THE MAESTRO SERIES: An interview with Dana Marsh

Across the Arts with Patrick D. McCoy

After an extensive round of auditions and interviews for the revered post as artistic director of The Washington Bach Consort, Dana Marsh was named the new director, succeeding the late Dr. J. Reilly Lewis, who founded the consort in 1977. Lewis died unexpectedly in June 2016. His remarkable artistry will long be remembered, treasured and felt. Art journalist Patrick D. McCoy chats with Dr. Dana Marsh about his new post, the upcoming season with The Washington Bach Consort, finding academic balance with his post at Indiana University and his vision for the consort. As director of the Historical Performance Institute and chair of the Early Music Department at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, Dana Marsh has directed a broad range of ensemble performances and NPR broadcasts at Jacobs since 2014. He coaches aspiring vocalists in historical performance and teaches early notation and performance practice. As an academic, Marsh was invited to be a panelist at the Smithsonian Institution’s conference “Historically Informed Performance in Higher Education” in 2015. In May 2016, he founded the annual international conference “Historical Performance: Theory, Practice and Interdisciplinarity,” which has attracted scholars and performers from a dozen countries. He recently founded the annual, peer-reviewed journal, “Historical Performance” (IU Press), which contributes significant research to the field.