By Gary Alexander

Special to the Weekly

In October, I wrote about the visiting Garfield Band with this opening: “One of the challenges of island life is the expense and time necessary to attend a single great musical event in Seattle. You must find a place to stay overnight, negotiate the ferries and the freeways, both ways. Alas, a $25 concert ticket can easily turn into a $250 trip for a music lover. Out of inertia, we generally stay home and dream longingly of the concerts we could have seen.” My conclusion: “You don’t have to travel to Italy – or even Seattle” to hear great music without leaving the island – one case in point being the Garfield concert.

Now, with the holiday season approaching, the next best offer I can make to Lopez music lovers is a same-day (out and back) ferry ride to nearby Orcas Island to hear a program of Bach’s great music, including the Magnificat and Cantata No. 140 (Sleepers Awake), brought to you by the 50-plus singers of the Orcas Choral Society, along with a full 20-piece Baroque orchestra drawn from Seattle, Orcas and elsewhere, plus the Orcas Boys Choir, and a professional baritone soloist, Philip Cutlip, coming to Orcas in collaboration with the Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival.  In the words of director Roger Sherman, a noted Bach scholar and conductor of the OCS since 2010, “It’s not often you get to hear a chamber orchestra live in a small hall with a 50-voice choir singing the glorious music of Johann Sebastian Bach.”

Lopez residents can board the inter-island ferry Sunday, Dec. 7, departing at 11:25 a.m. That allows plenty of time for lunch on Orcas before the 2 p.m. concert.  (Car-pooling reduces per-person costs.) Then, you can mix at leisure with the singers after the concert and return to Lopez on the 6:45 interisland ferry.

Another option is to attend the free Pre-Concert Audience Seminar on Tuesday, Dec. 2, noon to 1:30 p.m. at the Emmanuel Church parish hall. Lopezians can take the 9:55 a.m. ferry to Orcas, returning at 3:10 p.m.

Even though rehearsals involve overnight stays on Orcas for Lopez singers, three Lopez vocalists have joined the Orcas Choral Society for this concert – Ginni Keith, Gary Vaughn and yours truly.

For years, I have encouraged Island concert promoters to seek an inter-island audience by creating an option for same-day ferry round-trips to musical events on neighboring islands. I have also urged singers and other musicians to make the effort to hear other-island concerts, reasoning that if we want a good audience for our own events, it helps to “pay it forward” by honoring other singers with our presence.

One example of cross-island collaboration came last year, when OCS Director Roger Sherman played organ in “Carols and Lessons” on Lopez. Sherman is an ideal director for the Orcas singers, especially when channeling J.S. Bach’s genius. Sherman won a music scholarship to Oberlin Conservatory, where he received a bachelor of arts in music theory and history. He has been associate organist at St. Mark’s Cathedral since 1985, in addition to serving as president of Cathedral Associates (a concert presenting organization).

Since 1993, Sherman has produced and hosted a Sunday evening radio show “The Organ Loft” on KING-FM (98.1). After moving to Orcas 14 years ago, he developed Loft Recordings and then The Gothic Catalog, a mail order catalog focused on organ and choral music.

As director of Orcas Choral Society since 2010, he says “I feel very fortunate for the opportunity to make music with such talented and interested people. I love choral music; there’s nothing like it in the whole world.” He says singing is communal spiritualism. “All singing is spiritual in nature.”

Come to Orcas on Dec. 7 to see (and hear) Bach’s glorious “Magnificat” and “Sleepers Awake.”