Bach as a Bridge-Builder

Carla Dirlikov Canales and I have known each other since we were teenagers growing up in the twin towns of Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, Michigan — we even sang together as fellow voice majors at the University of Michigan. Since then, Carla has built a career turning music into a tool for cultural diplomacy: a State Department cultural exchange mission to Mexico led her to found The Canales Project in 2016, and in 2023 she became the National Endowment for the Arts' first Senior Advisor and Envoy for Cultural Exchange. She's currently a fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School.In this episode, Carla and I talk about identity, curiosity, and how Bach — a working musician employed by the city of Leipzig — offers a surprising model for thinking about music's power to build bridges between people and cultures today.Stick around to the end for the aria: the tenor aria "Bleibt, ihr Engel, bleibt bei mir" from Cantata BWV 19, Es erhub sich ein Streit, featuring Dominic Favia on period natural trumpet.NOTE ABOUT THE TRUMPET:Dominic Favia, our trumpet player for this aria, played this on a true period instrument, which is to say that it has no valves and no finger holes. These instruments, which is how trumpets were designed in Bach’s time, are only able to play notes that occur naturally in its own overtone series, which means that some of these notes don’t quite line up in the same ways our ears are accustomed to hearing in our time of equally-tempered modern pianos. This is not a mistake by any means, but just the physics of the instrument and is what we imagine would have been the same sound Bach’s own trumpeters would have made and what Bach himself would have been accustomed to hearing.Learn more about BACH 52 at bach52.nicholas-phan.com.Learn more about Dominic's trumpet at https://www.dominicfavia.com/about-the-natural-trumpetBACH 52 Episode 21Bach as a Bridge-Builderwith Carla Dirlikov Canales,   mezzo-soprano;  founder, The Canales Project  ⁨@thecanalesproject2624⁩  & Nicholas Phan, tenorARIA Tenor Aria from Es erhub sich ein Streit, BWV 19PERFORMERSNicholas Phan, tenorDominic Favia, trumpetSan Francisco Conservatory of Music Baroque Ensemble  Corey Jamason & Elisabeth Reed, directorsThis project is a fiscally sponsored project of FRACTURED ATLAS.To find our more information and to make a TAX-DEDUCTIBLE donation to support the continuation of this project please visit:https://fundraising.fracturedatlas.org/nicholas-phan-recording-projects