WELCOME!
Click here for the exciting 2016-17 concert season of Great Music at St. Bart’s!
WHO ARE WE?
Mid-Manhattan Performing Arts Foundation brings Great Music between Fall and Spring every year. Check out our 2016-2017 season brochure or peruse the concerts and events page, and please consider becoming a member of the Great Friends of Music Guild.
2016- 2017 Season Press Release
“Forward-looking, expert ensemble Third Sound” (The New Yorker) returns to Great Music at St. Bart’s to open the 2016–17 season.
Following its historic residency at the 2015 Havana Contemporary Music Festival, Third Sound made its US debut with “an impressive night” (New York Classical Review) at St. Bart’s. In anticipation of the ensemble’s return to Havana this fall, Third Sound launches the Great Music season with a preview of its festival program, offering a unique snapshot of the dynamism and diversity of the contemporary American musical landscape.
The music of Johann Sebastian Bach has inspired generations of music lovers for its unparalleled genius in craftsmanship and its deeply spiritual affect. Bach's great art was practiced in both quaint towns and major urban centers in Germany.
Director of Music and Organist, William K. Trafka along with St. Bart’s parishioner, William Fulton will lead a tour of the German cities and churches where J. S. Bach lived and worked as a church musician. William Trafka will perform the organ works which Bach composed for those magnificent buildings. Participants will experience the thrill of hearing Bach’s works in the great architectural spaces where they reverberated three centuries ago.
Please enjoy photos from the last Bach Tour below!
St. Bartholomew’s Choir, Boy and Girl Choristers, New York City’s largest pipe organ and a chamber orchestra join forces for this concert of Christmas favorites.
Works include the Christmas portion of Handel’s Messiah, and carol settings of Sandström, Chilcott, Willcocks and others. Experience the joy and warmth of the holidays with great choral works, sacred and secular, and the chance to sing the beloved carols of the season with organ and orchestra in the candlelit splendor of St. Bartholomew’s Church.
Jeff Morrissey, Baritone, and William Trafka, Pianist, return this season with their popular Christmas program inspired by the elegant paintings found in the South Chapel of St. Bartholomew’s.
In 1919 Ethel Parsons Paullin and her husband Telford created the beautiful Adoration of the Magi and the 13 medallions surrounding it depicting subjects connected with the Nativity of Christ.
Morrissey, whose voice The New York Times calls “a ringing baritone and first rate,” will highlight the artwork weaving passages from the Bible with Polish carols, spirituals and ballads from his own Southern Appalachian Mountains to present a visual and musical telling of the Christmas story.
FREE EVENT. Hear St. Bartholomew’s grand Aeolian-Skinner pipe organ, one of New York’s greatest musical treasures. William K. Trafka, St. Bartholomew’s Director of Music and Organist, will play festive works for this New Year’s celebration.
The program will include organ works of Bach, Böhm, Franck and Willan. Trafka’s own transcription of Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man will be played at the stroke of midnight.
Now in its seventeenth season, Midtown Concerts sponsors lunchtime performances of music of the 18th century and earlier for anyone seeking a respite from the midtown hustle and bustle. Ensembles are chosen by a jury of early-music specialists from the metropolitan area. Each free concert is 30 to 40 minutes in length; no tickets or reservations are necessary. Admission is free.
Click here for the full schedule of concerts.
