Oregon Bach Festival is guided by artistic luminaries Jos van Veldhoven and Craig Hella Johnson. Our Artistic Partners are charged with shaping the Grammy-winning festival’s artistic vision, contributing to the development of the festival’s annual concert schedule, and cultivating artist relationships that result in new works and commissions. They also play key roles in the recruitment of conductors, instrumental and vocal performers, and educators.
Jos van Veldhoven
Jos van Veldhoven was artistic director of the Netherlands Bach Society for more than 35 years. Under his leadership, an impressive CD series was created, as well as concert tours in the Netherlands, Europe, the United States, and Japan. Music was not limited to Bach and his contemporaries, but also often included ‘new’ repertoire from the 17th and 18th centuries.
In his programming van Veldhoven knows how to connect tradition and adventure. He is the initiator of All of Bach, an ongoing 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 widely acclaimed recordings on YouTube.
Van Veldhoven often attracts attention with performances of ‘new’ repertoire within the early music genre. There have been some remarkable performances of oratorios by Telemann and Graun, vespers by Gastoldi, reconstructions of Bach’s St Mark Passion and the Köthener Trauer-Music and many lesser known seventeenth-century oratorios and dialogues. He has also conducted a large number of modern premieres of Baroque operas by such composers as Mattheson, Keiser, Bononcini, Legrenzi, Conti, and Scarlatti. Van Veldhoven is in great demand as a guest conductor, and has conducted the Dutch Chamber Choir, Netherlands Radio Choir, Flemish Radio Choir, Beethoven Orchester Bonn, Robert Schumann Philharmonic, Essen Philharmonic Orchestra, Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, and many of the Dutch symphony orchestras. Between 2001 and 2010, van Veldhoven worked with director Dietrich Hilsdorf on a cycle of staged Handel oratorios in the opera houses of Bonn and Essen.
Van Veldhoven 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 ground-breaking work in early music.
Craig Hella Johnson
Known for his depth of knowledge, artistic sensitivity, and rich imagination, Craig Hella Johnson creates deep connections between performers and listeners.
Critical Acclaim
Johnson is beloved by audiences, revered by singers, and lauded by critics and composers. The Wall Street Journal praised his ability to “find the emotional essence other performers often miss,” and Fanfare wrote that “Craig Hella Johnson has assembled and molded a first-rate choir to be respected as highly as the best we have had.”
Of Johnson’s performance of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, the San Antonio Express-News wrote: “Through all the amazing ebbs and flows of dynamics, the radiant balances, the seamless connection of episodes, the theatrically astute tempo relations, the unified structural arc, the music shone forth with organic naturalness. Nothing sounded fussed over. Everything just sounded right.”
Composer and Arranger
Johnson’s concert-length composition, Considering Matthew Shepard, was premiered in 2016 by Conspirare and has been performed by 40 choirs across the world. Songs from the oratorio are part of the high school and college compeitition repertoire.
As an arranger, Johnson has a signature “collage” style, marrying music and poetry, and blending sacred and secular, classical and contemporary, traditional and popular styles. He publishes the Craig Hella Johnson Choral Series, featuring specially selected composers as well as some of his original compositions and arrangements, with G. Schirmer Publishing. His works are also published by Alliance Music Publications.
Educator and Conductor
Johnson is also music director of the Cincinnati Vocal Arts Ensemble, artist in residence at Texas State University, and conductor emeritus of the Victoria Bach Festival.
Johnson was Artistic Director of San Francisco-based Chanticleer (1998-1999) and has served as guest conductor with the Austin Symphony, San Antonio Symphony, and many others in Texas, the U.S., and abroad.
As the Director of Choral Activities at the University of Texas at Austin from 1990-2001, Johnson led the graduate program in choral conducting. He remains an active educator, teaching nationally and internationally with professionals and students at conferences and universities. He is also a frequent speaker at regional and national conferences of the American Choral Directors Association. Craig Hella Johnson joined the faculty at Texas State as Artist in Residence in fall 2016 and continues to inspire his colleagues and students in innovative teaching and programming as Professor of Practice.
Biographical
A Minnesota native, Johnson graduated from St. Olaf College, the Juilliard School, and the University of Illinois, earning his doctorate at Yale University. As the recipient of a National Arts Fellowship, Johnson studied with Helmuth Rilling at the International Bach Academy in Stuttgart, Germany. He lives in Austin with his husband.