Virtual Celebration of the 300th Anniversary of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos Announced

The Brandenburg 300 Project announces a virtual celebration of the 300th Anniversary of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos and the music's placement on The Golden Record. The free, virtual broadcast is Wednesday, March 24, 2021 at 2:00pm PST and 7:00pm PST. Bach wrote The Brandenburg Concertos for Christian Ludwig, Margrave of Brandenburg-Schweft and dedicated it to him on March 24, 1721.

Produced by Bob Danziger, Jeff Jones, and Doug Mueller, The Brandenburg 300 Project is a free, virtual event and will present classical and jazz performances of The Brandenburg Concertos. Performers include Black Violin, Wynton Marsalis and the English Chamber Orchestra, Sones de Mexico Ensemble Chicago, Karl Richter & His Chamber Orchestra, Academy of Ancient Music, Dave Brubeck, Oscar Peterson, John Clayton, Neville Marriner: Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Classical Jazz Quartet with Kenny Barron, Ron Carter, Stefon Harris, Lewis Nash, and more.

Launched in 1977 by NASA, the Voyager Spacecraft 1 and 2 includes The Golden Record, a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk that contains sounds and images selected by a team headed by Carl Sagan and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth. The first music included on The Golden Record is The Brandenburg Concertos performed by Munich Bach Orchestra. The Golden Record also includes over 100 photographs and a variety of natural sounds, such as those made by surf, wind and thunder, birds, whales, and other animals. It also includes musical selections from different cultures and eras, spoken greetings from Earth-people in fifty-five languages, and printed messages from President Jimmy Carter and U.N. Secretary General Kurt Waldheim.

The Golden Record is intended to communicate a story of our world to extraterrestrials and any other spacefarers that might find them in the distant future. Continuing on their more-than-40-year journey since their 1977 launches, the Voyager Spacecraft each are much farther away from Earth and the Sun than Pluto and are deep into interstellar space.

The Monterey, CA region has a major connection to The Brandenburg Concertos. Since 1935, the Carmel Bach Festival has performed one of its concertos over 260 times and the Monterey Symphony has presented rousing renditions.

During the March 24 broadcast, viewers can send in their answers to the questions: What music would you like to have heard on the Voyager Golden Record that they did not include? What music would you want to represent all of humanity and human history that might be launched on a future Golden Record that would travel through space for the next 5 billion years? Why?

The Brandenburg 300 Project is sponsored by the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute and the Music and Performing Arts Department at California State University Monterey Bay, California State University Monterey Bay, Alliance for California Traditional Arts, California Rodeo Salinas, Carmel Bach Festival, Monterey County Pops!, Monterey Jazz Festival, Monterey Symphony, Palenke Arts, SETI Institute, and KAZU radio.

For more information and to register for the March 24 broadcast, please go to BrandenburgConcerto300thAnniversary.com.

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