teach them, return to them, and measure ourselves against them throughout our lives.

Balancing Bach begins with a different question: What can that inheritance set in motion?

Over five years, I will pair Bach’s six Cello Suites with a new body of repertoire created by American women composers. Six substantial works will be commissioned from established composers, while six more will emerge through international calls for scores, opening the project to voices I may not yet know.

The result will be twelve new works for viola, premiered in performance and recorded across three commercial albums. But twelve works are only the visible result.

Creating a Living Repertoire

I have learned through earlier commissioning projects that repertoire does not grow simply because a new piece is written. It grows when performers discover it, audiences hear it, students study it, teachers teach it, recordings circulate, and other musicians decide that the piece belongs in their own musical lives.

That is the larger ambition of Balancing Bach.

Established composers bring experience, imagination, and visibility to the project. Open calls make room for discovery. My earlier VIOLA 2020 call introduced me to composer Kirsten Volness and her for Hypatia, a work that became my most streamed and re-performed commission. Balancing Bach expands that model across all six suites.

The goal is not simply to commission twelve pieces. It is to create enough excellent repertoire to begin changing the ecology of what violists can choose to play.

Bach in Motion

And then there is dance.

The Bach Suites are music born from movement. Allemandes, courantes, sarabandes, gigues: their roots are in the body even when they are heard today from a concert stage.

Selected Bach suites and their contemporary counterparts will be developed with professional and community choreographers and dancers. The choreography will not decorate the music, but will offer another way of hearing it, revealing rhythm, gesture, structure, tension, and release through movement.

Balancing Bach puts bodies back into music born from movement.

The Next Generation

The project also asks young musicians to see repertoire differently.

A national educational initiative for middle and high school students will introduce them to Bach’s suites, contemporary women composers, and the idea that repertoire is not something handed down only by history. It is something they are permitted to shape.

Students will create their own suite movements. Selected works will be assembled into a collaborative Quilt Suite, performed by young musicians and shared digitally.

The point is not to teach students to imitate Bach. It is to let them experience repertoire as something they are permitted to shape.

Six Suites. New Voices. A Living Repertoire.

I began Balancing Bach thinking about six suites.

I now think about what those six suites can set in motion.