The Bach Society at Christ the King Lutheran Church will present Organ Vespers with guest organist Matthew Dirst at 5:00 p.m. on February 27.
Founder and director of Ars Lyrica Houston, an early-music ensemble, Dirst teaches at the University of Houston’s Moores School of Music. He earned his doctorate in musicology at Stanford University and studied in France as a Fulbright scholar. Dirst became the first American to win prizes in international competitions in both organ and harpsichord: first prize, American Guild of Organists’ National Young Artist Competition, second prize, Warsaw International Harpsichord Competition. He has written articles on the music of J. S. Bach and is author of Bach and the Public Sphere: Early Advocacy and Performance of the Keyboard Music (Cambridge University Press, 2002). In the spring 2004 he performed Bach’s Goldberg Variations on harpsichord in Charleston, S.C., a performance which he repeated in August at the Festival-Institute at Round Top, TX, and will reprise in April in Austin.
The program of music for Lent will include Johann Sebastian Bach’s extended partita “Sei gegruesset, Jesu guetig” (Hail to thee, lowly Jesus”) played in alternation with congregational singing of the chorale. There is no admission charge.