Bard Vocal Arts Alum Aiden K. Feltkamp ’16 Curates Collection of Music for Transgender, Nonbinary Voices
Bard Vocal Arts alum Aiden K. Feltkamp ’16 wants to help transgender and nonbinary people have their voices heard. Anthology of New Music: Trans & Nonbinary Voices, curated by Feltkamp, is thought to be the first compiled volume of songs written for and/or by transgender and nonbinary people.
Bard Vocal Arts Alum Aiden K. Feltkamp ’16 Curates Collection of Music for Transgender, Nonbinary Voices
Post Date: 03-01-2022
Bard College Conservatory of Music Presents Richard Strauss’s Salome, March 18 and 20
The Bard College Conservatory of Music presents Salome, an opera by Richard Strauss with libretto by Oscar Wilde. The Bard Conservatory Orchestra, conducted by Leon Botstein, joins an exciting principal cast of singers in a performance, directed by R. B. Schlather, of Richard Strauss’s once infamous, now famous opera, Salome—a biblical story with a twist. Performances will be held on Friday, March 18 at 8 pm and Sunday, March 20 at 2pm in the Fisher Center’s Sosnoff Theater. Tickets start at $25, with free tickets for Bard students.Bard College Conservatory of Music Presents Richard Strauss’s Salome, March 18 and 20
Adapted from Oscar Wilde’s one-act play, Richard Strauss’s opera Salome depicts the biblical story of Salome, the Judean princess who demanded, and obtained, the head of St. John the Baptist. Bard Visiting Associate Professor of Music Peter Laki writes that the first performance of Salome, given in Dresden on December 9, 1905, caught even the most progressive critics off guard. “There was little doubt that the opera was a masterpiece, that its music was radically innovative, even ‘revolutionary,’ but many were profoundly disturbed by the image of Salome kissing the severed head of John the Baptist on the mouth,” writes Laki, stressing that, despite its early notoriety, Salome was Strauss’s first successful opera and went on to become part of the standard repertoire of every house that can meet the almost superhuman demands it places on the singers and the enormous orchestra alike. “The opera certainly stands with Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, which followed eight years later, at the threshold of a new era. It did away with many old taboos and presented human situations and emotions in a way they had never been presented before. Strauss made an old story breathtakingly new, boldly confronting the dark sides of the human psyche.”
Salome is directed by R. B. Schlather with the Bard Conservatory Orchestra conducted by Leon Botstein. The performance features Alexandra Loutsion (Salome), Jay Hunter Morris (Herod), Nathan Berg (Jochanaan), and Katharine Goeldner (Herodias).
Post Date: 02-28-2022
The Tenor Chef: Barrett Radziun MM ’13 Baked and Instagrammed His Way through the Pandemic
Inspired in equal parts by the pandemic, his grandmother, and Julie and Julia, Bard conservatory alumnus Barrett Radziun MM ’13 found sweet fame on Instagram with his account @thetenorchef, writes the Star Tribune. While a graduate student at the Bard College Conservatory of Music, Radziun started baking for his fellow musicians, only to turn the passion into a side business. Now a performer and professor at Texas A&M University-Commerce, when his classes went online, he set about baking every recipe in Claire Saffitz's Dessert Person, documenting his progress on Instagram.The Tenor Chef: Barrett Radziun MM ’13 Baked and Instagrammed His Way through the Pandemic
Post Date: 12-14-2021
More Conservatory News
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Professor Joan Tower’s “1920/2019” Reviewed in the New York Times
Professor Joan Tower’s “1920/2019” Reviewed in the New York Times
A new 14-minute work by Joan Tower, Asher B. Edelman Professor in the Arts, was reviewed in the New York Times. “Imaginative writing for percussion and bustling rhythmic activity — long traits of Tower’s music — course through this restless, episodic score,” writes Anthony Tommasini. Tower, “as inventive as ever,” debuted the piece with the New York Philharmonic as part of Project 19, which commissioned 19 female composers to honor the centennial of the 19th Amendment. “1920/2019” represented the resumption of the series and a return of Tower’s “multilayered, meter-fracturing” style.
Post Date: 12-07-2021
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Bard Conservatory Faculty, Alumna Receive GRAMMY Nods
Bard Conservatory Faculty, Alumna Receive GRAMMY Nods
Faculty members of the Bard College Conservatory of Music and an alumna of the Graduate Vocal Arts Program (VAP) have been nominated for the 2022 GRAMMY Awards. Bard faculty member Gil Shaham has been nominated for a GRAMMY Award for Best Classical Instrumental Solo for his performance in Beethoven & Brahms: Violin Concertos with The Knights. Sō Percussion, a musical group of which Bard Conservatory faculty Eric Cha-Beach and Jason Treuting are members, has received a GRAMMY nod for its performance of composer Caroline Shaw’s Narrow Sea, which has been nominated for Best Contemporary Classical Composition. Dawn Upshaw, star soprano and VAP founding artistic director, also performed in the recording, with pianist Gilbert Kalish. VAP alumna Sophia Burgos MM ’16 was nominated as a principal soloist in the Best Opera Recording category for her performance in Janáček's Cunning Little Vixen with the London Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Chorus, and London Symphony Orchestra Discovery Voices. The 64th Annual GRAMMY Awards will air on CBS on January 31, 2022.
Post Date: 11-30-2021
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That’s Professor Little Lad to You: Bard Theater and Conservatory Faculty Member Jack Ferver Spoke with the New York Times about Their Newfound TikTok Stardom
That’s Professor Little Lad to You: Bard Theater and Conservatory Faculty Member Jack Ferver Spoke with the New York Times about Their Newfound TikTok Stardom
A well-regarded artist unexpectedly finds themselves the center of a new TikTok trend: that’s been Jack Ferver’s reality since summer 2021. In an interview with the New York Times, Ferver spoke with Margaret Fuhrer about their work and the journey from a 2007 Starburst commercial to TikTok fame in 2021. Reviving the “Little Lad” character wasn’t in their plan until a friend encouraged them to embrace the phenomenon: “So I thought, OK, I’ll go to Wigs and Plus and get a wig and do this TikTok and then see how it goes. I certainly didn’t anticipate getting two million followers in a month.” What resulted was not only fun and funny, but affirming for Ferver. The TikTok community write comments on each video to remind each other that Ferver uses they/them pronouns. “I’ve felt very bolstered from what I’ve seen from TikTok in terms of breaking away from categorical thinking — with gender, with everything,” Ferver says. Returning the favor, Ferver decided that Little Lad uses all pronouns as a means by which to make sure that “Little Lad includes everybody, that they invite everyone to play.” Ferver is a faculty member in the undergraduate Theater and Performance Program and the Graduate Vocal Arts Program of the Bard College Conservatory of Music.
Post Date: 11-19-2021
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A Very Different Vibe: Jennifer Melick Profiles Bard Vocal Arts Alumna Julia Bullock in Opera News
A Very Different Vibe: Jennifer Melick Profiles Bard Vocal Arts Alumna Julia Bullock in Opera News
For the December 2021 cover story of Opera News, Jennifer Melick profiles classical singer and curator Julia Bullock VAP ’11 as she returns to live onstage performances after a pandemic year of performing for video. “Bullock has an unusual quality of being a vivid onscreen presence while seeming simultaneously to be someplace very distant that she wants to take us. The velvety warmth of her voice, phrasing that is not overdone, a natural delivery of the words—all translate well to the screen and microphone. But her unwavering focus and active engagement with the listener are what really jump out,” writes Melick. On coming back to the stage, Bullock says, “I’m not challenged by the scope and scale of the performance, but it’s a very different vibe, a space that I need to practice filling out again.”
More and more, writes Melick, Bullock finds it “very clear the places I want to work, the people with whom I want to work, to ensure that I am entering into a legitimate collaborative relationship.” She also feels the responsibility of making the kind of spaces where unfettered creativity can happen, on more equitable and safer terms, for artists.
Post Date: 11-16-2021
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Bard Conservatory Sophomore Samuel Mutter Premieres “Incarceration,” Composition Inspired by Soviet Dissident Memoir He Read in Bard Common Course
Bard Conservatory Sophomore Samuel Mutter Premieres “Incarceration,” Composition Inspired by Soviet Dissident Memoir He Read in Bard Common Course
Samuel Mutter ’25 was so inspired by reading Vladimir Bukovsky's book To Build a Castle: My Life as a Dissenter as a Bard first-year that he composed “Incarceration,” an original piece of music that premiered at the Atlantic Music Festival over the summer. Mutter read Bukovsky's Soviet prison dissident memoir last year in Alternate Worlds: Utopia and Dystopia in Modern Russia, a common course taught by Sean McMeekin, Francis Flournoy Professor of European History and Culture. In an interview with Soviet History Lessons, a historical archive chronicling the human rights movement in the USSR, Mutter comments on the book and Bukovsky's life as an activist: “What could be a more important battle than a battle for life, for liberty, for basic human rights and freedoms?” He goes on to describe the inspiring experience he had last semester teaching piano lessons to young people in a local juvenile detention center through the Bard student–led Musical Mentorship Initiative. Mutter is a double-degree student in the Conservatory majoring in music composition and global and international studies with a concentration in historical studies.
Post Date: 11-02-2021
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Interview: Conservatory Advanced Performance Studies Student Kira Shiner Talks About Producing Music in a Pandemic
Interview: Conservatory Advanced Performance Studies Student Kira Shiner Talks About Producing Music in a Pandemic
The Global Search for Education interviews Kira Shiner, a 2021 recipient of a Graduate Certificate in Advanced Performance Studies (APS) from the Bard College Conservatory of Music, about her experience in pulling together an online musical performance during the pandemic. “I think music performance is on the brink of a big transition to something new. This pandemic has made every ensemble rethink how they interact with an audience,” says Shiner. Audiences can watch “Gypsy Song,” from Carmen, a lively performance from five Bard Conservatory and APS recipients on the Planet Classroom Network YouTube Channel. The five musicians in the woodwind quintet, APS recipients Collin Lewis, Kira Shiner, and Timothy Woerner; Conservatory alumna Jillian Reed ’21; and Eleni Georgiadis spread throughout the county, flawlessly mesh together their individual parts to create a perfect arrangement of the classic song from the Bizet opera.
Post Date: 10-29-2021