2026 Festival
The Board of the Arizona Bach Festival is excited to present the details of our 17th annual festival! Whether or not you attend the concerts in person, we also offer a Video Package of recordings on YouTube of all four Festival concerts! Watch our Facebook page for updates and be sure that you’re subscribed to our email list to receive our important festival news!
JS Bach Violin Concerto & Brandenburg No. 5
Jonathan Swartz, violin leads the Festival Orchestra
Sunday, February 15, 3:00 p.m.
All Saints’ Episcopal Church
6300 N Central Ave, Phoenix, AZ 85012
Tickets: $50 advance / $55 at the door
The 2026 Season opens on Sunday, February 15th with a Baroque tour de force: Arizona State University professor Jonathan Swartz appears as soloist and leads the Festival Orchestra in Bach’s Violin Concerto in E, and Brandenburg Concerto No. 5. He is joined by harpsichordist Jonathan Rhodes Lee, professor at University of Nevada, and flutist Elizabeth Buck, also an ASU professor. Also on the program is Telemann’s Don Quixote Suite and Johann Bernhard Bach’s Overture in G minor, an Arizona premiere.
Sonatas of JS Bach
Steven Moeckel, violin
Sunday, February 22, 3:00 p.m.
Western Spirit: Scottsdale’s Museum of the West
3830 N Marshall Way, Scottsdale, AZ 85251
Tickets: $50 advance / $55 at the door
Steven Moeckel, former concertmaster of the Phoenix Symphony, will present “Soul Searching,” a journey through the three sonatas for solo violin by J. S. Bach at Western Spirit: Scottsdale’s Museum of the West amid their glorious artwork on Sunday, February 22nd. Admission to this special event includes a tour of the museum and a pre-concert reception.
Lidarti’s Oratorio “Esther”
Josefien Stoppelenburg, soprano with the Festival Orchestra and Chorus
Sunday, March 1, 3:00 p.m.
Valley of the Sun Jewish Community Center
12701 N Scottsdale Rd, Scottsdale, AZ 85254
Tickets: $65 advance / $70 at the door
On March 1st, Arizona Bach Festival presents the Arizona premiere of Lidarti’s oratorio “Esther,” the only late Baroque oratorio in the Jewish tradition.
This recently discovered work features Dutch soprano Josefien Stoppelenburg in the title role as well as Phoenix favorites Nina Cole Garguilo and Paul Nicosia along with the Festival Orchestra and Choir.
The work dates from 1774 and was commissioned by the Portuguese Jewish community of Amsterdam. Venetian Rabbi Jacob Saraval took Handel’s 1732 English libretto of “Esther” and translated it into Hebrew. The composition was lost until 1997, when it was miraculously discovered in a used bookstore in Paris. It is, to this day, the richest known work of Hebrew art music from the 17th and 18th centuries. It is the only known full oratorio in Hebrew and it is the only known artistic work of Jewish and Christian collaboration in Europe.
Organ & Baroque Trumpet
Avi Stein, organ and John Thiessen, Baroque trumpet
Sunday, March 8, 3:00 p.m.
All Saints’ Episcopal Church
6300 N Central Ave, Phoenix, AZ 85012
Tickets: $40 advance / $45 at the door
The Festival’s annual organ recital features organist Avi Stein and Baroque trumpeter John Thiessen. Both are faculty at The Juilliard School. On March 8th they will perform a program of organ and Baroque trumpet repertoire rarely heard in Arizona and surely not one to be missed!
In addition to teaching at Juilliard, Avi Stein is the organist and chorusmaster at Trinity Church, NYC and the artistic director of the Helicon Foundation. John Thiessen has been principal trumpet player for Tafelmusik, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, American Bach Soloists, Trinity Baroque Orchestra, and American Classical Orchestra.