BACH ACADEMIE ALDEN BIESEN

(BELGIUM)

The choir and orchestra of the Bach Academie Alden Biesen gave their first performance in 2012. The ensemble is composed of professional musicians. They specialize in the music of the Baroque Era (17th-18th century), using only instruments of the same period. The repertory covers the music from Monteverdi to Mendelssohn.

On the yearly calendar are the following activities:

  1. Passion music (Palm Sunday and Good Friday)
  2. An international course for singers, organists and baroque instrumentalists (Aug.10 to 15)
  3. A baroque opera (last week of July)
  4. A baroque festival (first week-end of October)
  5. A Christmas concert (week-end before Christmas)
  6. Organ recitals

They have their residence in the Landcommanderij Alden Biesen, the cultural and conference center of the Flemish community in Rijkhoven (Belgium).

Artistic Director is Luc Ponet, who has been a regular guest organist at the International Bamboo Organ Festival since 2001.

Organum Alden Biesen

Kasteelstraat 6, 3740, 3740 Bilzen

www.organum-aldenbiesen.be

INTERNATIONAL BAMBOO ORGAN FESTIVAL

The Bamboo Organ of Las Piñas is not only a “curiosity;” it is one of the few remaining references left to the baroque music which sounded in the churches of the Philippines during the Spanish colonization, roughly covering the 17th until the middle of the 19th century. With the coming of the Americans (during the Philippine independence movement) in 1898, anything Spanish was vilified by the American victor, and the Filipino people forgot all about a period of 300 years of their own history.

After the restoration of the Bamboo Organ by Klais Orgelbau in Bonn in 1975, a Festival was initiated which became a yearly event - “part of an incredible ecosystem of individuals and groups that sprung up around the organ to give it life” - organ teachers and students, the Las Piñas Boys Choir, organ builders, the preservation of the historic organ patrimony, a choir and instrumental ensemble specializing in the performance of baroque music, in search for its musical past

The forthcoming exchange program in 2024 between the International Bamboo Organ Festival and the Bach Academie Alden Biesen is a major achievement, the result of persistently staging year after year major works of the Baroque era.

We owe this to the unwavering support of our sponsors and to the talented Filipino musicians who studied abroad and were exposed to the developments in the wider musical world and returned to their home base.

Our resident conductor, Beverly Shangkuan-Cheng, was invited to conduct the St. John’s Passion by J.S. Bach in Belgium in March 2024.

Dr. Beverly Shangkuan-Cheng has been the resident conductor of the International Bamboo Organ Festival since 2017.

She received a Bachelor of Music (summa cum laude) from the University of the Philippines, a Master of Music from the Yale School of Music and the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, and a Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Michigan. She is the President of the Philippine Choral Directors Association. Performance and adjudication engagements have brought her to all corners of the world.