Oregon Bach Festival is guided by artistic luminaries who 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.
Current OBF Artistic Partners
Jos van Veldhoven
Historically Informed Performance Practice
For more than 35 years, Jos van Veldhoven was artistic director of the Netherlands Bach Society and developed this 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. 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.
Van Veldhoven often attracts attention with performances of ‘new’ repertoire within the early music genre, including 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 is in great demand as a guest conductor, and 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 ground-breaking work in early music.
Ken-David Masur
Modern Choral-Orchestral Projects
Hailed as “fearless, bold, and a life-force” (San Diego Union-Tribune) and “a brilliant and commanding conductor with unmistakable charisma” (Leipzig Volkszeitung), Ken-David Masur is Music Director of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and Principal Conductor of the Chicago Symphony’s Civic Orchestra.
Masur’s tenure in Milwaukee has been notable for innovative thematic programming, including a festival celebrating the music of the 1930s and a city-wide Bach Festival. In Chicago, Masur leads the Civic Orchestra, the premiere training orchestra of the Chicago Symphony, in a variety of programs including an annual Bach Marathon.
Masur has conducted distinguished orchestras around the world, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit, National and San Francisco Symphonies, l’Orchestre National de France, Minnesota Orchestra, Rochester Philharmonic, Norway’s Kristiansand Symphony and Tokyo’s Yomiuri Nippon Symphony. He has also made regular appearances at Ravinia, Tanglewood, the Hollywood Bowl, Grant Park, and international festivals including Verbier.
Masur is passionate about contemporary music and has conducted and commissioned dozens of new works, many of which have premiered at the Chelsea Music Festival, an annual summer festival in New York City founded and directed by Masur and his wife, pianist Melinda Lee Masur.
Masur and his family are proud to call Milwaukee their home and enjoy exploring all the riches of the Third Coast.