Student fuses classical music with rock

The Bible might state that Jesus was crucified on the cross in Golgotha. But this weekend, he’s going to be on trial with a little rock music to back him up.

The IU Art Museum will become a stage for the student-run production of “PASSIONate CONVICTions,” a re-envisioning of Johann Sebastian Bach’s “St. John Passion” by graduate student Mark Doerries.

Doerries, a doctoral candidate of choral conducting in the Jacobs School of Music, said the concert will feature a multi-level production of classical music with rock influences. Doerries said he has been working on the show for roughly four years.

“What I’ve done is take a work from Bach’s time, the 17th century, and have translated it into a modern idiom, a rock idiom,” Doerries said. “And we’re going to see if it works.”

The original piece is one of two passion compositions created by Bach and follows the story of Peter’s betrayal of Jesus through the Crucifixion.

While the original is mainly a choral performance still used in churches today, Doerries’ concert will be staged as a courtroom scene in which Peter is tried for his denial of Jesus, which will then be followed by the eventual betrayal and persecution of Christ by Pontius Pilate.

Rather than performing the show on a stage, Doerries said, the concert will take place on all four levels of the Art Museum’s Atrium, with the audience dispersed throughout the ground, mezzanine and second floor.

“You won’t necessarily see everything, but everyone will be able to see about 90 percent of what’s going on,” he said, “The idea is to stage what’s going on in the original oratorio.”

Doerries said he hopes to attract nontraditional audiences that would typically avoid classical music, people who are in their teens and twenties. To do so, he added influences from his favorite rock bands growing up, such as The Violent Femmes, U2 and R.E.M.

He said the ultimate goal is to bring classical music out of the concert halls and into more popular venues such as cafes and bars.

Graduate student Sharon Harms, a member of the chorus, said the concert is something people of various ages can enjoy.

“We’re going to have a huge academic community interested just because it’s Bach,” she said. “And then you’re going to have a younger audience interested because it has a rock band.”

Harms said the show is like nothing she’s ever seen or participated in and the audience will enjoy the amount of visuals and the lack of formality usually found in concert halls.

As part of ArtsWeek 2010, the Art Museum will also showcase a collection of works depicting the Passion Story to coincide with the concert, said Josie Larimer, museum manager of events.

Works created by medieval and Renaissance artists, including Matthias Stomer, Albrecht Dürer and Rembrandt van Rijn will be on display in the Gallery of the Art of the Western World during the weekend.

Doerries said the concert will be a unique experience and that he hopes the experimental take on the music will draw a larger crowd that might gain new appreciation for classical works.

“I think it’s going to be an exciting, loud time,” he said. “You’ve got opera singers singing rock music and rock musicians playing classical music, so it’s going to be this kind of fusion of many different worlds; hopefully, a big explosion of sound and ideas.”