Basically Bach’s founder and music director Daniel V. Robinson quit teaching music at a small college in Ohio and came home to Chicago in 1983. While deciding what to do with the rest of his life, he “joined a couple of music groups and kept musically active.” He and Christie Enman, later Basically Bach’s executive director, sang with several early-music groups in the city, and his wife Kate played violin. Then, he says, “We just decided that we thought we could do better on our own–and I was really eager to get back into conducting. We realized that what both I and the market were well suited for at that point was a Baroque music group based on historical principles.” They started out small in 1984, doing mostly choral pieces, since singers were who they knew.
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“Then,” says Robinson, “the whole field of Baroque authentic-performance-practice performances just took off, and we found that the music demanded much more instrumental participation than we had imagined at first. That meant we were going to have to struggle to get the money to do that. We’ve moved kind of slowly in that sense, pacing our growth somewhat with our financial abilities.”
He is not bothered by the fact that the group’s growth has been slower than, say, the other local early-music success story, the City Musick. “The first season we budgeted and spent about $10,000. I have no idea where that money came from, although a few people actually came to our concerts–we had about 50 subscribers. This year our budget is somewhere between $180,000 and $200,000. And although we’re not through with our season subscription drive, we have over 600 subscribers, which is double last year. My understanding is that a great deal of City Musick money is foundation money and corporate grants. This is the opposite of us–we’ve tried to build our base on individual giving and earned revenue. You look at something like the Orchestra of Illinois, which was a great idea but was also largely supported by foundation grants. The foundation grants vanished, and they had no basis–and had not as yet discovered a mission that could sustain them. You wonder if the same phenomenon could happen here.
The two works can be heard Friday at 8 PM at the Cathedral of Saint James, 65 E. Huron; Saturday at 8 PM at the First Congregational Church of Evanston, 1445 Hinman in Evanston; and Sunday at 7:30 PM at the First United Church of Oak Park, 848 Lake St. in Oak Park. Call 334-2800 for further information.
