Carmel Bach Festival 1999 – present Copyright ©2010 CBH

Point Lobos

Every summer, musicians and audience gather in the picturesque town of Carmel-by-the-sea on the Monterey Peninsula, about two and a half hour’s drive south of San Francisco, for the Carmel Bach Festival.

The world-famous Pebble Beach Golf Courses are a mile or two north, and the natural beauty of Point Lobos—described as “the greatest meeting of land and water in the world” by landscape artist Francis McComas—is a few miles south following the Highway 1 along the coast through Big Sur to Los Angeles.

The town of Carmel itself was settled in the early 1900s as a Bohemian artist community. Remnants of this quaint beginning remain—there are no footpaths or street lighting, and houses don’t have numbers so they must be described as “Dolores 2 NE 12th”.

2007 marked the 70th year of the Carmel Bach Festival, and 2010 is the twelfth I’ve been asked to overlook the preparation of all the early keyboard instruments for two intensive weeks of rehearsals followed by the two-week and a day performance season. I’m never the only Australian in Carmel for the Northern summer: The orchestra has been led by Elizabeth Wallfisch for more than fifteen years. Sally-Anne Russell, mezzo-soprano soloist from Adelaide, is visiting for her ninth year.

More than a month out of every year represents a fair slab of time, and as Carmel has turned into sort of a second home for me, in 2004 I thought I’d write a bit about what happens here and what I do here: In spite of its longevity, the Festival is not so well known outside of California.

Rehearsal underway in 2004 for the St Matthew Passion in the newly-rebuilt Sunset Center Theater

The recently rebuilt Sunset Community Center is the focus of the Bach Festival. The city spent USD23 million and several years on the rebuild of the old grammar school hall which had been associated with the Bach Festival from its inception. The facility is shared by the Monterey Symphony and Carmel Music Society throughout the year, and has the latest in high-tech adjustable acoustic enhancement (LARES—Lexicon Acoustic Reinforcement and Enhancement System) to tweak the ambience of what used to be a hall not terribly well-suited for classical music performance at all.

The format of the Festival program has become well-established over the years, but each year sees its own minor variations. For the past two years, the performance season has been truncated from three weeks to two. Monday night has always been an opportunity to hear the Festival Strings with Libby Wallfisch on original instruments—much, but not all, of the Festival is performed on modern instruments at A440. Wednesday has traditionally been a Founders’ Memorial Concert in the San Carlos Borroméo de Carmelo Mission. Thursday night also features original instruments directed By Andrew Arthur.

This base program for the evening concerts repeats for the next two weeks, so each main program is performed twice. The Saturday of the final weekend is a celebratory Best of the Fest program, with highlights from the entire program and introduced by Music Director and Conductor Bruno Weil.

Sunset over the 18th-century Spanish Carmel Mission Basilica

All Saints Episcopal Church was the established venue for the Intermezzo Recital Series, with a wide variety of programs held early afternoons every weekday. In 2007 many of these moved to a new venue closer to the centre of Carmel, the Methodist Church of the Wayfarer. Several of these concerts always require an appropriate harpsichord, and occasionally organ in addition. This year, Monday, Wednesday and Thursday use fortepiano. The Saturday recital is usually held in the late morning at Sunset Center Theater. Again, this series repeats to cover the whole season.

To exploit the foyer space gained in the Sunset Center rebuild, 2004 saw the establishment of a series of Foyer Recitals based around theorbo. These Tuesday and Friday morning programs repeat for the durations of the festival. Keyboard crept into these for the first time in 2009.

As if that wasn't enough, there are also different Twilight and Candlelight programs—several requiring early keyboard most years—in various venues including the Church in the Forest at Robert Louis Stevenson School in nearby Pebble Beach.

Tuning the continuo organ for a performance in the Carmel Mission Photo: Jim Kasson

Running concurrently with all this is the Adams Vocal Master Class. In the final week there is always concert in Sunset of the four “VBAs”—the young professional singers who were chosen to study under David Gordon and Kendra Colton and Sanford Sylvan in this master class founded in 1984 to honor the late Virginia Best Adams.

Fortunately, each year there are normally at least some other concerts which don’t require my direct intervention: Monday morning’s solo Bach’s Organ Music at the Mission with Andy Arthur playing the Cassavant housed in the back gallery, and most of the Twilights at All Saints, for example. There are also a few family concerts, performance panels and outreach performances as well—some requiring early keyboards each year.

Many of the concerts are recorded for delayed broadcast on KUSP 88.9FM in Santa Cruz. The schedule can be found here.

“…the raddest harpsichord technician on earth!” View from my front yard to Carmel River Beach in 2006, using my official Festival vehicle on a rare morning off

The actual early keyboard instruments we use at the Festival are all sourced from owners in the Bay Area, packed and transported here by my dearest friend and colleague Kevin Fryer, who keeps reminding me that he was the keyboard technician here for nine years from 1990 until my first summer in 1999 when I was just filling in for him: Neither of us expected at the time that it would become a permanent arrangement! Last year I exceed Kevin’s term, though, so perhaps the job has truly become mine.

The keyboards are chosen in consultation with the performers to match their repertoire as closely as possible. We usually have four or five harpsichords and two organs—the latter essential to cover the large liturgical component of each Festival, and especially the double orchestra used in the years we do the St Matthew. All the harpsichords and organs are fortunately equipped with transposing keyboards. This year we have three fortepianos for me to look after. And the modern piano puts in a cameo appearance at one or two performances—with its own modern piano tuner.

There is a hectic schedule with moves from venue to venue handled by the unionized crew under the supervizion of the Production Manager Doug Mueller and Stage Manager Michael Becker. The frenetic activity of the initial fortnight of rehearsals is only exceeded by the mayhem of Opening Week where recitals for the next day have their required dress rehearsal immediately after the current day’s first performance. I seem to spend my waking time tuning then biking from one venue to the next, catching up with eMail using the wifi backstage when there is a moment of respite.

It’s no California summer beach holiday for me, and it’s not just tuning. Over the Festival period, there’s always the odd maintenance to perform on the keyboards as well. One of my first priorities after arrival is to work through the instruments, ensuring each is in top condition for the season. Often there are weak lead tuning rolls on the open wooden pipes of the organs to remake so their tuning will stay where put. Harpsichord strings break from time to time, as do quills with such intensity of use. It’s always been my policy to return the instruments in better condition than they arrived.

The keyboardists I’ve worked regularly with in Carmel include Andrew Arthur, Michael Beattie, David Breitman, John Butt, Holly Chatham, Scott Dettra, Daniel Lockert, Dongsok Shin, Michael Sponseller, Avi Stein, and Yuko Tanaka.

Each year, the Festival evolves. In 2009, I was invited to write a feature article for the program book on my activities here. 2010 is the final year of both Bruno Weil and Libby Wallfisch: 2011 sees our new Music Director and Conductor Paul Goodwin. The most number of tunings I’ve ever had to do on a single day was 13. (For the present festival tunings, please refer to the running total on the Tune-o-meter page.) All up, I tuned for 40 public performances in Carmel in 2006, not including private functions. As several programs required two or even three keyboard instruments, my tunings made a mammoth total of 222 over the five week period that year, including rehearsals. Perhaps the 2009 Festival was the busiest, though, with a daily average of 6.69 tunings: I can safely say I know of no other festival quite like this in the world…

Carey Beebe

		Interview 2007 KUSP’s Roger Emanuels interviewing Carey Beebe at the 2007 Carmel Bach Festival.
		2009 Keyboard Spectacular A lineup on the Sunset Center stage of all the keyboard instruments used during the two week concert season of the 2009 Carmel Bach Festival.	also on YouTube
		2008 Keyboard Spectacular A lineup on the Sunset Center stage of most of the keyboard instruments used during the three week concert season of the 2008 Carmel Bach Festival.	also on YouTube
		Tower Music @ the Mission The pagentry of the candlelit banner parade at San Carlos Borroméo de Carmelo Mission, 2008 Carmel Bach Festival.	also on YouTube
		Tower Music @ the Mission II For several decades, patrons arriving at evening concerts of the Carmel Bach Festival have been greeted by brass music.	also on YouTube
		Preview of Intermezzo Number 1 — A short portrait Preview of Douglas Mueller’s short documentary on Carey Beebe tuning at the Carmel Bach Festival.	also on YouTube
		Carmel Bach Festival 2001 The Sunset Center has been the primary venue for the Carmel Bach Festival for decades but with a major renovation taking place, the 2001 Carmel Bach Festival had to find a new auditorium. The main building at the Naval Post Graduate School in Monterey, which was once a luxury hotel, was chosen for the 2001 Carmel Bach Festival. In this story we hear what some people, Jesse Read, musician, Carey Beebe, harpsichord maker and tuner, have to say about how the change in venue affects the sound, the audience, and the musicians. Hear it for yourself in a couple of short excerpts from the program.
		An interview with Carey Beebe Filmed at the 2000 Carmel Bach Festival by Endorphin Productions. Carey Beebe has a fascinating and unusual occupation. He constructs harpsichords and travels the world to events like the Carmel Bach Festival to maintain and tune harpsichords. He tells us about the construction and peculiarities of these instruments as we discover the beauty of the harpsichord.

Full details of the 2010 Festival can be found—and tickets reserved—on the official Carmel Bach Festival web site.

	2010 Tune-o-meter
	2010 Instrument Gallery
	Site overview
	Harpsichords Australia Home Page