Bach is back

Bach in Action

Although we are unfortunately not yet able to offer comprehensive time travel, we have succeeded in opening a portal to the 18th century and teleporting none other than Johann Sebastian Bach himself to the present day. Meet him during a conversation concert in the historic summer hall of the Bach Archive in Leipzig city centre.
Ready for a meet and greet?

The big Comebackh

Just in time for the Bach Festival 2025, the Virtual Bach Experience was launched, allowing up to 28 visitors to attend a virtual concert at the same time. The audience can expect an XR experience lasting just under an hour, featuring a mix of musical pieces played on a historical cembalo, as well as contemporary anecdotes and illustrative images – all purely digital and presented by none other than Johann Sebastian Bach himself. This is a unique opportunity to encounter this visionary of classical music up close.

Bachstage

How did we manage to bring the music director to life in a digital way? Here’s a little peek behind the scenes: Of course, this could have been done purely digital, but in order to create the most authentic reincarnation of the Thomaskantor possible, we expanded the production by adding acting and musical expertise. The result: our Bach is a best-of compilation of three real people, whose performances we digitised using various recording, motion and performance capturing techniques.
To ensure that the famous harpsichordist could actually play the keys, a combination of several hand tracking techniques was required, as well as body and face tracking. In addition to the vast amount of capture data that had to be processed, a considerable amount of state-of-the-art technology was also used, as we were also responsible for the audio recordings of the harpsichord playing, parts of the off-screen voices and other sound design.

While we’re on talking about hardware
Getting the setup for the exhibition up and running was also on our to-do list.
28 XR headsets running in sync, which were supposed to play up to 5 shows a day in quick succession, might sound easy at first, but when you look closer, it was a real challenge. There are few best practice projects that replicate such a concert situation. That’s why we spent a long time fine-tuning a stable setup that would allow us to push the hardware to its limits while still enabling stable everyday operation. At the heart of this is a specially developed tablet app that can be used to manage the glasses and the performances. From a synchronised start, to monitoring performance, battery level, etc., to individual adjustment of the volume or language selection for each device, everything related to the concert can be controlled centrally.

Bach on Tour

Currently, you can experience the Virtual Bach Experience several times a week at the Bach Museum. So stop by and visit him when you’re in town. If Leipzig is too far away, you’ll soon be able to experience the immersive concert in other locations. Because Bach is going on tour! We are currently working on a portable version to show the master of Baroque to the world and give as many fans as possible the opportunity to meet and greet him.

The Virtual Bach Experience is a collaborative project with OVRLAB. Schenker Technologies and PXF were involved in procuring the hardware and parts of the performance capturing.
The publisher is the Bach Archive Leipzig, and the project was funded by Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung, the City of Leipzig and the Free State of Saxony.