EMU’s Lehman Auditorium has surely seen its share of historic firsts over the years, though last week might have marked the first time a memorandum of understanding has ever been signed on its stage. 

Representatives from EMU and the Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival (SVBF) advisory board, along with supporters of the festival, gathered on the auditorium stage on Thursday, Aug. 14, to celebrate the SVBF’s status as an independent 501(c)(3) organization. The event included a ceremonial signing of documents and drew more than two-dozen people. 

EMU financially sustained the annual summer festival since its start in 1993 until last year. The agreement signed last week outlines the transfer of ownership from the university to Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival Inc., which was granted tax-exempt nonprofit status in January 2025 and officially became independent from EMU on July 1. Signers included Dr. Tynisha Willingham, provost and vice president of academic affairs at EMU, and members of the SVBF executive committee: Christine Fairfield, chair; Angela Showalter, vice chair; Cara Modisett, secretary; and Fred Kniss, treasurer. 

Thursday’s ceremony provided an opportunity for donors, staff, and stakeholders to mark the momentous occasion and reflect on the history of the 33-year-old festival.

Following a piano performance of Bach’s Prelude in E major, BWV 854, from The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1, from Dr. David Berry, director of the music program at EMU and artistic director of the SVBF, Professor Emeritus Dr. Kenneth J. Nafziger offered a historical perspective on the founding of the festival. 

Nafziger, a member of EMU’s music faculty for 39 years before he retired in 2017 and founding conductor and artistic director of the SVBF, shared stories from the festival’s earliest days.

In 1992, near the start of the fall semester, he was having a dinner with several EMU friends when they began asking him about his experiences conducting the Lake Chelan Bach Fest in north-central Washington that summer. “I noticed that Joe (former EMU President Joseph Lapp) was taking notes,” Nafziger shared. “When the note-taking stopped, he said, ‘What would it take to get something like that going here?’ We took him at his word…and in January of 1993, we were given the go-ahead to do a festival in June. With expert help from Helen (Nafziger), Scott Hosfeld, and Marcia Kauffman, we made the first one happen, and it included vanilla ice cream and hot raspberry sauce at intermission.”

“The beginnings of rehearsals from the second season forward resembled a family reunion,” he continued. “Local orchestral players, including JMU friends, local singers and relatives from east of the Mississippi and Canada, we grew.”

Willingham spoke about the relationship between EMU and the SVBF. “You are still a part of the EMU family and the fabric of EMU,” she said. “EMU has three core values—academic excellence, peace and justice, and active faith—and the Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival exemplifies those core values.”

“We know that in our public schools, the arts have been the first things that have been cut,” she said, crediting the festival’s “pay-what-you-can” ticket pricing with allowing everyone to experience music, regardless of economic status. “The Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival is a gift. It’s been a gift to EMU for over 30 years, it’s been a gift to our community for over 30 years, and it’s been a gift to everyone who has stood on this stage.” 

Included in the memorandum of understanding is an agreement that Lehman Auditorium and Martin Chapel will continue to serve as venues for SVBF performances for at least the next three years, said Les Helmuth, interim executive director of the festival.

“What I discovered in this past year of talking with donors, businesses, and people behind the festival is that the breadth and depth of support is this wide,” he said, stretching out his arms. “It comes from all walks of life, and it’s fabulous. It really is. It’s a great community treasure, and we desperately need to keep it going.”

The Rev. Dr. Sarah Ann Bixler, dean for the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at EMU, delivered the blessing for the event. Other EMU representatives in attendance included Interim President Rev. Dr. Shannon W. Dycus and Kirk Shisler, vice president for advancement.

The 34th annual Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival will be held from June 8-13, 2026. Find out more at .

The Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival, with Kenneth J. Nafziger as artistic director and conductor, continued its tradition of artistic excellence by offering unparalleled classical music concerts with the highest caliber of musicians. This year’s theme, “Bach and Some Admirers,” featured works that reflect other composers’ admiration for Bach.

Dr. Kenneth Nafziger directs the Bach Festival orchestra, chorus and soloists Thomas Jones and Sharla Nafziger in Johannes Brahms’ “Requiem” the evening of June 16.
Photo by Jim Bishop

The ability of music to both inspire and bring healing was exemplified in the appearance on campus of internationally-acclaimed Canadian pianist Janina Fialkowska. She first collaborated with the Bach Festival in 1999 and was diagosed with a cancerous tumor in her left arm in 2002.

Ms. Fialkowska returned to the Lehman Auditorium stage to play Chopin’s “Concerto No. 2 in F Minor for Piano and Orchestra” and “Concerto No. 1 in E Minor for Piano and Orchestra” during the second festival concert June 15. She received a rousing standing ovation for each concerto performance.

In addition to her concert performances, at the Thursday noon concert, June 14, at Asbury United Methodist Church in Harrisonburg.

The monumental Johannas Brahms’ “Requiem” was performed June 16 by the festival chorus and orchestra, with featured soloists Sharla Nafziger, soprano, and Thomas Jones, baritone. It was Ms. Nafziger’s fifth appearance as a guest artist and Jones’ third at the festival.

The opening concert Sunday afternoon, June 10, featured the Bach “Concerto for Two Violins” with soloists Joan Griffing and Susan Black, and music of South American composers Hietor Villa-Lobos and Astor Piazzolla and of Felix Mendelssohn.

Festival performers presented shorter works in well-attended daily noon concerts Monday through Saturday, June 11-15, at Asbury United Methodist Church in downtown Harrisonburg. On June 16, local young musicians were featured.

The festival concluded Sunday morning, June 17, with the Leipzig service, a re-creation of an 18th century worship service at St. Thomas Lutheran Church in Leipzig, Germany, where Bach was cantor and composed a cantata for each week’s service.

“For a brief period each year, Harrisonburg becomes Leipzig, Germany, and Lehman Auditorium is transformed into St. Thomas Lutheran Church,” Dr. Nafziger stated. Bach’s “Cantata No. 100” was the featured work, with Father James Massa, a priest of the Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, N.Y., as homilist.

Some musicians return every year to participate in the Bach Festival; a few, like Harrisonburg native Mark Hartman, have participated every year since the festival began in 1992.

Hartman, who teaches violin, viola and music theory at Cental College in Pella, Iowa, looks forward to playing violin in the festival, noting: “The performers and the music come together and develop a personality under the direction of Ken (Nafziger).

Mark Hartman, now teaching in Iowa, and colleague Philip Stoltzfus, Northfield, Minn., rehearse the Bach “Orchestral Suite.” They return to Harrisonburg every year to play in the Bach Festival orchestra.
Photo by Jim Bishop

“The Bach Festival has become fine-tuned, with a different theme every year, but the basic purpose remains – an opportunity for musicians to perform and audiences to experience a week of great music,” Hartman said.

Suzanne K. (Sue) Cockley of Harrisonburg has sung in the festival chorus several years and read scripture at this year’s Leipzig service. She deemed it a “luxury to immerse myself in a full week of classical music – exhaustive but inspiring.”

“For 14 years I have returned to the Bach Festival for the great music, great performances and great camaraderie. It is one of the most meaningful constants in my life,” said Sandra Gerster of Baltimore, principal oboist in the festival orchestra.

“I come back every year because the trust, respect and integrity that Ken Nafziger brings to the Festival is unsurpassed. He cultivates a safe environment where we are encouraged to take artistic risks, to try to perform something in a new way, where the musical process is valued and where the performances are truly expressions of emotion, not plastic displays of static perfectionism,” she said.

“I return because my colleagues have become my family, and I am constantly inspired, awestruck, heartened and buoyed by them,” Gerster added.

Such sentiments were echoed by Mary Kay Adams, Bach Festival coordinator and principal flutist in the festival orchestra.

Ms. Adams said she relished the chance “to work closely with so many wonderful people who played a vital role in making the festival successful – the musicians, board members, community volunteers, EMU staff, donors, families who house musicians and Ken Nafziger and Joan Griffing.

“This festival continues to exceed my expectations on both musical and personal levels each year,” Adams said. “I’ve played in the orchestra since the beginning, 15 years ago, and have a deep appreciation for the outstanding musical quality. And because of the friendships established with returning musicians through the years, we look forward to working together each summer and renewing those bonds.”

Next year’s Bach festival will be held June 8-15, 2008, on the theme, “Bach and String Things.” Information is available on-line at .

The program opens Sunday, June 10 and concludes with the popular Leipzig worship service June 17.

Dr. Kenneth Nafziger directs the orchestra and choir in Bach’s “Mass in B Minor” to open the 2006 festival.
Photo by Jim Bishop

“Since Felix Mendelssohn’s revival of Bach’s ‘St. Matthew Passion’ in 1829, composers have been inspired by the monumental music of the late Baroque master,” said Kenneth J. Nafziger, artistic director and conductor of the festival. “The circle of admirers includes all who participate in Bach festivals around the world and musicians from many cultures who have made his music their own.”

The opening concert, at 3 p.m. Sunday, June 10, in Lehman Auditorium. will feature Bach’s “Concerto for 2 Violins and Strings in D Minor” with violinists Joan Griffing and Susan Black; “Bachianas brasileiras, No. 1” by Heitor Villa-Lobos, Mendelssohn’s’ “String Symphony No. 5 in B-flat Major” and “Las Cuatro Estaciones Portenas” (The Four Seasons) by Astor Piazzola.

Janina Fialkowska, pianist

Major festival concerts will be held at 7:30 p.m. Friday, June 15 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, June 16 in Lehman Auditorium. Friday’s program will feature the brilliant artistry of pianist Janina Fialkowska in two concertos for piano and orchestra by Frederic Chopin, along with Bach’s “Orchestral Suite No. 1 in C Major and Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach’s “Symphony in E-flat Major.”

Saturday night’s program will draw on the combined talents of the Bach festival orchestra and choir with guest soloists Sharla Nafziger, soprano, and Thomas Jones, bass, in performing Johannes Brahms’ “Requiem.”

Chamber music programs with instrumentalists and vocalists from the festival will be presented noon-1 p.m. Monday through Saturday, June 11-16, at Asbury United Methodist Church, S. Main St., in Harrisonburg. Admission is free; donations are welcomed.

The festival will conclude with the annual Leipzig service at 10 a.m. June 17 in Lehman Auditorium, often cited by many attendees as the highlight of the week. The program recreates an 18th century worship service at St. Thomas Lutheran Church in Leipzig, Germany, where Bach was cantor and conducted a cantata for each week’s service.

The Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival is sponsored in part by the Virginia Commission for the Arts and the Arts Council of the Valley.

Bach Festival tickets are available on-line at or by calling the EMU box office at 540-432-4582.

No, it’s not "Be Bop a Lula," But Be assured, there’s Boundless Beautiful music in store as the Begins its 13th season this summer at ��ݮ����, June 12-19.

Under the artistic direction of , professor of , this year’s program will combine the dazzling masterworks of prolific German composer Johann Sebastian Bach with the music of other "Bs" – Brahms, Bartok, Berstein, Britten, Boccherini, Bruch and Berlioz.

"Many people assume classical music is made up of three famous ‘Bs’ – Bach, Beethoven and Brahms, Dr. Nafziger noted. "So why not find an interesting collection of music by composers whose last names begin with the letter B?

"The choice of Beethoven’s ‘Symphony No. 9’ was in response to numerous and repeated requests for this well-loved work to be performed at a festival sometime," he said.

Nafziger pointed out that this is the 200th centennial of the death of Italian composer Luigi Boccherini. "With little likelihood of featuring his festival any time soon, I chose to find a way to include him this year," he said. "Let’s see: what do Beethoven and Boccherini have in common? Not much, actually!

"The only point of unity was the initial B, which, fortuitously is also the first initial of him for whom this festival is named. Aha! How about Bach and other Bs? I would like to claim this as a stroke of genius, but it really was an accident!"

The opening concert, at 3 p.m. Sunday, June 12, in EMU’s Lehman Auditorium, will feature Bach’s "Concerto for Flute, Violin and Harpsichord in A Minor" with Pedro Aponte, flute; Joan Griffing, violin; and Bradley Lehman, harpsichord. Other "Bs" on the program are Leonard Bernstein’s "Missa Brevis," Bela Bartok’s "Romanian Folk Dances" and Benjamin Britten’s "Simple Symphony."

Major festival concerts will be held 7:30 p.m. Friday, June 17 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, June 18. The delectable menu will include the appetizing Bach’s "Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F Major"; "Double Concerto for Clarinet and Viola and Orchestra" by Max Bruch; leading to the main course, Beethoven’s "Symphony No. 9 in D Minor" with the festival chorus and orchestra and soloists.

Sandwiched between the main festival concerts will be daily chamber music programs noon-1 p.m. at Asbury United Methodist Church with a variety of programs offered throughout the week. A Saturday (June 18) "Concert for Families" will feature a mother-daughter choir directed by Julia White.

The festival will conclude with the annual Leipzig Service 10 a.m. June 19 in Lehman Auditorium, often cited as the highlight of the week for many attendees. The program recreates an 18th century worship service at St. Thomas Lutheran Church in Leipzig, Germany, where Bach was cantor and composed a cantata for each week’s service.

The Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival is sponsored in part by the Virginia Commission for the Arts and the Arts Council of the Valley.

Advance tickets to the three concerts are available from the EMU box office, 540-432-4582. More information on the Bach Festival is available at .