Bard Conservatory

Music for the Mind and Heart

The mission of the Bard College Conservatory of Music is to provide the best possible preparation for a person dedicated to a life immersed in the creation and performance of music.

More about us

Photo by Karl Rabe

Offering Unique Undergraduate and Graduate Programs

Undergraduate Double Degree in Liberal Arts and Music Performance (BA and BM)
Graduate Degree in Vocal Arts (MM)
Graduate Degree in Conducting (MM)
Graduate Degree in Instrumental Studies (MM)
Master of Arts in Chinese Music and Culture (MA)
Advanced Performance Studies
Postgraduate Collaborative Piano Fellowship

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The Bard Conservatory also offers a Preparatory Division for students ages 3 to 18.

Featured News

Hungarian composer György Kurtág. Photo by Christoph Egger ECM Records

Bard College Conservatory of Music Presents Signs, Games & Messages 2025: A Kurtág Festival

The Bard College Conservatory of Music presents the 2025 season of Signs, Games & Messages, a three-day festival celebrating the music and artistry of renowned Hungarian composer György Kurtág. The festival, which is free and open to the public, will begin on February 29 and take place through March 2 on Bard’s campus in Annandale. Curated by acclaimed pianist and conductor Benjamin Hochman, a lecturer at Bard College Berlin, this year’s festival offers four unique programs showcasing the range of Kurtág’s work. More >

Yan Guowei performs “Ink Plum” at “The Sound of Spring” concert at Lincoln Center in New York City on Jan 26. Photo by Fadi Kheir

“The Sound of Spring” Reviewed in China Daily

China Daily reviewed “The Sound of Spring,” Bard’s US–China Music Institute and China’s Central Conservatory of Music’s sixth annual new year concert with The Orchestra Now. “I think the relationship between the US and China is important, it's very important, especially in contemporary times. The two biggest countries in the world need to connect together. I think music has been one of the tools to connect people,” said maestro Jindong Cai, director of the US–China Music Institute. More >

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Upcoming Events

3/28
Friday

Third Year Recital: Christina Ng-Leyba, trombone
1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Olin Hall
3/28
Friday

Non-Required Recital: Ethan Young, cello, with Neilson Chen, piano
7:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space
3/29
Saturday

Kendra Colton, soprano, and Kayo Iwama, piano
4:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space

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Meet Our Faculty

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Erika Switzer

Assistant Professor of Music, Bard College; Director, Postgraduate Collaborative Piano Fellowship, Undergraduate and Graduate Diction, Undergraduate and Graduate Vocal Coaching, Conservatory of Music

Erika Switzer
Erika Switzer is an internationally active pianist, teacher, and arts administrator. She has performed on the stages of New York’s Weill Recital Hall (Carnegie Hall), David Geffen Hall (Lincoln Center), Frick Collection, and Bargemusic, and at the Kennedy Center, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Spoleto Festival, Mostly Mozart, Bard Music Festival, and Stanford Live. During a seven-year sojourn in Germany, she performed at the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden and the Munich Winners & Masters series, and won numerous awards, including best pianist prizes at the Robert Schumann, Hugo Wolf, and Wigmore Hall International Song Competitions. European appearances also include recitals for Pro Musicis at the Salle Cortot in Paris, Académie Francis Poulenc at the L’Hôtel de ville de Tours, and Göppingen Meisterkonzerte. Recent premieres include the 5 Boroughs Music Festival Songbook II (Matthew Aucoin, Jonathan Dawe, Evan Fein, Whitney George, Laura Kaminsky, Missy Mazzoli, Paola Prestini, Kamala Sankaram); Brooklyn Art Song Society (Andrew Staniland); and Vancouver’s Music on Main (Jocelyn Morlock, Caroline Shaw, Jeffrey Ryan). Switzer has been recorded by the CBC, Dutch Radio (Radio 4), SWR and the Bayerische Rundfunk in Germany, WQXR New York, and WGBH Boston. A recent recording release, English Songs à la française, features her long-standing duo partnership with baritone Tyler Duncan. Together with soprano Martha Guth, she created Sparks & Wiry Cries (sparksandwirycries.org), which contributes to the future of art song performance through publication of The Art Song Magazine, presentation of the songSLAM festival in New York City, and the commission of new works. In addition to teaching in Bard’s undergraduate Music Program, Switzer works with the Graduate Vocal Arts Program on diction for singers, vocal coaching, and chamber music, and directs the Postgraduate Collaborative Piano Fellowship. BM, MM (solo piano), University of British Columbia; MM, Hochschule für Musik und Theater München, Germany; DM (collaborative piano), The Juilliard School. At Bard since 2010.
Nicholas Schwartz

Trombone

Nicholas Schwartz
Nicholas Schwartz has a diverse career performing across North America, Europe, and Asia. After studying at The Juilliard School with then New York Philharmonic bass trombonist Don Harwood, he moved to San Francisco where he began freelancing throughout the Bay Area.

Since 2010, he has been the principal bass trombonist of the New York City Ballet Orchestra. He has also performed with the Pittsburgh Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, The Metropolitan Opera, The Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, San Francisco Ballet, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, St. Lukes Chamber Orchestra, the New York City Opera, Atlanta Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, The Malaysia Philharmonic, Mostly Mozart Festival, and Classical Tahoe.
Jindong Cai

Director, US-China Music Institute; Graduate Conducting Program, faculty

Jindong Cai
Conductor Jindong Cai is the director of the US-China Music Institute and professor of music and arts at Bard College. He is also an associate conductor of The Orchestra Now (TON). Prior to joining Bard he was a professor of performance at Stanford University. Over the 30 years of his career in the United States, Cai has established himself as an active and dynamic conductor, scholar of Western classical music in China, and leading advocate of music from across Asia. Cai started his professional conducting career with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, where he held assistant conducting positions and worked closely with Music Director Jesús López-Cobos, Conductor Keith Lockhart, and Cincinnati Pops Conductor Erich Kunzel. He has worked with numerous orchestras throughout North America and Asia. Cai maintains strong ties to his homeland and has conducted most of the top orchestras in China. He has served as the principal guest conductor of the China Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra since 2012. In 2015, he led the Shenzhen Symphony on its first tour to the American West Coast, performing in Palo Alto, San Jose, Seattle, Los Angeles, and San Diego. The concerts included collaboration with the San Francisco Opera on the premiere of a scene from Bright Sheng’s much anticipated new opera, Dream of the Red Chamber. Cai is a three-time recipient of the ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music. He has recorded for the Centaur, Innova, and Vienna Modern Masters labels. He has close relationships with many Chinese composers and has premiered or performed new works by Tan Dun, Zhou Long, Chen Yi, Bright Sheng, Ye Xiaogang, and Wang Xilin, among others. In recent years, a number of professional orchestras have approached him to create special programs of works by Chinese and other Asian composers, including the “Celebration of Asia” concert with the Seattle Symphony Orchestra in 2016. Cai has received much critical acclaim for his opera performances. In 1992, his operatic conducting debut took place at Lincoln Center’s Mozart Bicentennial Festival in New York, when he appeared as a last-minute substitute for his mentor Gerhard Samuel in the world premiere of a new production of Mozart’s Zaide. The New York Times described the performance as “one of the more compelling theatrical experiences so far offered in the festival.” Cai serves as the principal guest conductor of the Mongolia State Academic Theater of Opera and Ballet in Ulaan Baatar. Since 2011, he has visited Mongolia a dozen times to conduct opera and ballet performances, and led the theater’s historical first tour to China in 2013. Cai joined the Stanford University faculty in 2004 as director of orchestral studies and conducted the Stanford Symphony Orchestra for 11 years. He led the Stanford Symphony Orchestra on three international tours—to Australia and New Zealand in 2005; China in 2008, as part of the Beijing Olympic Cultural Festival; and Europe in 2013. In 2013, Cai launched “The Beethoven Project,” for which the Stanford Symphony Orchestra performed all nine Beethoven symphonies and all five of the composer’s piano concerti—featuring Van Cliburn Gold Medal–winning pianist and Stanford alumnus Jon Nakamatsu—in one season. Cai is also the founder of the Stanford Pan-Asian Music Festival. Over its 11-year history, the festival—which is dedicated to promoting an appreciation of music in contemporary Asia through an annual series of concerts and academic activities—has become one of the most important platforms for the performance of Asian music in the United States. As a scholar and expert on music in contemporary China and Asia, Cai is frequently interviewed by news media around the world, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, BBC, and NPR. Together with his wife Sheila Melvin, Cai has coauthored several New York Times articles on the performing arts in China and the book Rhapsody in Red: How Western Classical Music Became Chinese. Their latest book, Beethoven in China: How the Great Composer Became an Icon in the People’s Republic, was published by Penguin in September 2015. Born in Beijing, Cai received his early musical training in China, where he learned to play violin and piano. He came to the United States for his graduate studies at the New England Conservatory and the College-Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati. In 1989, he was selected to study with famed conductor Leonard Bernstein at the Tanglewood Music Center, and won the Conducting Fellowship Award at the Aspen Music Festival in 1990 and 1992.
Jenny Q Chai

Piano Masterclasses; Chinese Admissions Ambassador

Jenny Q Chai
An artist of singular vision, pianist Jenny Q Chai is widely renowned for her

ability to illuminate musical connections throughout the centuries. With radical

joie de vivre and razor-sharp intention, Chai creates layered multimedia

programs which explore and unite elements of science, nature, fashion, and art.

The New Yorker describes Chai as “a pianist whose dazzling facility is matched

by her deep musicality.”

Chai’s instinctive understanding of new music is complemented by a deep

grounding in core repertoire, with special affinity for Schumann, Scarlatt

Beethoven, Bach, Debussy, and Ravel. She is a noted interpreter of 20th-century

masters Cage, Messiaen, and Ligeti, and her career is threaded through with

strong relationships and close collaborations with a range of notable contemporary

composers, including Tan Dun, Jarosław Kapuściński, Andy Akiho, Pamela Z,

Lukas Ligeti, Cindy Cox, Annie Gosfield and György Kurtág. With a deft poeti

touch, Chai weaves this wide-ranging repertoire into a gorgeous and lucid

musical tapestry. Chai is also a vital champion and early tester of the groundbreaking

synchronous score following software program, Antescofo. Developed at IRCAM by

scientist Arshia Cont, the software offers a real time computer and animation respons

to live performance elements, enabling performers to create multimedia presentations

of AI sophisticated and expressive fluency. Chai explored and helped hone Antescof

in residence at IRCAM alongside frequent collaborator Jarosław Kapuściński, and has

since toured internationally with the software offering multimedia performances i

Shanghai, New York, Havana, and elsewhere. In September 2019, Chai gave a TEDx

Talk titled When Classical Music Meets Technology.

Other notable highlights include her 2024 Shanghai Symphony Hall Audiovisual AI

Concert, 2012 Carnegie Hall recital debut; many

performances at (le) Poisson Rouge, including a 2016 Antescofo-supported

program, Where’s Chopin?; her 2018 Wigmore Hall debut with a program

exploring the relation between color and sound; lectures and recitals at Shanghai

Symphony Hall, Shanghai Concert Hall, and Shanghai Mercedes Benz Arena; a

featured performance at Tan Dun’s International Music Medicine Festival in Qingdao;

the Leo Brouwer Festival in Havana, Cuba; Philippe Manoury’s double-piano concerto,

Zones de turbulences, at the Warsaw Autumn International Festival of Contemporary

Music with duo partner, pianist Adam Kośmieja and the Polish National Radio

Symphony Orchestra; and much more.

Her immersive approach to music is also channeled into her work with FaceArt Institute

of Music, the Shanghai-based organization she founded and runs, offering musi

education and an international exchange of music and musicians in China and beyond.

In summer 2019, Chai oversees FaceArt’s first ever month-long Co-Creation Summe

Festival, which invites International piano and composition faculty. Additionally, Chai

served on the Board of Directors of the New York City-based contemporary music

organization Ear to Mind, and has published a doctoral dissertation on Marco Stroppa’s

Miniature Estrose which is collected by many schools including Stanford and Harvard

University.

Chai has recorded for labels such as Divine Art, Deutschlandfunk, Naxos, ArpaViva and

MSR. In 2010, she released her debut recording, New York Love Songs, featuring

interpretations of works by Cage and Ives among others, and her most recent

recording, (S)yn(e)sth(e)te, was released by MSR Records in 2017. She can also be

heard on Michael Vincent Waller’s Five Easy Pieces and Cindy Cox’s Hierosgamos. In

2021, her newest album on Bach, Ives and Schumann Kreisleriana received positive

reviews globally. The album was featured by Apple Music as one of its selected best

Classical Music albums.

The recipient of the Yvar Mikhashoff Trust’s 2011 Pianist/Composer Commissionin

Project, the DAAD Arts and Performance award in 2010, Chamber Music America

commissioning award and first prize winner of the Keys to the Future Contemporar

Solo Piano Festival, Jenny Q Chai studied at the Shanghai Music Conservatory, the

Curtis Institute of Music, the Manhattan School of Music, and in Cologne University of

Music and Dance. Her teachers include Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Seymour Lipkin,

Solomon Mikowsky, Marilyn Nonken, and Anthony de Mare.

Academically, Chai has given lecture recitals at universities such as Stanford, Harvard,

University of California Berkeley, NYU, Shanghai Conservatory and more.

Chai is a former piano faculty member of the University of California Berkeley, an

alumni mentor at Curtis Institute of Music and an official career mentor at Manhatt

School of Music. In 2022, Chai became Fazioli Global Piano Ambassador.

Chai is a social activist who works passionately on environmental causes through her

music and runs a personal animal shelter. She has rescued over one hundred small

animals in China since the pandemic and is an active donor to many animal rescue

organizations.

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