CSU faculty members continue to extend their influence and vision across the region - and the world. Dr. James Kim, CSU Director of Choral Studies, has launched the Colorado Bach Ensemble, a group featuring professional singers and instrumentalists from across North America. The Colorado Bach Ensemble will perform their inaugural concerts in June with performances of J.S. Bach's Mass in B Minor.

What's the big deal with a new ensemble, particularly in a town that already has a symphony, an opera, and other assorted classical groups? Plenty. "Kim and...this organization being formed have the potential to put us on the map in the eyes of another audience," wrote Jim Clark, President of the Fort Collins Convention and Visitors Bureau in a recent column in the Coloradoan. "Kim intends this program to be recognized not nationally, but internationally. And I believe it will."

In fact, Kim is launching the ensemble from an international footing. Kim has just returned from Stuttgart, Germany, where he spent two weeks working with Dr. Helmuth Rilling - one of the world's leading Bach authorities - preparing a performance of the Mass in B Minor for audiences in Germany and Italy. That experience, along with Rilling's visit to CSU last fall, will, of course, color the preparation of the Colorado ensemble.

By any measure, this is a top-flight ensemble. Singers and musicians have been invited based on their proven ability to express the line, phrasing, and color that brings the music of Bach vividly to life. Soloists come from the international concert stage, including: Kelly Ballou and Anne-Kathryn Olsen, sopranos; Eric Jurenas, counter-tenor; Joe Mikolaj, tenor; Paul Max Tipton, bass-baritone.

Performing a masterwork of this scale - with musicians of this quality - can't help but add to the growing perception of Fort Collins as a burgeoning center for world-class culture alongside world-class business and science, much of which is being driven by CSU faculty.

"It's our hope to create an experience for young and old that mirrors what I and so many of my colleagues experience through the music of J.S.Bach," says Dr. Kim. "It empowers us, sustains us, and does nothing less than help us to be better people. It is a necessity, not a luxury."

Now, that's world-class vision.

The Colorado Bach Ensemble is sponsored in-part by the Colorado State University Department of Music, Theatre and Dance.

The inaugural Colorado Bach Ensemble performances will be on June 28 in Fort Collins at the Edna Rizley Griffin Concert Hall, located in the University Center for the Arts at Colorado State University, and on June 29 in Denver at the June Swaner Gates Concert Hall, located in the Newman Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Denver. Both performances will be at 7:30 p.m. A pre-concert talk by another world-class Bach expert, Dr. Earl Rivers from the College Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati, will take place at 6:30 p.m.