The third annual Enlightenment Festival returns with two back-to-back weeks of choral-orchestral works. This year’s Festival will celebrate the music of Bach with programs highlighting the enduring composer’s sacred cantatas and oratorios.

Patrick Dupre Quigley, Conductor

WEEK 1

Life | Death

During an age of high mortality, Johann Sebastian Bach experienced the stark and tenuous nature of life and death firsthand. As a result, Bach’s music of human existence and death is, unsurprisingly, probing and profound. Seraphic Fire sings two of Bach’s haunting cantatas on death, and Reginald Mobley is featured in the solo alto cantata Vergnügte Ruh in this musical evening of inspiration and reflection.

Program to include:

Dieterich Buxtehude	Jesu, meines Lebens Leben
Johann Sebastian Bach	Vergnügte Ruh, beliebte Seelenlust, BWV 170
	Herr, gehe nicht ins Gericht mit deinem Knecht, BWV 105
Antonio Vivaldi	Laetatus sum

Concert Schedule:

WEEK 2

Beginning | End

Joyous arrivals and awe-inspiring departures feature in the closing concert of Seraphic Fire’s third annual Enlightenment Festival. Selections from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Christmas Oratorio portray an expectant mother preparing for a child’s arrival and the Magi searching for that child. The Ascension Oratorio is particularly thrilling with spectacular opening and closing trumpets, its coloratura passages, and equally challenging chorale. Chamber orchestra and students from the UCLA Ensemble Artist Program join Seraphic Fire singers to perform two of Bach’s great works in a burst of sonic glory in this arresting program.

Program to include:

Johann Sebastian Bach	Selections from Christmas Oratorio, BWV 248
	Ascension Oratorio, BWV 11

Concert Schedule:

Single tickets will go on sale September 6, 2022.