BART invites local musicians to participate in its Bach in the Subways program, which began Thursday and ending on the 339-year anniversary of the German composer’s birth March 31.

This year’s event kicked off at the Downtown Berkeley station, where Junior Bach kids played violin, piano, recorder and cello under the rotunda. Last year, seven groups participated, but there’s room for more. Musicians of any age still have time to participate.

“We are paying close attention to any requests that come in,” BART spokesperson Anna Duckworth said.

The coming and going of trains throughout the system is a perfect metaphor for Johann Sebastian Bach’s use of musical counterpoint, when two or more similar sounding musical lines are played together along independent rhythms.

“There’s this special face that people get when they start playing Bach, I call it Bach Face, and I think his music has an uncanny capacity to draw people in and connect them unlike no other composer,” said New York musician Dale Henderson, who started playing alone in the subway in 2010.

Today, the Bach in the Subways program has grown into musicians playing Bach in public spaces, like subway stations, in 150 cities across 40 countries.

  • Nana Ng, 7, a member of Junior Bach, plays violin while performing for Bach in the Subways at Downtown Berkeley Station in Berkeley, Calif., on March 21, 2023. Musicians of any age, participating in Bach in the Subways, are playing for transit audiences in BART stations through March 31. (Junior Bach Festival via Bay City News)
  • Michael Shuang, 15, a member of Junior Bach, plays electric piano while performing for Bach in the Subways at Downtown Berkeley Station in Berkeley, Calif., on March 21, 2023. Musicians of any age, participating in Bach in the Subways, are playing for transit audiences in BART stations through March 31. (Junior Bach Festival via Bay City News)
  • Jaylen Wei, 10, a member of Junior Bach, plays electric piano while performing for Bach in the Subways at Downtown Berkeley Station in Berkeley, Calif., on March 21, 2023. Musicians of any age, participating in Bach in the Subways, are playing for transit audiences in BART stations through March 31. (Junior Bach Festival via Bay City News)

“Suddenly, classical musicians get to perform without any of the formal trappings of a classical music setting. The principal cellist of the Vienna Philharmonic has joined us a bunch of times. It’s just a very pure way to connect with the audience,” Henderson said.

There is no tipping involved. Travelers through the Bay Area can listen to the music in the free areas of select stations. A regularly updated performance schedule can be found at bachinthesubways.org/san-francisco/.

To perform at a station, musicians must first register and obtain a free Expressive Activity Permit from BART.

Ruth Dusseault is an investigative reporter and multimedia journalist focused on environment and energy. Her position is supported by the California local news fellowship, a statewide initiative spearheaded by UC Berkeley aimed at supporting local news platforms. While a student at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism (c’23), Ruth developed stories about the social and environmental circumstances of contaminated watersheds around the Great Lakes, Mississippi River and Florida’s Lake Okeechobee. Her thesis explored rights of nature laws in small rural communities. She is a former assistant professor and artist in residence at Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture, and uses photography, film and digital storytelling to report on the engineered systems that undergird modern life.