Boulder Bach Festival and 3rd Law Dance/Theater collaborate on “Bach UnCaged”

Zachary Carrettin with dancers from 3rd Law Dance/Theater

By Peter Alexander

The Boulder Bach Festival (BBF) will reprise its highly successful 2014 partnership with 3rd Law Dance/Theater with a new work that combines the music of J.S. Bach with iconoclastic 20th-century American composer John Cage.

The performance, “Bach UnCaged” (7 p.m. Friday and Saturday, March 27 and 28, at the Dairy Center in Boulder), is part of the festival’s “Compass Series,” which aims to present Bach’s music in new and unexpected contexts.

The performances will feature pieces for solo strings by Bach, played by BBF music director Zachary Carrettin on electric violin; interludes drawn from the sonatas for prepared piano by Cage, played by the festival’s executive director, Marcia Schirmer; and dance by 3rd Law Dance/Theater and choreographer Katie Elliott.

Carrettin will play a series of solo movements by Bach, from both the solo sonatas for violin and the solo suites for cello. Between the Bach movements, Schirmer will play individual sonatas for prepared piano by Cage. The separate pieces will be preceded and linked together by improvised passages by Carrettin—some using the notes C-A-G-E. Only at the end will the music of Bach and Cage sound together.

Read more at Boulder Weekly.