NEWS
BY BOB KEEFER
MUSICIAN DIS-INVITED
FOR 2018 OREGON BACH
FESTIVAL
Eugene’s Premier Dispensary
And the summer festival’s schedule has also been announced
C
ellist Jaap ter Linden has con-
firmed that his invitation to con-
duct a concert at this summer’s
Oregon Bach Festival was re-
scinded after Eugene Weekly
reported that he had been let go from a
conducting job at Oberlin Conservatory
over using a racial epithet in a rehearsal
in 2015.
In an email and lengthy phone in-
terview, though, ter Linden said OBF
JAAP TER
Executive Director Janelle McCoy was
LINDEN
apologetic about canceling his invitation
to conduct students at the festival’s Ber-
wick Academy at a July 3 concert during the upcoming festival.
“Janelle told me they were very, very sorry, but in light of the situation in the university
having to do with last year’s events — it’s a very sensitive situation regarding these mat-
ters — they were withdrawing [the invitation],” he says.
He was referring to last summer’s firing of artistic director Matthew Halls. OBF let
Halls go on Aug. 24 amid complaints — which Halls disputed — of racist and sexist be-
havior. Full details were never made public, but some of the charges appeared relatively
minor in subsequent releases of public records.
Ter Linden also provided more background on his dismissal from Oberlin. Because of
scheduling problems, he said, fewer and fewer students had been able to come to rehearsals
he was conducting there, and one day he made joking reference to a Dutch children’s book
title from his youth, Ten Little N----s.
The children’s book — as did a 1939 Agatha Christie mystery novel of the same title,
later retitled And Then There Were None — uses subtraction as a story device.
Ter Linden, who is Dutch, said he was unaware at the time of the cultural load the word
bore in the U.S. Now married to an American musician and living in Ohio for the past year
and a half, he says he’s become much more sensitive to racial issues in this country.
“I am not a politician. I had no sensitivity for these things,” he says. “I have now seen
what the situation is in this country, and my sensitivity has grown, of course.”
Meanwhile, OBF has announced its schedule for this summer’s festival, which runs June
29 through July 14. It will include two previously announced commissions. JoAnn Fall-
etta will conduct the world premiere of The Passion of Yeshua by Richard Danielpour on
July 8, and pianist Simone Dinnerstein will perform the Pacific Northwest premiere of
Piano Concerto No. 3 by Philip Glass on July 12.
The festival will open once again at Eugene’s Hult Center, with an all-Bach program
that includes conducting by Monica Huggett of Portland Baroque Orchestra and Seattle
Baroque Orchestra’s Alexander Weimann; they’ll be doing four of Bach’s Brandenberg
Concertos (Nos. 1, 2, 4 and 5) and Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 4. ■
Tickets go on sale to the public in early May. See more info at OregonBachFestival.org.
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eugeneweekly.com • February 8, 2018
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