St. John’s Lutheran Church, adjacent to La Villita at 502 E. Nueva St. in downtown San Antonio, opens a new season of their popular First Friday Concert Series this week with a San Antonio musical treasure, and that’s pianist Zachary Ridgway.
The concert takes place at noon on September 4, and is a perfect lunchtime length—less than 40 minutes of music, followed by a luncheon on site. The concert is free (so is the parking), and lunch is available for a suggested $10 donation.
Ridgway’s program on Friday is called From Bach to Franck: Preludes, Chorales, & Fugues, and finds the pianist playing music of both composers, including a Bach piece that Ridgway says brings out the “wild side” of the composer, and César Franck’s “Prelude, Choral and Fugue.”
“It is an homage to Bach,” Ridgway says. “[Franck] takes three of Bach’s favorite genres… and write one gigantic piece. Each movement kind of imitates what Bach had done with those genres, [but] in the late 19th century idiom that Franck is writing in.”
Details on St. John’s First Friday concerts can be found here: https://stjohnssa.org/music/first-friday-concert-series/
Ridgway will also be stretching out on Sunday, September 6 with a concert at Trinity University, where he teaches in the Department of Music. That program begins at 3:00 p.m. and includes Franz Schubert’s last piano sonata, which Ridgway notes is a favorite of many listeners.
Use the audio player at the top of this page to hear Zachary Ridgway play music of J.S. Bach and César Franck live in the KPAC Performance Studio.
