Bach Around the Block, Kalamazoo's beloved progressive organ recital, returns for its 37th nearly-annual installment on Monday, June 8, at 7 p.m., beginning at St. Luke's Episcopal Church in downtown Kalamazoo. The free event, organized by the Southwest Michigan chapter of the American Guild of Organists, guides audiences on foot through three historic downtown churches — St. Luke's, First United Methodist Church, and First Congregational Church — each housing a distinctive pipe organ. Seven organists perform music spanning the full arc of Johann Sebastian Bach's career.
This year's program carries a special distinction: the Kalamazoo premiere of a newly authenticated Bach work, a Chaconne in G Minor. Brooks Grantier, an AGO fellow and longtime organizer of the event, explains that the piece was identified by a Leipzig archivist who concluded that while "the handwriting isn't Bach," it definitively "sounds like it." Grantier explains that Bach often required his students to copy music for him as part of their study.
Grantier notes that the evening's program traces Bach's biography geographically, moving from early works composed in Arnstadt and Mühlhausen, to his Weimar period at First United Methodist, and concluding with mature Leipzig compositions at First Congregational. Omar Padilla, organist at St. Philip's Church in Battle Creek and a first-time participant in the event, closes the concert with Bach's monumental Prelude in C minor, BWV 546. Padilla, who trained in Guadalajara and Mexico City before coming to Michigan to serve a Spanish-speaking parish community, calls the Prelude & Fugue in D major to be played by another featured organist "the masterpiece of the concert," adding that its fugue is "so bright, so beautiful" it makes him want to dance.
The concert also features a pedal-only solo, pieces drawn from Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, and a congregational chorale from the Orgelbüchlein. The event is free, open to all, and requires only a willingness to walk the short distances between the churches centered at Bronson Park, Kalamazoo.
The interview was summarized by Claude AI and edited by the author.