Evan Shinners

Biography

Founder of 'The Bach Store' and host of 'The WTF Bach Podcast,' Evan Shinners began his musical studies at age 9 and made his orchestral debut at age 12. Mr. Shinners grew up in the tradition of European sacred music, receiving lessons in singing and choral conducting from a young age. He attended The Juilliard School in New York where he studied piano with Jerome Lowenthal. Mr. Shinners holds two degrees from the institution (BM '08, MM '10.)

Since 2010, Evan has devoted himself almost exclusively to the study and performance of the works of J.S. Bach. In 2011 he began studying the clavichord, and in 2018 began his ongoing harpsichord studies with harpsichordist Béatrice Martin.

Mr. Shinners joined the Yamaha artist's roster in 2015. Using the Disklavier, he was able to record Bach's "organ sonatas" on piano- the first of its kind. He also commenced on a massive recording project of Bach's complete solo keyboard music on Bösendorfer instruments. In 2018 Mr. Shinners founded a non-profit organization with the goal of "bringing Bach to the masses in non-typical venues". Awarded the 'Alumni Enterprise Award' by the Music Academy of the West, in November of 2018 Evan opened "The Bach Store" in a 5,000 sq. ft. former bank on 56th and Broadway in Manhattan. There, he performed Bach for five hours, every day, for 37 consecutive days. In the evenings, Mr. Shinners hosted different guest artists every night, seeing nearly 70 different musicians perform Bach in the space during the run. His efforts landed him on the front page of the New York Times Arts and the Wall Street Journal. He was interviewed by German Public Radio and other international news sources.

In 2019, Mr. Shinners launched a second Bach Store around the corner from the New York Stock Exchange. Between the two installations, the repertoire that was covered - in free nightly concerts - was impressive: the complete works for solo keyboard, violin, cello and flute, complete cycles of violin and harpsichord works, the flute and harpsichord works, motets for a cappella chorus, three of the Brandenburg Concertos, and more. Both installations were visited by some 10,000 people. The Thüringer Bachwochen in Bach's home state of Thuringia hosted the third Bach Store 2022 and is scheduled to reopen in 2024. Mr. Shinners plans for more stores to open more in London, Switzerland and beyond.

Mr. Shinners is also the host of the ambitious, "The WTF Bach Podcast" who's first season seeks to explain the beauty and structure of "The Art of Fugue" to someone with no previous musical knowledge. Fugues are dissected, played with voices isolated into different speakers, even played backwards or upside-down. Even with such daunting subject matter, now in its second season the podcast boasts 50,000+ listeners in 100+ countries. The guests interviewed are a who's who in current Bach thought: jazz pianist Brad Mehldau, harpsichordist Robert Hill, mandolinist Chris Thile, Conductor Joshua Rifkin, and former director of the Bach Archive in Leipzig, Christoph Wolff.

Since 2015 Mr. Shinners has performed an exhaustive list of the 'complete works' of J. S. Bach, nearly all of them from memory.