CMNW Presents the Oregon Bach Festival: Bach’s Mass in B Minor

Artists

Oregon Bach Ripieno Ensemble Chamber Choir

Oregon Bach Festival Ripieno Ensemble

The 2025 Oregon Bach Festival Ripieno Ensemble features 8-12 vocalists who form a small choir in support of the Mass in B Minor vocal soloists. The ensemble’s composition is designed to emulate choruses that Bach and his audiences would have experienced. Members of the ensemble are hand-selected from the festival’s larger, Grammy Award-winning chorus.

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Oregon Bach Festival Baroque Orchestra Chamber Orchestra

Oregon Bach Festival Baroque Orchestra

The Oregon Bach Festival Baroque Orchestra is comprised of the world’s best Baroque and Classical instrumentalists. The orchestra varies in size, based on the annual needs of the festival, and many of the musicians serve as faculty members of the festival’s prestigious Berwick Academy for Historically Informed Performance. The 2025 presentation of Bach’s Mass in B Minor features 25 members of the Baroque Orchestra who perform the piece in Eugene (July 3), Mount Angel Abbey (July 5), and Portland (July 6).

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Rowan Pierce Oregon Bach Festival Soprano Soloist

Yorkshire-born Rowan Pierce is a former Rising Star of the OAE and a Harewood Artist at ENO.

She appears regularly with ensembles including AAM, Gabrieli Consort, SCO, BBC Scottish Symphony, OAE, City of Birmingham Symphony, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Les Arts Florissants, and Florilegium, and has appeared at the Wigmore Hall on many occasions both in recital and with chamber ensembles.

Operatic roles include Tiny (Paul Bunyan), Papagena (The Magic Flute), Dede (A Quiet Place), several appearances as Barbarina (Le Nozze di Figaro), Papiria (Lucio Papirio Dittatore), Oberto (Alcina), and multiple appearances as Quivera and as Orazia (The Indian Queen).

Recent and future festival appearances include the Ryedale, Oxford Lieder, Bath, Cheltenham, BBC Proms, Lammermuir, Edinburgh, Oregon Bach, Leeds Lieder, and Chiltern Arts Festivals.
Recordings include a solo disc of Purcell songs, Vaughan Williams’ Ninth Symphony with the RLPO, the award-winning King Arthur and The Fairy Queen with the Gabrieli Consort, as well as recording collaborations with Roderick Williams and Christopher Glynn.

Rowan Pierce studied at the Royal College of Music where she won various awards, winning both the Song Prize and First Prize at the inaugural Grange Festival International Singing Competition after graduating. She is a Samling Artist and was generously supported by the Countess of Munster Award and Midori Nishiura at the RCM.

Clara Osowski Oregon Bach Festival Mezzo-Soprano Soloist

Mezzo-soprano Clara Osowski, praised for singing “from inside the music with unaffected purity and sincerity” (UK Telegraph), is an active soloist and chamber musician performing across the United States and Europe. Her 2024/2025 season included performances of Copland’s Old American Songs and Handel’s Messiah with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra; Mozart’s Requiem with the Rochester Philharmonic; Mozart’s Mass in C Minor with the South Dakota Symphony; Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 with the Mid-Columbus Symphony; and the role of Baba the Turk in The Rake’s Progress at the 2024 NDSU Chamber Music Festival.

Recent career highlights include her London debut at Wigmore Hall, Handel’s Messiah with the Kansas City Symphony, and Mozart’s Requiem and Mendelssohn’s Elijah with the Milwaukee Symphony. Clara earned her Bachelor of Musical Arts from North Dakota State University and her Master of Arts in Voice from the University of Iowa. She currently serves as the Artistic Director of Source Song Festival in Minneapolis.

Ulrike Malotta Oregon Bach Festival Mezzo-Soprano Soloist

An internationally sought-after mezzo-soprano, Ulrike Malotta’s uniquely warm vocal tone, versatility, and sensitivity covers a broad repertoire—spanning from the Renaissance to contemporary music.

Highlights of this past season include a tour featuring Bach cantatas under the direction of Justin Doyle and his RIAS Chamber Choir, a St. Matthew Passion tour across the Netherlands led by Peter Dijkstra, as well as a concert tour of Mendelssohn’s Elijah and St. Paul, including performances in Canada. She performed Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis at the Herkulessaal in Munich, Paul Jenkins’ The Armed Man at the Tonhalle Zurich, and Stanford’s Requiem at the Cologne Philharmonie.

Ulrike is at home on major international concert stages and regularly collaborates with ensembles like the Nederlandse Bachvereniging, Akademie für Alte Musik, Basel Chamber Orchestra, Concerto Köln, Dresden Festival Orchestra, Gürzenich Orchestra, Dresden Philharmonic, Bochum Symphony, Munich Radio Orchestra, Munich Symphony, Bamberg Symphony, as well as the choirs of Bayerischer Rundfunk, WDR, and NDR. She has appeared on numerous releases, including J.S. Bach’s St. John Passion under Peter Dijkstra (BR Klassik), as well as C. Loewe’s Jan Hus (Oehms).

Also highly accomplished on the operatic stage, Ulrike has performed at the State Theater Darmstadt (Endimione, La Calisto), the State Theater Wiesbaden (Flosshilde and Second Norn, Der Ring), and at the Bavarian State Opera (Ursuline, The Devils of Loudun).

She studied voice at the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich and at the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts, where she earned her master’s degree.

Thomas Hobbs Oregon Bach Festival Tenor Soloist

Thomas Hobbs is one of the most interesting and significant Bach tenors and is in high demand with leading baroque and early music ensembles across the world. Highlights of Hobbs’ 2024/25 season include Bach’s St. Matthew Passion for RIAS Kammerchor and the South Netherlands Philharmonic and concerts with ensembles including Le Banquet Celeste, Gli Angeli Geneve, and Les Arts Florissants. Key engagements in recent seasons have included two tours across Europe with the Netherlands Bach Society. Hobbs also continues long running relationships with Gli Angeli Geneve, Le Banquet Céleste, Alia Mens, Tafelmusik, and Ensembles Masques. His recordings of Handel Chandos Anthems with Stephen Layton and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and Mozart’s Requiem in D minor with John Butt and the Dunedin Consort have been universally praised, with the latter receiving the 2014 Gramophone Award for best Choral recording.

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Peter Harvey Oregon Bach Festival Baritone Soloist

One of the foremost interpreters of the music of J.S. Bach and his contemporaries, Peter Harvey has made well over 150 recordings in repertoire spanning eight centuries, with an emphasis on music from the High Baroque. A key participant in their Bach Cantata Pilgrimage, Peter’s recordings with Sir John Eliot Gardiner include the celebrated solo cantata, Iche habe genug.

As well as with period ensembles like Akademie für Alte Musik, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Academy of Ancient Music, Dunedin Consort, The King’s Consort, and Tafelmusk Toronto, Peter has worked with orchestras and modern ensembles such as the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, and Oslo Philharmonic, among others.

Peter Harvey studied at Magdalen College, Oxford, and at the Guildhall School of Music in London—where he won prizes in several international singing competitions.

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Jos van Veldhoven Conductor

In addition to guest conducting many choirs and orchestras in the Netherlands and far beyond, Jos van Veldhoven is currently Artistic Partner of the Oregon Bach Festival in the United States.

Jos was Artistic Director of the Netherlands Bach Society for more than 35 years, where he developed the company into a leading, world-class ensemble. Under his leadership an impressive CD series was created, and he made many concert tours in the Netherlands, Europe, the United States, and Japan. Not only the music of Bach and his contemporaries sounded, but also “new” repertoire from the 17th and 18th centuries. In his programming, Jos van Veldhoven knows how to connect tradition and adventure over and over again.

He is also the initiator of “All of Bach,” an unprecedented project in which the Netherlands Bach Society performs, records, and publishes all of Bach’s works online. More than 20 million followers worldwide now enjoy the recordings on YouTube, and they have received large acclaim all over the world.

Jos often attracts attention with performances of “new” repertoire within the early music genre, including many lesser known seventeenth-century oratorios and dialogues, and a large number of modern premieres of Baroque operas by composers such as Mattheson, Keiser, Bononcini, Legrenzi, Conti, and Scarlatti. In great demand as a guest conductor, Jos has conducted— among others—the Dutch Chamber Choir, the Netherlands Radio Choir, the Flemish Radio Choir, the Beethoven Orchester Bonn, the Robert Schumann Philharmonic, the Essen Philharmonic Orchestra, the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, and many of the Dutch symphony orchestras.

Jos has been associated with the Conservatorium van Amsterdam and the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague as a teacher of choral conducting for more than 30 years. In 2007, Queen Beatrix of The Netherlands made him a Knight in the Order of the Dutch Lion for his groundbreaking work in early music.