Baroque Organ Vespers with Christopher Holman at St. Gertrude, Madeira

​When Johann Sebastian Bach was 20 years old, he journeyed to northern Germany to learn from the great master organists of Hamburg and Lübeck, whose improvisations and compositions inspired some of his greatest works. This organ concert, presented by Christopher Holman, is a historical reconstruction of the kind of vespers that the young Bach would have heard during his sojourn north. The concert will include works by Bach’s (likely) teachers Dieterich Buxtehude and Georg Böhm, plus Heinrich Scheidemann, Franz Tunder, and Samuel Scheidt. Plainchant will be sung in alternation with the organ.

Part of the inaugural St. Gertrude Sacred Music Series, which will bring together world-class artists from across the United States to present the Roman Catholic Church’s treasury of sacred music from the last millennium in concerts, musical meditations, and services.