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Written by Michael Muckian, Contributing writer
Jun 2, 2011
Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society, the summer classical music ensemble in Madison that performs “chamber music with a bang,” opens its 20th season on June 10 by giving the New Harvest Foundation a boost in its fundraising efforts for LGBT causes.
BDDS’s opening concert at the Stoughton Opera House is preceded by cocktails and appetizers at 5:30 p.m., with a cake reception immediately following the 7:30 p.m. show. The after-show fundraiser takes place at the home of former New Harvest board member John Beutel. A $50 ticket purchases admission to the show and reception, while $35 gains admission to the concert only.
“Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society is a wonderful source of music and entertainment,” says board member Kelly Chambers. “An opportunity to host a New Harvest Foundation fundraiser in conjunction with a BDDS show is a chance to highlight two great and diverse organizations in Wisconsin.”
“Bach to the Future” is this year’s whimsical theme for BDDS, which presents a series of six different performances through June 26. A group of 19 musicians will perform in various combinations – not only at the Stoughton Opera House, but also at The Playhouse at Madison’s Overture Center and the Hillside School on Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin campus in Spring Green. The goal of the program is to make classical music fun, according to its principals.
“There’s nothing about classical music that says that the players have to be serious or stodgy,” says co-founder and performer Stephanie Jutt, principal flutist with the Madison Symphony Orchestra and faculty member at the UW-Madison School of Music. “We play all kinds of music, from the most lighthearted fluffy stuff to the most serious and profound, but our habit of keeping a light touch on it all has served us well.”
In 1992, Jutt helped found BDDS with pianist Jeffrey Sykes, music director for Madison’s Opera for the Young and music faculty member at California State University-East Bay. BDDS attracts involvement from a revolving group of classical pros who have numbered more than 100 in the past 20 years.
The 2011 roster includes Parry Karp, UW-Madison’s professor of cello and chamber music and a member of Pro Arte Quartet, violinist Suzanne Beia, a fellow PAQ member and co-concertmaster for both MSO and the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, and other accomplished musicians.
“Bach to the Future” acknowledges the group’s homage to Johann Sebastian Bach, the master of Baroque composition and the group’s namesake and unofficial mascot.
“We thought we’d indulge ourselves in a bounty of Baroque playing this year,” says Jutt, a Stockton, Calif., native who began her career in the 1970s as a San Francisco street musician. “Our audiences love Bach and are always asking for more, so we will feature an important piece by Bach in every concert this year.”
Other composers featured on this year’s roster include Joseph Haydn, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Dmitri Shostakovich, César Franck, George Gershwin, Maurice Ravel, Camille Saint-Saëns, Ralph Vaughan Williams and others. Contemporary composer Ned Rorem and Paul Schoenfeld also have short works on the program.
For many audience members, the music, which is performed Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays throughout June, is only part of the draw. The concerts are accompanied by prize drawings, dramatic readings and other frivolity. The idea is to keep things light and entertaining as befits a summer concert season, but also to introduce new audiences to chamber music, which Jutt admits may be a dying art.
“Chamber music – or any classical music – is truly on the endangered list,” Jutt says. “But once we get listeners in the door, they tend to love it and come back again and again.”
BDDS’s goal of enlightening people while serving a higher cause meshes well with the goals of New Harvest, which helps a variety of deserving organizations, says board member Michael Shoultz.
“New Harvest Foundation is the only foundation in south-central Wisconsin that channels charitable contributions exclusively to organizations working to promote lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights, services, culture and community development,” says Shoultz, an autism consultant with the Madison Metropolitan School District. “Most contributors are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, but we also receive support from straight, but not narrow families and friends.”
New Harvest, established in 1984, has funded a variety of Madison-area arts groups, including Stage Q, the Madison Gay Men’s Chorale, Perfect Harmony Men’s Chorus, TAP-IT New Works, Inc., and others.
“We do what we do in order to give back,” Shoultz says.
