About Bach, the Universe and Everything

Is there life out there? It may be some time before we’re making reservations at Milliways (aka The Restaurant at the End of the Universe in The Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy ‘trilogy’), but astronomers and scientists are increasingly finding signs of life in the solar system and beyond. We set off in search of answers once again.

Guided by the work of JS Bach, composer and intergalactic genius, our mission is to explore the human desire to better understand our place in the cosmos through his 200 cantatas. Each concert is built around a Bach cantata and a talk from a guest scientific speaker, alongside choral and instrumental music by other baroque and renaissance composers.

Soul Music – Sun 17 Dec

The December edition of our series brings together one of Bach’s sublime Advent cantatas, the sublime Ärgre dich, o Seele, nicht, BWV 186a, first performed in December 1716, with a talk from guest speaker Jon Culshaw – impressionist, comedian and actor.

Jon Culshaw has a deep connection to music and previously applied his inimitable skills in playing the iconic David Bowie for a BBC World Service radio drama, and is also a lifelong astronomy enthusiast with his repertoire of impressions notably including the great Patrick Moore. Here he will share with us his love for the night sky and the inspiration he has taken from it.

This performance will last approximately 1 hour, without an interval.

‘He was wrong to think he could now forget that the big, hard, oily, dirty, rainbow-hung Earth on which he lived was a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot lost in the unimaginable infinity of the Universe.’

Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy