Festival Stories: Jeremy Nafziger

The first Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival was held two years after I graduated from Eastern Mennonite College, which was wonderful for many reasons, including that I had more chances to sing with my college choir director, Ken Nafziger, one of the festival’s founders and artistic director for its first thirty years. And he’s also my dad, so I was around the festival from the beginning—even before the beginning, when Ken and Helen (my mother) and Scott Hosfeld and Marcia Kauffman were working on the first season, and I even went twice to the Lake Chelan (Washington) Bach Festival, the first Bach festival dad conducted, to see what was up before the valley got its own.

And I have sung in almost all the public Bach festival choirs since, missing just one when a combination of distance and babies’ ages turned out to be too much. There have been many stunning performances and even the rehearsals sometimes turn out to be the most beautiful music I’m involved in that year. And it’s not possible to pick a favorite, so here’s one week at the Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival that I will always remember. It’s for the music, most importantly, but the rest is what makes up each festival’s meaning and memories and story.

In 2006—I know it was 2006 because it was a World Cup year and the games started the same week as the Bach festival rehearsals—the first weekend’s concert was the Mass in B-Minor, with a 20-voice choir of invited singers. The invitations were to my dad’s list of top people who had ever sung in the EMU Chamber Singers with him, and in the first draft, I wasn’t on it. Fair! But still disappointing.

However, being around and being related and being a tenor eventually won out: a few people couldn’t make it, I got to be in the choir. At the first rehearsal, the choir members introduced themselves (OK, we pretty much already knew each other) and which voice part they were singing. When it came my turn, Dad said I was already his favorite singer in the choir—that contest was closed—and I said I would be singing in the “nepotism section.” And for my favorite conductor.

We rehearsed morning and afternoon for most of the week before the performance, and at lunch, I went to a restaurant on Waterman Drive and watched World Cup games. They were, near as I can tell, perfect days. I had never sung the B-Minor, and I don’t know that I’ve ever been more worried (terrified, even) of a performance—that small of a choir, and that music—but it was beautiful. 

Jeremy Nafziger
SVBF Board Member