Focus today is on other Bach-era composers

Instead, his contemporaries Handel and Rameau will hog the spotlight on Day 1 of the three-day festival that will celebrate all things Bach.

Those in the audience at tonight's opening concert will hear the music Bach likely heard from composers who might have enjoyed the kind of celebrity today's pop artists enjoy.

"Handel and Rameau were more popular at the time than Bach's music," explained flutist Sandy Schwoebel, a member of the Friends board who will perform during the marathon. "We are performing music that Bach would have heard and known, but his style was very different."

Bach in his day was revered for his organ playing, but his compositions were largely dismissed and considered outdated. While he followed the Baroque dictates for form and contrapuntal style, his contemporaries, Handel and Rameau included, had moved on to the emerging Classical style.

Shining the light on Bach's contemporaries invites the audience into the musical world he experienced.

"If you are going to have all this Bach, it would be neat to have a Bach chamber concert that explored Bach's contemporaries," said Kevin Justus, a member of the St. Philip's Friends of Music board.

This year's festival grows to three days from one and includes concerts, workshops and a children's event. St. Philip's Friends started the festival in 1992 to celebrate the anniversary of Bach's birth, March 21, 1685. The event, which expanded to two days in the mid-1990s, then shrank back to one as the decade closed, has always centered on Bach's organ music and featured choirs and small chamber ensembles.

This year, spearheaded by Schwoebel, the festival is more expansive, including its first kids program Saturday morning that will introduce Bach in a play narrated by Schwoebel. Organist Jeffery Campbell will play the role of Bach from the organ.

Professional musicians from the Tucson Symphony Orchestra, Arizona Opera Orchestra and the University of Arizona will make up the chamber ensemble.

The festival will explore Bach in his various settings, from court and chapel music to church music. Conductor Dale Adelmann, a Bach scholar and respected choral clinician, will conduct the orchestra and the St. Philip's in the Hills Episcopal Church adult choirs and soloists, who will perform Bach's Cantata 22 and Cantata 93 in concerts on Saturday, and will perform during church services Sunday that will feature Bach's church music.

"That's what makes this one so special, because it's sort of the ideal of what the Bach festival could be," Justus said.

If you go

"Bach X 3: A Three-Day Music Marathon"

• Presented by: St. Philip's Friends of Music.

• When: Today through Sunday.

• Where: St. Philip's in the Hills Episcopal Church, 4440 N. Campbell Ave.

• Tickets: $15 recommended donation for general admission, $25 reserved seats; no admission price for Sunday morning services. 529-8412.

• Schedule and program:

Today: 7:30 p.m., Contemporaries of Bach featuring conductor Thomas Cockrell and organist Jeffery Campbell. Handel's Organ Concerto in F major; Handel's Concerto Grosso in C major "Alexander's Feast"; Rameau's orchestral dances and excerpts from operas written for Versailles and Paris.

Saturday: 11 a.m., "Meet Mr. Bach," a children's concert and theatrical performance; 3 p.m. "Bach in Court and Chapel 1," with conductor Dale Adelmann and featuring harpsichordist Jeffri Sanders performing Bach's Harpsichord Concerto in A major, and a chamber orchestra and St. Philip's Adult Choirs and soloists performing Bach's Cantata 22; 7:30 p.m., "Bach in Court and Chapel 2," with Campbell performing Bach's Prelude and Fuge in E minor; flutists Sandy Schwoebel and Christine Harper performing the Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 in G major with violinist Ellen Chamberlain; and the choirs performing Cantata 93.

Sunday: 9 a.m. and 11:15 a.m. church services, "Bach in Church," with the chamber orchestra, choir and soloists performing Lutheran Mass in A major, "O Jesu Christ, meins Lebens Licht" and "Jesus, Joy of Man's Desiring"; 12:45 p.m., Organ a la carte, with Campbell featuring Toccata and Fugue in D minor, Trio Sonata No. 1 in E-flat major and Prelude and Fugue in E-flat "St. Anne."