The first Bath Bachfest took place in 2012. Nine years later it is firmly established as a 3-day 5-concert, mini music festival celebrating the work of Johann Sebastian Bach and his contemporaries. Held each February in Bath’s stunning period venues, it attracts fine musicians and audiences from across the UK and well beyond.
Bach, alongside his friend Handel and Italian contemporary, Vivaldi, made the Baroque period of the 17th and early 18th century an extraordinarily fertile musical period, whose legacy continues to enthral and captivate today.
Bath Bachfest is programmed by artistic director, Amelia Freedman, and managed by the Bath Mozartfest team, which has made that the city’s most successful festival. No small claim for a year-round City of Festivals, covering everything from children’s literature to films and food.
The possibility of a Bath Bachfest came from the Bach Festival, which was a feature of the Bath musical scene for more than sixty years. It was founded in the Bach centenary year of 1950 by Cuthbert Bates, and maintained after his death by his daughter, Elizabeth Bates. We are delighted that Elizabeth agreed to be Patron of the new Bath Bachfest – a most appropriate acknowledgement of her family’s championing of the great J S Bach for so many years.