Evan Shinners is the founder of ‘The Bach Store’, and perhaps the most adequate heir apparent to Glenn Gould and Wendy Carlos when it comes to reinventors, re-imaginers, and first-amongst-worshipers of J.S. Bach. With quotes like ‘Thank Bach for God’, Shinners is a 21st-century Evangelist who reminds us that Bach does not belong just to the staid and boring worlds of Hewitt and Co., but was a human capable of expressing the wealth of human emotion on a level above others.

J.S. Bach: Suite in g minor, BWV 995 (1/2) (Evan Shinners, keyboard)

Firstly: what was the quintessential moment that stands out to you as the conception of your love obsession for JS?

Evan Shinners Records Bach © Alison Luntz Photography

There were two: as a child, I watched Disney’s ‘Fantasia’ over and over, where the opening music was Leopold Stokowski’s arrangement of the Toccata and Fugue. Around the age of ten, I asked my parents to buy the music – and they bought the Busoni transcription for piano. I — and this is crazy to imagine this actually happened — I crossed out Busoni everywhere it appeared and wrote SHINNERS. I didn’t know who Busoni was or why his name was there… and when I try to remember it, I sort of recall crossing out Busoni’s name, as if I was thinking “this is my music”! I rediscovered the score as an adult and had this creepy experience seeing Busoni’s name crossed out and replaced with my own next to Bach’s.

J.S. Bach: Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, BWV 565 (arr. L. Stokowski) (Leopold Stokowski Symphony Orchestra; Leopold Stokowski, cond.)

The second instance: I was twelve years old and entering a European choral school, and I was allowed to sit in on the rehearsal as they began singing the duet from BWV 78. At that point, I didn’t know Bach had written anything beyond, say, the Anna Magdalena stuff or the organ pieces… so seeing that this vocal music was also by Bach stunned me. Even then, I recall admiring how each part was a ‘solo’ in a sense, that no line was accompaniment. And seeing the German translated underneath, how dissonant sounds would coincide with the word for ‘sick’, or how the music was pleading when the text spoke of pleas. I nearly passed out— really. I had to sit down, I was faint. I’m sure the kids around me thought, ‘WTF’s wrong with this kid?’ but that’s how it happened.

J.S. Bach: Jesu, der du meine Seele, BWV 78 – Duet Aria: Wir eilen mit schwachen, doch emsigen Schritten (Wilhelm Wiedl, boy soprano; Paul Esswood, counter-tenor; Concentus Musicus Wien; Nikolaus Harnoncourt, cond.)

Why do you do what you do: what makes you pursue Bach beyond the norm, to explore new territories?

You’ve maybe heard Duke Ellington’s classic response to the question, “how do you keep your band together?” His response was along the lines of: “Well, if you want to keep a band together, you have to have a gimmick, and my gimmick is to pay them money.” That is, everyone needs to eat! But, fine, without being coy, art allows one to be free.

Art can set you free, honestly. To have the ability to touch— no matter how briefly or superficially— the highest moments of the greatest minds in history, this is happiness. The fact that we can hear the Saint Matthew Passion today, or play The Well-Tempered Clavier in the privacy of our own homes, this brings meaning to our lives. Many poets— Rilke, Wordsworth, Heaney, Oliver— have said that aligning yourself with the sentiment of a poem deepens your present experience. We can recall the words of Hamlet or revisit a haiku by Bashō, and in doing so, we connect deeper to humanity. This is something that’s said with great conviction across the years about the power of words– I think it’s the same with music. That’s what music is all about, the same thing. It deepens the present. It deepens you. To be able to ride a bus, or eat a sandwich, and to have the luxury to recall Beethoven while doing so, why, this is enhancing your life.

There is one other answer to the question which is personal, and it comes from a meditation exercise by Joseph Goldstein. ‘What would you want to— should you have such a luxury— what would you want to be able to see that you’ve done with your life on your own deathbed. Picture yourself there. What would you want to have done?’ I answer, I want to have done as much with Bach’s music (as much with other art forms, words, poems, even paintings), as I possibly could have.

Was Juilliard a stifling place for your out-of-the-ordinary ideas; or was it the perfect space for innovation and experimentation?

Juilliard was wonderful. They still are wonderful to me. I am a mentor at the institution, they call me frequently, they publish my feats in their journal, it is a wonderful place. I think Hollywood wants to portray it as a stifling place, as a cutthroat environment. I’m sure if you’re in your own head, your own living room can be cutthroat, but the reality is— which is hard for most people who are good enough to get into Juilliard to admit— if you’re at a conservatory in the first place, you don’t have the whizzbang career with 200 concerts a year. If you did, you wouldn’t have time to go to a conservatory! So it’s inevitable that one has to come up with different ways to ‘break in’ to the scene. You are forced into innovation. A few people may make it in the traditional routes after Juilliard, but most others have to find a unique angle. My teacher, Jerry Lowenthal, has been as important to me in my life as even both my parents. He opened my mind. Not only music: he taught me how to read literature. He taught me practically everything. And he, now a few years short of 100, is really at the heart of a place like Juilliard.

The Bach Store in New York: this is no small feat – first of all to get a shopfront in Manhattan, developing merchandise (the condoms are hilarious, the message on the stress balls even better), plus the ongoing performances: all of this is remarkable. What was your motivation throughout this period; and 6 years on, how has this project defined or influenced your career?

The Bach Store was my competitive instinct, really. The Music Academy of the West approached a few of their alumni and said, “we’re giving fifty thousand dollars to whoever can come up with the best way to promote classical music.” I told the president on the spot, “I’ll play Bach in a cube in Times Square for 5 hours a day like David Blaine.” …And so I couldn’t rent Times Square, but I was only 14 blocks away. So honestly, it began as an attempt to win some money: I can’t say I strove to create community when I started, but I quickly saw that’s what was happening.

It has defined my career in the sense that I am the guy who plays the entire Bach catalogue on demand. As each Bach Store approaches, I live-stream for hours a day, dusting off any piece my followers request. Because people will come into The Bach Store and request the “Partita in G,” or “Second Cello Suite,” or even “BWV 23, the opening duet” and I’ve got it. I can’t say I give a world-class performance of every odd request, but several times a day people come away saying, “I’ve never heard the piece like that before.” You know, “That was the best I’ve ever heard that piece.” I feature guest artists there, too, it’s a place where, sure, I’m the host, but the product is not me, it’s Bach. I’m trying to be a modern mouthpiece for Bach.

Partita in G, BWV 829

The rebuke from Pierre Hantai referenced in the New York Times Article: how have you responded in the past years in marrying the worlds of spiritual transcendence and public accessibility? Do you believe art has to be one or the other, or that a perfect balance can co-exist? Do you believe that people like Hantai (with their spiritual approach to music) have stifled the living humanity of music; or that by placing the music on a spiritual pedestal, they are ensuring the quality of the art stays at its peak?

Let’s give some context to ‘transcendence.’ Hantai was claiming that he attempted to get the entire audience to ‘transcend’ at his concerts. He wasn’t critiquing The Bach Store. He wasn’t saying, it’s Bach Store or transcend.

He’s talking about Truth. He’s talking about what I said earlier about leading people to a deeper happiness through art. So if Truth— capital T— is what we’re after, let’s note that if you don’t have preconceived ideas about where truth can appear, you can find it anywhere. It’s easier to find God in church, right? But is the message any less real if you find God on the sidewalk? The koan, “What is the Buddha? A dried S***stick.” Yes, you’ll find the beauty of Bach at a concert in an 18th-century church in Europe on period instruments, that’s obvious! That’s the prescription! But what if you’re able to find Bach as you hustle between subways, amidst giant panels of glass in New York City? Which message is more ‘pure?’

I jokingly refer to myself on the podcast as Bach’s prodigal son. But it seems like if I’m able to bring people who wouldn’t ever buy tickets to the symphony toward Bach, toward a higher level of classical music awareness, then they are the prodigal sons. And it’s their return to Bach we should celebrate more than the season ticket holders.

Okay, let’s talk about purists. Hantai, as I understand, was born into a family of artists. At age twelve he was passionately attracted to painting— painting! He has a brother who is a traverse flute player, he travelled around Europe educated by a literate, intellectual family. He was one of the souls born with a golden harpsichord in his mouth— or at his fingers, whatever. He was raised much closer to the history of the thing in question.

I’m from a family of blue-collar Americans – farmers, salespeople. The word ‘intellectual’ was delivered like a pejorative. My parents didn’t know what to do with me. My path to purity therefore begins from much further away.

I’m not dissing Hantai, nor defending myself. We’ve been dealt different cards. Mine says, ‘a lot of people who could potentially like Bach, don’t because of the way it’s presented.’ It’s only natural that the one of us raised by those already educated in Bach would try to instill a sense of authenticity, of refinement, while the other is forced to look for any way to shove the substance into the individual. We both are pushing the same product. We both are pushing Bach. We imply each other.

However at The Bach Store, the music is presented as ‘purely’ as it can be. I never dumb down the product. It’s the venue that’s better packaging on the same, pure, product. I am not ‘improvising on Bach’ or ‘jamming with Bach.’ Anyone who knows my recent work knows this. I’m a scholar trying to bring the historic baroque spirit to life in the 2020s. It’s modern packaging.

Hantai quips about our generation making ‘melanges’ of art, and I agree. ’Crossover’ is someone who’s great at neither discipline. We are at a time in history where people constantly make the mistake of saying, “this musician is the 21st century Beethoven” or, “Dante would write like this poet if he lived in 2025.” It’s a nice thing to say because it makes us feel as if we’ve understood or accomplished something, but in reality, it’s dumbed down the past and elevated ourselves unfairly.

You’re an advocate for a composer who needs no advocacy: in some ways, a [more] difficult challenge in the 2020s than advocating for under-represented composers. What is the importance and value for you in continuing to nurture and develop our appreciation for a composer that is already appreciated?

In many ways, Bach is always going to be newer than new music. His was a studio, a workshop, with many people involved. It’s deeper than what happens today. What was going on then is completely unfathomable to us today. He was more serious than we can admit. The average person was more musically competent than we admit. The people! We hardly understood our grandparents, how do we expect to understand people 300 years ago? These people knew their culture, knew their Bible, their Luther, these people were literate, smart people! Now, it’s a temptation for us to say, “yes, but those poor Christians, they didn’t realize there is no God, didn’t understand evolution, they marginalized women…” Yet out of this culture came a level of musical literacy that is so advanced that we are still peeling away the layers of complexity. It’s musical archaeology. That’s why it’s always new. There are specialised fields in Bach research. The way we examine Bach literally relies on science! Think about x-rays, and the chemical samplings we make of his ink. But beyond the fact that Bach-knowledge is expanding, not shrinking, let me get to the real meat of what’s going on here:

Learning about Bach is important because it teaches us about ourselves. People from Bach’s time were involved in something that was beyond Bach’s time and place. Bach wasn’t about himself, he was selfless. He was involved in the collective manifestation of generations of knowledge and forming a relationship with the infinite, with God, with eternity. If you toss that aside because society was backward by modern standards, you toss aside some part of yourself, and you won’t be able to lead your own mind to make connections between now and then. You’ll be intellectually impoverished with an inflated sense of self-worth, delusional.

As for the question of ‘underrepresentation’ in the baroque. I quote myself from an essay I published elsewhere:
“Although it is possible that there are geniuses lost to modern history, this is not the case with classical composers. Music was made in a different environment that didn’t allow for the “expression of the individual” as we envision it today. There are no geniuses who have been silenced by the establishment, there are no missing Beethovens. Careful research and scholarship over the centuries have turned up any musician worthy of our continued attention.

An unknown creative individual is simply impossible in the eras where music was a communal business. Written music was so highly technical, that to even begin acquiring the skill set to “speak” required training, and was often passed down within the family. There were families of engravers, families of instrument builders, there were civic musical duties laid out by the local town— any individual writing influential music in such an atmosphere would surface in the archives.”

Prelude in C Minor, BWV 999

How much value do you get from ruffling the feathers of conservative listeners who think you’re bastardising the product – is shaking up the industry a stronger motivator compared to the perhaps unexpected appreciation from conservative listeners (which stems from the fact that you’re breaking new ground and welcoming new audiences to their favourite composer)?

I’m really not trying to ruffle feathers. Anything I do is with the aim of bringing more appreciation to classical music. It always has been. If you get ruffled because of my album art or whatever it is people complain about, well… then you’re that sort of person. The world is here, at this stage, and you’re complaining about artwork on a classical music album… I know people think WTF, the initialism, offends, but as soon as they look beyond the cover at what’s going on, they will see it’s a highly educational and loving process. In any case, ‘WTF’ if it hasn’t already, will cease to shock and just become meme language. And it’s going to be important to get Bach into meme culture as quickly as possible.

In a world where modifications to repertoire (unless it’s Piazzolla) are considered the highest sin (and hence we still have to put up with four hour operas where 80% is expendable), what is the potential for Bach here? Considering he himself re-arranged works for various instruments – can Bach be an example that the sacred nature of the score is a myth and not a law?

“The music is not on the page.” It’s one of my favourite lessons. Bach relied on transcription and parody throughout his life. Musical parody I mean— not humour. Of course there has to be a certain respect and knowledge in the first place. You can’t just do what you want to a Bach piece and call it an arrangement— or ‘art.’ But once you study Bach enough, you start to see that he was, on most weeks, a bandleader who knew that the two oboes are sick, and there are no good sopranos in town, so boom: Alto and string music. It’s living music. As for interpreters of the living culture, we’re interested in those who have been reverent before learning to become irreverent.

Any plans for future Bach Stores, podcasts, recording projects? When it comes to meaningful reach – what is the most important medium: a store where you can have face-to-face interactions; a podcast where you can pull away the layers of complexity in a friendly manner; or a recording where the product is simply there for the audience to create their own understanding?

Constantly! I’ve just released the first three volumes of what hopefully will become the complete— as complete as we have— keyboard works. The podcast has a few new episodes every month. I’ve started releasing a YouTube video every two weeks, The Bach Stores pop up here and there every year or so. As for the most important medium, I’d say the podcast has brought me closest to my listeners.

Hear the Piece of Music Bach is Holding (Canon Triplex, BWV 1076)

On recording works that have already been recorded ad nauseum: what is the value of, and your reason for doing so? Is it egoistic (i.e. for you to make your mark), benevolent (i.e. because we need to have more voices demonstrating the potential), or something completely different?

Let’s hope it’s a mix of egoistic and benevolent! And just like I mentioned, Bach’s style is constantly updated, so it’s important to capture where we are today. And also— and this isn’t meant to be a dig— I still haven’t heard the gold standard Goldberg Variations on a piano…

The albums released under WTF Bach (Viva, Englisch, Jello Sweets): are these works designed to be presented together with your more traditional recordings, or do they represent different artistic alter egos?

You forgot ‘Shining Charles (HUGE VIBE)’ haha! Well this is obviously not classical music, although some of that music actually starts on manuscript paper. WTF Bach, before it was a podcast or in The Bach Store, was an electronic project based in Brooklyn. I appear on stage without an instrument, I sing and dance. I still do this around 2 AM in a random dive bar now and then. Now, ‘Englisch’ and ‘Jello Sweets’ are Bach arrangements in the style of Wendy Carlos, Uri Caine. As for the presentation – last month at ‘Le Poisson Rouge’ in NYC, they billed Evan Shinners alongside WTF Bach. This was a lot of fun; I played about 40 minutes of Bach on a grand piano, then did about 10 minutes of WTF Bach at the end.

Sort of Like a Recitative, While Other Dances • WTF Bach (spotify.com)

Any other musicians doing things to/with Bach that you look up to?

Of course! So many! Robert Hill, Leo Van Doeselaar, Jonathan Sells with Solomon’s Knot, John Butt. …pretty much most of the people who appear with the Netherlands Bach Ensemble. Even if they are not strictly Bach players, like Eddie Barbash and Jesse Scheinin, two jazz musicians I admire, they spend the beginnings of their practice overdubbing themselves singing through the chorales. That’s what it’s all about. Scholars: Daniel Melamed, Yo Tomita, Michael Marissen, David Yearsley, I admire their work.

What is the one project you’d love to realise, if time, money, and physical limitations weren’t a thing?

I’d conduct the complete vocal works! In space!

© July 2024. Interview by Chris Lloyd with Evan Shinners (WTF Bach)

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