In addition to his well-known Passions based on the Gospels of John and Matthew, Bach wrote a Passion setting for the Gospel of Mark. After his death in 1750, Bach’s Markus Passion was hand-delivered to a Leipzig publisher. By the time the centennial complete works of Bach’s music were compiled in 1850, the work had gone missing. The lost Passion was reconstructed in 2019 by Malcolm Bruno, and in 2025, a new OBF-commissioned stage production tours the US and UK featuring beloved TV/film actor Joseph Marcell (The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air). The “pocket passion”—which includes four singers and single strings —gives the world what it never should have lost. A production by Concert Theatre Works.

OBF Baroque Orchestra
Joseph Marcell, narrator
Pascale Beaudin, soprano
Cody Bowers, alto
James Reese, tenor
Jonathan Woody, bass
Julian Perkins, conductor and harpsichord

This concert will also be performed at First United Methodist Church in Portland on Saturday, July 12, and at Town Hall, Seattle on Sunday, July 13. Tickets for those performances are available through their respective venues.

Artists, dates, times, repertoire, and venues are subject to change.