Bach Festival Society honors John Sinclair’s 30th year
John Sinclair, the artistic director of the Bach Festival Society of Winter Park, thinks his organization found the perfect way to honor his 30 years of service to the music-making nonprofit.
The new John V. Sinclair Endowed Fund for Artistic Direction will make sure there’s money around to maintain the society’s level of excellence after Sinclair’s tenure comes to a close.
“I couldn’t think of anything nicer they could do,” said Sinclair.
The Bach Festival Society board of directors established the fund this year as a surprise for Sinclair in honor of his milestone.
“John’s tenure has established a standard of excellence and professionalism recognized by his peers and patrons alike,” said board chairman Eric Ravndal. “As it grows, the fund will provide income to support the highest quality of the next and subsequent directors.”
So far, more than $183,000 has been donated, mostly from board members, musicians and choir members, said executive director Elizabeth Gwinn.
“That’s enough to get it going,” she said. “We’ll be doing additional fundraising” now that the initiative is open to the whole in a rehearsal in 2015.
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The idea behind the fund is that it will permanently support part of the annual compensation of the artistic director, who also serves as the group’s conductor. Finding the right person to one day follow Sinclair to the podium could be tricky: The artistic director position is a complex one.
For one, the job requires proficiency in conducting both vocal and orchestra music.
“The world of conducting has gotten very specialized,” Sinclair said. “There’s a fairly small number of people who actually do both.”
The position also requires someone with a deep knowledge of the music of Bach’s time period, and someone who can work with both professionals and amateurs. While the society’s musicians are pros, the choir is made up of volunteers.
Finally, because of the Bach Festival Society’s close relationship with Rollins College, where it is headquartered and performs, it’s likely any future artistic director would be expected to teach. Sinclair is the chair of the Rollins music department. Teaching, of course, requires its own specialized skills.
“The kind of person who can conduct a B-minor Mass is not always the kind of person who wants to teach freshmen,” he said.
There’s plenty of time for the fund to grow further — Sinclair, 65, said he has no plans of stepping down just yet. With a laugh, he quotes the peasant from the Monty Python bit, mistakenly thought to have expired from the plague: “I’m not dead yet!”
Also conductor of the International Moravian Music Festivals, Sinclair is also known to local audiences as conductor of Orlando’s Messiah Choral Society and for conducting nearly 900 performances of Epcot’s Candlelight Processional at Walt Disney World.
“As long as my ears hold out, and my arms and shoulders,” he said, music lovers will find him at the podium.
The milestone has led Sinclair to reflect on how far the Bach Festival Society has come in the past 30 years. In his first semester, he recalled, there was one concert: The choir sang Christmas songs in Central Park with no more than a pitch pipe to guide them. Now, there is a full complement of performances nearly year round.
Which brings us back to the new fund named in Sinclair’s honor.
“I’m just beyond grateful. I knew they were up to something, but didn’t know to what extent,” he said. “I’ve spent a career trying to engender a love of music in this community. This is for its future.”
For more information on the John V. Sinclair Endowed Fund for Artistic Direction, go to BachFestivalFlorida.org.