- Anytime there's an opportunity, you know, to hear something new by a composer like Bach, who many people consider one of the greatest, if not the greatest composer ever.

I think it's such a tremendous opportunity for us to present that.

- And especially here in Pittsburgh.

- It's this very small ensemble.

We're in the hot seat, you know, we have to play beautifully, make a beautiful sound.

- It's a beautiful texture.

It doesn't sound like a viol consort and it doesn't sound like a modern orchestra.

- A work that was last performed during Bach's lifetime.

Very unique for Bach's collected work, to have this type of instrumentation, in that it so specifically is complimentary to Chatham Baroque's instrumentation.

- It's a world premiere.

Who doesn't want to see a world premiere?

- Ah, 89 again.

- So Bach's "Markus Passion" is one of a few passions that he wrote during his lifetime.

There are two that we all know and love today, the "Saint John Passion" and the "Saint Matthew Passion".

The Mark passion was a work that he wrote a little bit later in 1731.

At some point later it was discovered that the manuscript had gone missing and it just disappeared.

- It's not a complete piece.

So it's based on an existing -- or as the word that's used is it's a parody of another work by Bach.

It's all rather confusing actually.

- A colleague of mine, Malcolm Bruno, the musicologist, created a reconstruction of Bach's lost "Markus Passion".

And he did that by finding a piece of music that other people have used before to try to restore this work, the Trauer-Ode.

A piece that had the same very unique instrumentation.

What we do have are a lot of tantalizing details.

We know that it was written for an orchestra that included two lutes and two gambas.

And that's very unusual.

- Because the instrumentation specifically calls for gambas and for lutes.

And Chatham Baroque was founded by a gambist.

And Scott Pauley has been playing lutes with Chatham Baroque since 1996.

And specifically is complimentary to Chatham Baroque's instrumentation.

It feels very special for us.

- So he took this funeral music as the basis, and then went to his text writer, his librettist, and said, we have to do another passion because Good Friday is coming up again.

I don't have time to write a new piece, but I want to recycle this music.

- But the problematic thing about the passion was all of the recitative that Bach writes, the kind of spoken part of the story that's told by the character of the Evangelist, that is all lost and we don't have any of that left.

So the solution for Malcolm Bruno was to actually not try to recreate recitative but to give that text to a spoken actor.

And that's quite different from anything else we have.

And I think it's a modern solution in that it, it's going to always be in the language of the audience.

- Here we have an opportunity to have the spoken passion given to us.

And so I've tapped the famous actor, Joseph Marcell, who's famous to your audiences as Jeffrey the Butler in Fresh Prince of Bel Air.

- I grew up watching Fresh Prince of Bel Air after I came home from school.

And to meet Mr.

Marcell is going to be, I mean, I think I'll be completely starstruck and I'm gonna try to play it cool.

- I know in addition to the actor Joseph Marcell speaking his lines, each of the four singers there are four soloists, soprano, alto, tenor, and bass.

Each of them also have some of the dialogue as well, so that not only will they be singing, but they'll be doing some of the Evangelist speaking as well.

- In this iteration of Bach's "Saint Markus Passion", there are only four singers.

So each of us have the responsibility of two arias and we also will be singing all the choruses and the chorals.

So you think, what's the difference between a chorus and a choral?

A chorus has more of a contrapuntal writing, which means sometimes the bass comes in and the the alto comes in and the tenor comes in and the, and so we kind of chase each other in, in the music, and it's much more complex musically.

Whereas a choral, it's more of a reflection.

It's more of a meditation on what's happened and how we should feel about it, and like a Greek chorus, commenting about what does this mean for us and why is it happening?

- The story of the Markus Passion, like all of the passions is about the last few days of the life of Jesus Christ leading up to the crucifixion.

- Jesus cries so loudly, he cried so loudly, heaven and earth heard him.

But also I'm saying, okay, he died, but he's dying... he suffered for us to have heaven at the end of our lives.

At first, I was looking at it thinking, why is this so, you know, happy, but it's because it brings such relief from what believers thought was eternal damnation.

- The themes of this, of you know, of loss and of longing and hoping for better things, I think those are timeless.

I think staging this will heighten it to a really exciting degree.

Bill Barkley, who's staging it was music director at the Globe in London, and that's where we met on various projects.

What about this Markus Passion?

This needs to be staged.

It has an actor to take the storytelling role, but it has four singers.

And he said, this is a great idea.

- All we can do is apply our best thinking, bring our open hearts and minds and do the best we can.

And then sit there and watch along with all of your audience.

And then for the first time experience, what this was always meant to be.

- It's a very intimate rendering of Bach.

And I think compared to the other passions, it's, it's a little more personal, but it's also maybe more approachable because I think it's just a shorter work.

- Being fully immersed and carried along in a somewhat transporting and timeless way.

It's going to be very satisfying.

because they're hearing Bach's music performed by fabulous players, on period instruments.

- There's no conductor.

So to come and see all these musicians coming together, looking at each other, you know, at the right moments and queuing and it's like a, a really well-oiled machine where anything could happen.

So it's a very important opportunity and I hope that Pittsburghers will take advantage of the fact that it's being performed here just once and in New York just once, at least for this particular project.

- We are really building this in real time and we're doing it for your audience at Carnegie Music Hall in Pittsburgh in this grand spectacular venue.

And it's just a wonderful opportunity for us to discover what this piece is.