Northwest BachFest presents Grammy Award Winning Catalyst Quartet (Karla Donehew Perez, violin; Abi Fayette, violin; Paul Laraia, viola; and Karlos Rodriguez, cello) in concert. Grammy-Award winning BachFest Artistic Director Zuill Bailey, cello, will also perform.

The first fully realized string quartet version of J.S. Bach’s famous Goldberg Variations was created through a collaborative arranging process by the Catalyst Quartet that created the first fully realized four-voiced version of the Goldberg Variations, originally for keyboard. Catalyst Quartet wrote, “Over the course of a year and half, we researched, arranged, edited, interpreted, RE-interpreted, and RE-edited the entire 30 Variations and Aria. With our eyes set on recording this work, we went to Aldeburgh, England in January 2014. Under the auspices of the Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme, we workshopped our arrangement with renowned cellist and Bach interpreter Pieter Wispelwey. After two weeks of intense study, we presented the debut of our new arrangement to a very enthusiastic audience at Jubilee Hall. Overall, the project has transformed the way we interpret Bach’s music.”