Saturday, November 11, 2023 – 2pm
Reed College, Portland – Performing Arts Building Room 320 – Directions
Newcomers are Welcome to this Event!
Online Video Premiere – Saturday, November 25, 2023 – 2pm on the WEKA YouTube Channel
JS Bach’s Inventions and Sinfonias are some of his best-known keyboard works and yet they seem to elude categorization. Are they simply pedagogical pieces, intended to develop keyboard technique? Are they only examples of how to compose counterpoint, never intended for public performance? Are there any guiding principles that can help us know how to approach these pieces as musical art rather than merely technical exercises?
Dr. Barbara Baird will perform the fifteen Two-Part Inventions and four of the Three-Part Inventions (Sinfonia) in this harpsichord recital and presentation about the fundamentals of playing in Baroque Style. The recital will be followed by time for demonstration of the harpsichord and hands-on exploration of the instruments for anyone in the audience who wishes. Three instruments from the Reed College Early Keyboard Collection will be available for you to try, so bring your scores!
Piano students and teachers are always welcome at WEKA events and we hope that this event will be especially student-friendly. The shorter-length recital will be comfortable for younger students, and the following demonstration and hands-on time will be engaging and involving. The harpsichord builder, Paul Irvin, as well as additional harpsichord instructors, will be on hand to answer questions and provide guidance. Welcome!
Printable Program
Handout – Introduction to the Harpsichord
Handout about the Reed College instruments – Welcome to the World of Early Keyboard Instruments
For additional insight about the compositional style used in these works, watch our 2022 YouTube video, Musical Rhetoric and Figural Vocabulary in the Inventions and Sinfonias of J.S. Bach presented by Michael Delfin.
Admission
Free to WEKA members
Free to 18 and under, and college students with ID
Children must be accompanied by an adult
General Admission $25 payable at the door with cash or check
The Reed College Performing Arts Building is easily reached directly from the free, West Parking Lot on SE 28th Ave. Directions
About the Reed College Early Keyboard Collection
Reed College is unique in the Portland area with an Early Keyboard Collection that can be shared, thanks to the efforts of Bonnie Garrett (fortepianist and harpsichordist), whose long career at Reed included both teaching and administration. Read about Bonnie Garrett on page 16 of the Reed College Magazine, Sep 2010
About the Presenter
DR. BARBARA BAIRD has been a member of the University of Oregon music faculty since 1987, teaching organ, harpsichord, and piano. She has been Organist and/or Director of Music Ministries at First Congregational Church, Eugene, Oregon, since 1982.
After earning her Bachelor of Music degree in Organ Performance from Texas Christian University, working with Prof. Emmet Smith, she studied three years at the Cologne Conservatory of Music in Cologne, Germany with organist Michael Schneider and harpsichordist Hugo Ruf. Baird received her Master of Music degree in Harpsichord Performance from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, as a student of Larry Palmer. Her Doctor of Musical Arts degree is in Organ and Harpsichord Performance from the University of Oregon, where she studied with John Hamilton, Guy Bovet, and Mark Brombaugh.
An active recitalist since 1971, Baird has performed throughout the United States as well as Argentina, Brazil, Europe and Australia. A frequent adjudicator and clinician, she regularly conducts workshops and master classes for keyboardists, particularly on Baroque and Classical Period Performance, and Keyboard Pedagogy. Baird has been a presenter and recitalist at both national and regional conventions of the American Guild of Organists, and for the Southeastern Historical Keyboard Society, the Western Early Keyboard Association, the Organ Historical Society, the Historical Keyboard Society, the Oregon Bach Festival, several chapters of the American Guild of Organists, and for piano teachers’ guilds in the United States and Australia.
Baird currently has four CDs available:
Vienna: Two Centuries of Harpsichord Music (1600-1800)
The Organ Mass: Selections from Bach’s Klavierübung and Couperin’s Convent Mass
Pastorale, Partite, and Preludes at the Point, works by Johann Sebastian Bach
Organ Works for Two, featuring Julia Brown and Barbara Baird, organ duo