John Frayne

On Tuesday at Faith United Methodist Church in Champaign, the Baroque Artists of Champaign-Urbana gave the opening concert of the 2026 Five Cities Baroque Festival. The conductors were BACH artistic director Sarah Riskind and guest conductor Nate Widelitz, who has directed the festival, which he founded in 2020, for the last four seasons.

The Baroque Artists of Champaign-Urbana (BACH) concert on Sunday at First United Methodist Church in Champaign had an intriguing central idea. Under the leadership of Sarah Riskind, this ensemble performed the treatments of Psalm 42, “As the deer longs for water …,” by four composers, from the Renaissance to the recent past, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Marianna Martines, Herbert Howells and Judith Weir. The latter two composers used the version in the 1662 Anglian Book of Common Prayer.

The Champaign-Urbana Symphony Orchestra ended its season with a triumphal performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s grandiose and overwhelming “Manzoni Requiem Mass.” The highest praise should go to conductor Stephen Alltop for assembling the mighty vocal and instrumental forces in Foellinger Great Hall on May 2, and for unifying all these forces into a disciplined and emotionally moving experience.