Bach’s »Mass in B minor« with a jazz twist

Karin Freist-Wissing, Director of Church Music at the Kreuzkirche in Bonn, has big plans for the 2026 Beethovenfest. She is leading a major project involving four ensembles, including her chamber choir Vox Bona, centred on Bach’s last great vocal work. In a brilliant collaboration with the Bonn-based jazz pianist Marcus Schinkel, a re-composition of the »Mass in B Minor« is taking shape under the new title Missa Morphosis. Here she explains how much of Bach and how much of Schinkel can be heard in the work, and how Vox Bona is approaching this jazz experiment.

How did the project come about?

I’ve known Marcus Schinkel for a long time; everyone knows each other in the Bonn music scene. Our first collaboration was the project Credo in unum mundum, where, as part of the 2022 Beethovenfest, he arranged Beethoven’s Missa solemnis into a jazz version for my choir and my symphony orchestra at the Kreuzkirche. I then wanted to do something together again and came up with Bach’s »Mass in B Minor«. For me, it’s one of the pinnacles of the musical canon. I then suggested this to the artistic director, Steven Walter – he’s always up for a bit of madness, after all. That’s how the Missa Morphosis project came about.

What is it about the »Mass in B Minor« that makes it suitable for a jazz arrangement?

One reason might be that Bach is incredibly rhythmic. And this is particularly true of the »Mass in B Minor«: the fast fugues, for example »Cum sancto spiritu«, really pack a punch, with the trumpets and timpani. The choir also has a rhythmic, percussive sound, created by syncopation and shifts in the rhythms. Or take the fast fugue in »Pleni sunt coeli« at the end of the Sanctus – it sounds like an interlaced duple and triple metre, it’s mad. That’s a great place to start with jazz drumming.

How did the rehearsal process go?

I performed the original »Mass in B Minor« with Vox Bona in November 2025. So we’d already worked very intensively on the piece. During rehearsals, I put up a large noticeboard in our rehearsal room on which I wrote down details of the background to each section. I also added my own thoughts on the Mass texts and the music. Both touch upon the very essence of what it means to be human, across all ages. Then, over the course of our rehearsals, the choir developed their own ideas, painted pictures, wrote poems and put up photos. In this way, every single choir member made the piece their own. With a foundation like that, it’s fun to experiment with Marcus Schinkel’s jazz arrangement. When we started rehearsals for it at the beginning of the year, this reworking wasn’t even finished yet. The piece was further developed with a great deal of improvisation; there were countless versions until the score was finally complete. The process was great fun, but was, of course, rather unusual.

How did Marcus Schinkel arrange Bach’s original?

A great deal of Bach’s music has remained unchanged, but some parts have been altered. Marcus Schinkel works in a very distinctive way. He cuts up the score and reassembles it. The result is truly a completely new work, in which, however, a great deal of Bach can be heard. For example, the solo arias are sung in the original by four classical singers. All the other parts of the Mass do not follow one after the other, but are interwoven – and the ensembles also blend together: The Real Group, Vox Bona, the B’Rock Orchestra and Schinkel’s jazz trio.

Bach himself compiled parts of his Mass from older cantata movements – is there a similarity in compositional approach to Schinkel’s?

The reworking of older pieces, the so-called ›parody‹ technique, was not simply a matter of copying or reusing material, but a tremendous art form. And one mustn’t forget that, back then, music would disappear into a drawer after it had been performed just once. This provided a way of ensuring the music lived on. For his Mass in B minor, Bach selected the very best from his entire oeuvre and, in the last two years of his life, composed a great deal of new material for it. One might assume that, from his perspective, this was among the finest things he had ever written – his legacy. In any case, it was normal for him to rearrange his own music – much like in our recomposition.

Do you and the Vox Bona choir already have any experience with jazz?

There are several jazz musicians in my family. I myself love jazz piano and am interested in jazz singing. But Vox Bona sings in a classical style, informed by the aesthetics of early music. Yet then it comes together with jazz – and it works. It’s quite mad, but it works. We don’t need to try and do anything that we, as a chamber choir, aren’t capable of, or that other jazz choirs do better.

What does the Swedish jazz quintet The Real Group bring to this mix?

It was my idea to bring The Real Group on board for the project. They’ve completely reinvented themselves – the old line-up has now been replaced by very young musicians, and they’re fantastic too. I find it really fascinating that they also come from a classical background at the Stockholm College of Music, not just from jazz, and are now active in the jazz and pop scenes.

What would you say to someone who objects to Bach arrangements?

I always enjoy trying out new things. Of course, the very puritanical Bach enthusiasts might say: Why on earth would you do that? To which I’d reply straight away: Of course, you don’t have to at all. But you can – and it’s great fun. We live in the present day and have also experienced other musical eras. Bach’s music really goes along with anything; that’s what I find so brilliant. It allows you to discover whole new worlds with this music, which has been with us for so many centuries.