Is Johann Sebastian Bach's music really for everyone?
BACH 52 is a web series and podcast hosted by Grammy-winning tenor Nicholas Phan, exploring that question one cantata at a time. Each episode pairs a performance of a Bach aria with a conversation between Nick and a guest from the worlds of music, medicine, theology, education, and beyond — people who bring unexpected perspectives to some of the most profound music ever written.
Bach composed over 200 sacred cantatas for the Lutheran church. BACH 52 is on a journey through that music — asking what this deeply Christian music means for believers and non-believers alike, and why it continues to resonate across cultures, faiths, and centuries.
Guests have included musicians, conductors, physicians, educators, clergy, and industry leaders — all united by a lifelong relationship with Bach's music and a willingness to explore what it means for the world we live in today.
Start anywhere — every episode stands alone.
Learn more: https://www.bach52.nicholas-phan.com/
Bach, Faith, and the Future of Classical Music with Chad Smith | president & CEO, Boston Symphony Orchestra Last August, the Tanglewood Learning Institute hosted the first live-filmed conversations for BACH 52. The first of these features Chad Smith, President & CEO of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, in a wide-ranging conversation about Bach, classical music’s evolving place in contemporary culture, and the role of major artistic institutions as civic and cultural stewards. Bach, Spiri...
23 Sept 2026
Theology, Music, and Modern Myths | Who Was J.S. Bach Really?
Theology, Music, and Modern Myths with Michael Marissen | Bach scholar & author of Bach Against Modernity Who was Johann Sebastian Bach really? When we talk about Bach, it’s so easy to slip into big claims — greatest composer ever, universal genius, before and after Bach. And while there’s truth in all of that, this conversation reminded me how much richer the music becomes when we stop trying to make Bach look like us, and instead let him be who he actually was. In 2023, I had the chance...
16 Sept 2026
Bach as Connection: Communal Music Making with Kate Sheeran
BACH AS CONNECTION COMMUNAL MUSIC MAKING with Kate Sheeran former executive director, Kaufman Music Center Dean, Eastman School of Music What if Bach was never intimidating — just music? Grammy-winning tenor Nicholas Phan sits down with Kate Sheeran, Executive Director of New York City's Kaufman Music Center and incoming Dean of the Eastman School of Music, for a wide-ranging conversation about the power of communal music-making, what music education can look like when...
9 Sept 2026
Death, Doubt & the Bach Institute
with Pamela Dellal, Bach Institute Director & Intellectual Resources Curator This week on BACH 52, Nicholas Phan sits down with Pamela Dellal — alto, master translator, and director of the Bach Institute at Emmanuel Music — for a conversation about death, doubt, and why Bach's cantatas still speak to us today. Pam has translated Bach's cantata texts for Emmanuel Music for decades. She talks about the history of the ensemble under founder Craig Smith, how she becam...
2 Sept 2026
Reginald Mobley on Race, Access & Why Bach Belongs to Everyone
Reginald Mobley on Race, Access & Why Bach Belongs to Everyone with Reginald Mobley Grammy-nominated countertenor programming consultant, Handel & Haydn Society Grammy-nominated countertenor Reginald Mobley joins tenor and host Nick Phan for a wide-ranging conversation about what it means to belong in classical music — and who gets to decide. Reginald grew up in Gainesville, Florida, raised by grandparents who told him that classical music "wasn't for us." Yet a ...
26 Aug 2026
Bach, Shakespeare & the Sins of the Past
with Steven Zohn general editor, American Bach Society musicologist, Temple University Is it possible to separate great art from the flawed men who made it? In this episode of BACH 52, I sit down with Steven Zohn, General Editor of the American Bach Society and Professor of Musicology at Temple University, to talk about Bach, Shakespeare, and what we owe the canon. Steven and I get into why Bach's music resists becoming a museum piece, the surprising parallels between Bach and...
20 Aug 2026
Bach, Community, the International Pride Orchestra
Bach, Community, the International Pride Orchestra with Michael Roest founder & director, International Pride Orchestra former Associate Dean of Academic Affairs, San Francisco Conservatory of Music Nicholas Phan sits down with Michael Roest — former Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and founder of the International Pride Orchestra — to explore what Bach's music has to do with identity, community, and belonging. Michael sha...
12 Aug 2026
Bach as a Bridge-Builder
Carla Dirlikov Canales and I have known each other since we were teenagers growing up in the twin towns of Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, Michigan — we even sang together as fellow voice majors at the University of Michigan. Since then, Carla has built a career turning music into a tool for cultural diplomacy: a State Department cultural exchange mission to Mexico led her to found The Canales Project in 2016, and in 2023 she became the National Endowment for the Arts' first Senior Advisor and Envoy...
5 Aug 2026
Why Bach Is a "Rorschach Test" | BACH 52
Violinist Owen Dalby (St. Lawrence String Quartet, Stanford artist-in-residence) on why Bach's music works like a Rorschach test — and how it became his spiritual home. Owen Dalby has spent a lifetime leading an extraordinarily multifaceted musical life — performing at the highest levels while pushing the bounds of how classical music relates to community. For much of the last decade he toured the world as a member of the St. Lawrence String Quartet. Before that, he co-founded Decoda, a Carn...
29 Jul 2026
For Everyone Who Wants It
with Ellen Exner doctor of musicology former Vice-President, American Bach Society Is Bach's music really for everyone? Musicologist Ellen Exner — vice president of the American Bach Society and a student of Christoph Wolff at Harvard — argues it isn't, and that the honest answer is more interesting than the comforting one. Recorded in Philadelphia while I was performing with the Philadelphia Orchestra, our conversation traces how Bach's sacred vocal music went nearly fo...
22 Jul 2026
Why Bach's Music Touches Everyone – Even If You're Not Religious
Is the music of Bach for everyone? In Episode 2 of BACH 52, I sit down with oboist and artistic director Debra Nagy to explore this question through the lens of historical performance, personal belief, and the universal human emotions that Bach's music somehow captures across centuries and cultures. Debra is the artistic director of Les Délices and one of the most thoughtful advocates for baroque music I know. Raised in the conservative Jewish tradition and now identifying as culturally Je...
15 Jul 2026
Can Singing Unite Us?
On bringing people together from three states and 92 zip codes through music with Matthew Swanson | director of choruses, Cincinnati May Festival Matthew Swanson has spent the last several years working with one of the great American choral institutions: the Cincinnati May Festival, the oldest choral festival in the Western Hemisphere, founded in 1873 by a community that decided singing together was worth building an entire tradition around. After working with the May Festival in various capa...
7 Jul 2026
Bach, Faith & Radical Welcome with Reverend Pamela Werntz
How Sacred Music Holds Space for Everyone with Reverend Pamela Werntz | rector, Emmanuel Church Is Bach's sacred music only for believers? Reverend Pamela Werntz, Rector of Boston's Emmanuel Church, thinks otherwise. In this episode of BACH 52, she shares how Bach's cantatas create space for an extraordinarily diverse community — from musicians and scholars to people sleeping in the church garden — and why that radical welcome is at the heart of what this music can do. Emmanuel Mu...
7 Jul 2026
Get Off My Lawn! with pianist Jeremy Denk
Was Bach A Radical Conservative? with Jeremy Denk | pianist & author Pianist and author Jeremy Denk joins Grammy-winning tenor Nicholas Phan for a wide-ranging conversation about Johann Sebastian Bach — why his music feels both ancient and startlingly modern, why younger generations are drawn to him more than ever, and what it means that Bach was, in Jeremy's words, a true "get off my lawn" kind of composer: working stubbornly against the fashions of his time while somehow pointing toward...
7 Jul 2026
Is Bach's Music Really for Everyone? An Introduction
Grammy-winning tenor Nicholas Phan introduces BACH 52 and the question at its heart: Is Johann Sebastian Bach's music really for everyone? Nick shares his own journey with Bach — from childhood violin lessons to a 20-year career singing this music on stages from Leipzig to Lincoln Center — and the personal reckoning that sparked this project. As a gay biracial singer navigating the classical music world, he explores the tension between an art form that has the power to transform lives and ins...
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