Due to Covid-19, our 2021 Bethlehem Bach Festival has been modified to offer live-streaming concerts and events. At this time, we are also announcing that Artistic Director and Conductor Greg Funfgeld has confirmed a new retirement date in response to our much compromised 2020-2021 season. Conductor Funfgeld will lead The Bach Choir and Bach festival orchestra through June 2022, completing his 39th Season.

At this year’s virtual Festival, he will lead Choir members, along with Orchestra members and soloists through live-streamed performances.

All updates will be posted here on our Festival page online.

This season, perhaps more than ever, we are anticipating The Bethlehem Bach Festival in May, 2021 with great excitement and joy!

Not only will The Festival be welcomed back into many lives following the 2020 hiatus, we will also be celebrating our Artistic Director and Conductor Greg Funfgeld, as he conducts his final Bach Festival after an almost 40-year tenure as our leader.

Music is a transformative experience. The bonds it creates, the memories it evokes, the traditions it builds: each one remarkable and treasured. While we have been unable to share these experiences with our audience for several months, we look forward to the Festival when we will once again forge connections through music and embark on those beautiful journeys together.

Tickets are on sale NOW by phone or by mail only; all Festival tickets will be on sale ONLINE beginning the Spring.

View the Season Brochure!

After accessing the brochure, use the > on the right of your screen to page through the brochure!

Download your order form!

After accessing the form, use the > on the right of your screen to page through the order form!

Access the Packer Church seating chart

Thank you for your support and we’ll see you in Bethlehem

Please contact Renée James, Marketing Director, with any questions about our upcoming Festival: 610-866-4382 x 115 or renee@bach.org

I bought tickets to the 2021 Festival. What are my options?

We are offering ticket-holders three options for their 2021 Festival tickets: a voucher toward any concerts in the 2021-2022 season, including Festival tickets; a refund or the option to make donation to The Choir in the amount of your tickets. You may make your selection online through this FORM.

I have a voucher for my unused 2020 Festival tickets. What do I do with that?

Many patrons have vouchers in hand, representing tickets purchased for either our Spring 2020 Concert or our 2020 Festival. We will honor all vouchers issued in 2020 through June 30, 2022.

We will reissue vouchers to everyone who received one in 2020, either for their tickets to the Spring Concert or the Festival. They will be valid through June 30, 2022.

With some Covid-19 restrictions being eased, and the ongoing vaccinations taking place, why isn’t the audience being allowed to attend?

Because we are performing as guests in various venues, we must adhere to their Covid Response Team protocol. At Lehigh University, Packer Memorial Chapel is closed until further notice, and outside guests are not allowed to have an audience in Baker Hall (Zoellner Arts Center).

In other venues, with the number of people involved in the performance – including The Choir and the Orchestra members and soloists – we’ve reached the in-person limit indoors.

How will the live-streaming work? What if I can’t watch the lecture or concerts on May 14 or 15th?

We are offering a 2021 “Festival Pass” at no charge but we do ask patrons to register. We’ll send a link to the live-stream to everyone who registers to view any or all events this year. Our live-streaming partner is NAME TK.

Once they premiere, the concerts will be available on The Choir’s YouTube channel starting on June 1 and may be viewed at any time.

Our largest event of the year takes place in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, traditionally on the campus of Lehigh University and on the historic grounds of the Moravian community. Glorious tradition, spirited performances, festival premieres…music for you. It will be our distinct pleasure to welcome so many of you back to Bethlehem in 2022 after a two-year “hold” on our live Festival concerts.

Our 112th Bethlehem Bach Festival in 2019 was – as ever – a time of reunions, annual renewal and contemplation and sharing this exquisite music as a community. The 2021 Virtual Festival was joyfully viewed by patrons from around the world – thank you! In 2022, as Artistic Director and Conductor Greg Funfgeld ends his influential and far-reaching tenure with The Choir, we will once again share our passion for Bach’s music with you and celebrate the transformative power of his extraordinary gifts.

Ticket Order Form

“It’s not only the history of the Festival but the personal history that so many of the performers and members of the audience have with it that gives the weekend a very wonderful and sentimental atmosphere.”

— Karen B., longtime Festival attendee

Festival Artist-in-Residence 2022

Eliot Fisk, Guitar
Ifor Jones Chamber Music Concert | Saturdays: May 14 and 21

Greg Funfgeld, Artistic Director and Conductor welcomes back Elliot Fisk, Guitarist, as our 2022 Artist-in-Residence.

Eliot Fisk is known worldwide as a charismatic performer famed for his adventurous and virtuosic repertoire. After nearly 50 years before the public he remains, as his mentor Andres Segovia once wrote, “at the top line of our artistic world.” In the 2017-18 season Fisk performed his transcriptions of all six Bach Cello Suites. The classical guitar repertoire has been transformed through Fisk’s innumerable transcriptions (including works by Bach, Scarlatti, Haydn, Mozart, Paganini, Schubert, Mendelssohn and many others). Following his own graduation in 1977, he founded the guitar department at the Yale School of Music. He is a Professor at the Universität Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria, where he teaches in five languages. He is also the Founder and Artistic Director of Boston GuitarFest (bostonguitarfest.org.)

“I have wanted to play the Boccherini/Cassado for years but the circumstances were never right. I heard Segovia play that work with Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1968 live in my hometown of Philadelphia, and I must have listened to this recording of it hundreds of times as a boy: those big old 33 LPs! Like the voice of God.” – Eliot Fisk