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Bard Conservatory Appoints Tuba Player Alec Mawrence to Faculty

The Bard College Conservatory of Music announces the appointment of Alec Mawrence to the tuba faculty. Alec Mawrence is the tuba player in the West Point Band’s ceremonial brass quintet, as well as an active freelancer and educator in the New York City area. Originally from Northbrook, Illinois, he earned a Bachelor of Music from Northwestern University and a Master of Music from the University of Michigan. He has performed and taught at renowned venues and conservatories around the world with the West Point Band, National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America, and the Northwestern University Symphony Orchestra. For three summers he was awarded an orchestra tuba fellowship at the Aspen Music Festival. His teachers include David Zerkel, Warren Deck, Gene Pokorny, Matthew Gaunt, and Rex Martin.

Post Date: 11-10-2023

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Bard Conservatory Orchestra Performs at Eastern Correctional Facility with Guest Musicians Marcus Roberts and Jason Marsalis

The Bard Prison Initiative hosted its long-running orchestral concert program at Eastern Correctional Facility last week. Conducted by Leon Botstein, the program included Beethoven, Bartók, and Duke Ellington’s New World A-Comin’ performed by Distinguished Visiting Professor of Music Marcus Roberts, accompanied by Jason Marsalis and others from Roberts’ band The Modern Jazz Generation. 

The Bard Conservatory Orchestra, an 80-student ensemble comprised primarily of undergraduates, performed on the stage of the prison’s auditorium for an audience of almost 150 incarcerated men. Yuchen Zhao, a second-year graduate student and violinist with the Conservatory Orchestra, told Andrew Checchia, who covered the concert for the Red Hook Daily Catch, that the men at Eastern were “the most focused audience in the world.” 

“This is a great opportunity to come together and enjoy a unique experience,” said Daniel F. Martuscello III, acting commissioner of New York State’s Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, before the performance. “People go to prison as punishment, but they shouldn’t be defined by the worst moments of their life.”

Post Date: 11-03-2023

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Bard Conservatory Appoints Harpist Mariko Anraku to Faculty

The Bard College Conservatory of Music announces the appointment of harpist Mariko Anraku to the faculty. Mariko Anraku is hailed as “a manifestation of grace and elegance” (Jerusalem Post) and has enchanted audiences through numerous appearances as soloist, as well as chamber and orchestral musician. The New York Times has called her a “masterful artist of intelligence and wit.”

Since 1995, she has held the position of Associate Principal Harpist of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. Since her debut as soloist with the Toronto Symphony led by Sir Andrew Davis, Ms. Anraku has appeared with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, New Japan Philharmonic Orchestra, Tokyo Symphony, Yomiuri Symphony Orchestra, Concerto Soloists of Philadelphia, among others. As a recitalist, she has performed in major concert halls on three continents, including Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall and Merkin Concert Hall in New York, Jordan Hall in Boston, Bing Theater at the LA County Museum, The Opera Comique in Paris, the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome, the Casals, Kioi and Oji Halls in Tokyo, The Shanghai Oriental Arts Center among many others.

Ms. Anraku’s impressive list of awards include First Prize at the First Nippon Harp Competition, First Prize, the Channel Classics Recording Prize and the ITT Corporation Prize at the Concert Artists Guild Competition in New York, and the Pro Musicis Foundation International Award. She was also awarded Third Prize and the Pearl Chertok Prize for the best performance of the required Israeli composition at the 11th International Harp Contest in Israel.

Ms. Anraku’s strong commitment to contemporary music and the expansion of boundaries of the harp repertoire has included an invitation to premiere works by Toshio Hosokawa at the Donaueschingen Musiktage in Germany, the Wien Modern in Austria, and festivals in Tubinger and Cologne, Germany, collaborating with traditional Japanese musicians and monks.

Ms. Anraku also gave the USA premiere of Jean-Michel Damase’s Concerto “Ballade” with the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra at the American Harp Society Conference. She has also collaborated in a “Tribute to Takemitsu” performance at Merkin Concert Hall in New York. An active chamber musician, Ms. Anraku has performed at the Spoleto, Tanglewood, Newport and Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festivals in the USA, The Banff Centre and the Festival of Sound in Canada, the Spoleto Festival ni Italy, and the Karuizawa and Takefu Music Festivals, among others in Japan. She has also performed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Harvard Music Association, and Columbia University, and has collaborated with artists including clarinetist Richard Stoltzman and flutists Emmanuel Pahud, Carol Wincenc, Paula Robison, Emily Beynon, Michael Parloff, Marina Piccinini, Stefan Ragnar Hoskuldsson and Denis Bouriakov.

Ms. Anraku has recorded exclusively for EMI Classics, including three solo recordings and “Beau Soir” a collaboration with eminent flutist Emmanuel Pahud. “Music for Harp", a compilation from her solo CDs is also available.

Ms. Anraku is a faculty member of the Manhattan School of Music and The Pacific Music Festival (PMF). She is a devoted teacher, deeply committed to the mentoring and development of young musicians and has given masterclasses at The Curtis Institute of Music, The Juilliard School, Peabody Institute, The Glenn Gould School, Conservatorium Maastricht, The Central Conservatory and China Institute of Music in Beijing, The Shanghai Conservatory of Music etc. She is often invited to be a jury member at local and international competitions.

She holds Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees from The Juilliard School and is a recipient of an Artist's Diploma from The Glenn Gould School in Toronto. Her teachers have included Judy Loman, Nancy Allen, Lanalee deKant and her aunt Kumiko Inoue. Ms. Anraku also studied Oriental Art History at Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan, and enjoys playing community service concerts at hospitals, drug rehabilitation centers, prisons and other venues.

 

Post Date: 09-25-2023

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Bard Conservatory Orchestra Presents Live Symphony Screening of The Wizard of Oz, Writes the Daily Catch

The Bard Conservatory Orchestra will present a performance from one of the most enduring films in cinema history with A Symphonic Night at The Movies: The Wizard of Oz, which will merge the 1939 cinematography produced by MGM Studios with a live symphony. The event, taking place in the Fisher Center’s Sosnoff Theater on Saturday, September 23, and Sunday, September 24, “marks the first time many of the student musicians will perform a so-called film concert, an experience that conservatory educators say will teach the popular side of the symphonic tradition,” writes Andrew Checchia for the Daily Catch. Conducted by James Bagwell, the orchestra’s rendition will accompany a screening of the film, replacing the film’s original songs and keeping precise timing with the original studio voice recordings. “This score was written for studio orchestras, and those scores sound good from the very beginning,” Bagwell told Checchia.

 

Post Date: 09-19-2023

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Bard Conservatory Alumna Micah Gleason GCP ’21 VAP ’22 Selected for 2023–24 Hart Institute for Women Conductors Showcase at the Dallas Opera

The Dallas Opera recently announced that Micah Gleason GCP ’21 VAP ’22, who graduated from the Bard College Conservatory's Graduate Conducting Program in 2021 and Vocal Arts Program in 2022, is one of four talented musicians selected to participate in the 2023–24 Hart Institute for Women Conductors Showcase. Gleason (US), Maria Benyumova (Germany), Shira Samuels-Shragg (US), and Jingqi Zhu (China) were chosen from a worldwide applicant pool of more than 75 conductors hailing from 27 countries on five continents.

Launched in 2015, the Hart Institute for Women Conductors Showcase is the only program of its kind in the world and seeks to address the extreme gender imbalance of leadership on the podium as well as in administration in opera companies. Now in its 7th year, more than 500 women conductors from 40 nations have applied to be trained, advised, and supported by this extraordinary initiative.

The annual Institute begins in November (November 13-17) with a week of daily virtual sessions, many of which are livestreamed and open for the public to view at no cost on The Dallas Opera’s You Tube channel. During an intensive ten-day residency in Dallas (January 19-28, 2024), participants will work with esteemed faculty and mentors in group and one-on-one sessions, as well as in rehearsals for the annual Showcase Concert on Sunday, January 28, 2024 at 7:30 p.m. The performance will feature each Institute conductor leading the Dallas Opera Orchestra and guest singers in selections of opera excerpts featuring overtures, solo arias, and ensemble pieces from across the centuries of the canon.
 

Post Date: 09-01-2023

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Bard Conservatory Orchestra Will Perform Live Symphony of the Music of The Wizard of Oz on September 23 and 24

The Bard Conservatory Orchestra presents a live symphony performance of the music from one of the most enduring films in cinema history with A Symphonic Night at The Movies: The Wizard of Oz. Conducted by James Bagwell, the orchestra’s rendition will accompany a recently remastered screening of the film, performing the film’s original songs by composer Harold Arlen and Academy Award-winning score by Herbert Stothart, accompanied by Judy Garland’s original 1939 studio recordings.

The event will take place in two viewings on Saturday, September 23, at 7 pm, and on Sunday, September 24, at 2 pm, in the Fisher Center’s Sosnoff Theater. Tickets start at $25 and sales benefit the Bard Conservatory Scholarship Fund. 

To reserve tickets, please visit here. 

Post Date: 08-31-2023