Événement

Church of Beethoven, Oak Park A Cajun Summer with Bach and Beethoven Experience

The Bach and Beethoven Experience (BBE) tells stories about, and through, classical, folk, and original music on 100 to 400-year-old instruments. Its unique style of cross-over classical music, and youthful take on the concert experience, has been praised as "folksy and irreverent" (yes - that was a compliment!) by Early Music America and "charming... sincere" and heartfelt" by the Herald Times and Hyde Park Herald.

Its second program on the Church of Beethoven series, A Cajun Summer, tells the story of a unique musical migration - of French music to North America and its evolution from classical to Cajun! As French explorers and immigrants traveled to the North American colonies, they brought with them traditional French ballads. In the New World these tunes combined with other styles and cultural influences, and with time they became what we now know as the Cajun style.

In A Cajun Summer, the BBE traces that migration of French Baroque music across the Atlantic to Nouvelle-France ("New France"). After landing in Acadia - the area now including eastern Quebec, the Maritime provinces, and Maine - the show follows the tunes as they sails down the Mississippi River to Cajun Country and La Nouvelle-Orléans. Complete with historical banjos and dueling violins, this will be a gumbo-chuggin', throwback boozin', Mardi-gras dancin' good time unseen elsewhere in North America.