Bard Conservatory of Music News Archive

      

The New York Times profiled the “singular, tender, euphoric, hypnotic opera” Stranger Love and its collaborators, composer and Bard alumnus Dylan Mattingly ’14 and librettist Thomas Bartscherer, Bard’s Peter Sourian Senior Lecturer in the Humanities. The Times also reviewed the opera, naming it a Critic's Pick, calling it “an earnest exercise in deep feeling that takes sensations and stretches them from the personal to the cosmic, and goes big in a time when contemporary music tends to go small.”

Stranger Love premiered on Saturday, May 20, 2023—its only planned performance at the time of writing. Writer Zachary Woolfe tracked the project from its envisioning 11 years ago to its final incarnation: a six-hour, three-act production to be staged at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. Contemporaneous, which Mattingly cofounded with David Bloom ’13 as an undergraduate at Bard, will play, with Bloom conducting. Whether Stranger Love will have a future performance after this weekend is unclear, though “Mattingly has dreamed of doing it at the Park Avenue Armory in New York.” Regardless, Mattingly and Bartscherer are at work on their next collaboration, the ambitiously titled “History of Life.”

The Bard Conservatory Orchestra presents a concert celebrating works by Bedřich Smetana (1824-84), Claude Debussy (1862-1918), Grigoraș Dinicu (1889-1949), Tōru Takemitsu (1930-96), and Benjamin Britten (1913-76). Conducted by Tan Dun, world-renowned conductor and composer, the program will feature Smetana’s Vltava (The Moldau), No. 2, from Má Vlast (My Country); Debussy’s Rhapsody for Saxophone and Orchestra with saxophone player Eric Zheng ’24; and Dinicu’s Ciocârlia (The Lark) with violinist Yida An ’24. Following an intermission, it continues with Takemitsu’s I Hear the Water Dreaming with flautist Jillian Reed ’21; and Britten’s Four Sea Interludes, Op. 33a from the opera Peter Grimes. The performance will be held on Saturday, May 13, at 8 pm​​ in the Fisher Center’s Sosnoff Theater. To reserve tickets, visit fishercenter.bard.edu, or call 845-758-7900 (Mon-Fri 10 am-5 pm).

In his cycle of six symphonic poems, Má Vlast (My Country), Bedřich Smetana paid tribute to the natural beauty and history of his native Bohemia. The Moldau became the most popular of the set, and provided the famous unifying theme—adapted from a Swedish folksong Smetana heard while living in Sweden in the late 1850s—throughout the overall work. 

Claude Debussy’s Rhapsody for Saxophone and Orchestra, a commission left incomplete at his death, was given its final shape by his friend, the composer Jean Roger-Ducasse, and performed and published posthumously in 1919. The work is more lyrical than virtuosic, and stylistically revisits many of Debussy’s favorite Spanish rhythms.

The melody of Grigoraș Dinicu’s arrangement of Ciocârlia (The Lark) was first introduced by his grandfather Angheluș Dinicu, a virtuoso on the nai, a Romanian pan flute consisting of reed or bamboo pipes glued together—a modern version of the ancient Greek panpipe. Angheluș, who was of Roma ethnicity, first played “The Lark” during the 1889 World Exposition in Paris, the event for which the Eiffel Tower was built. 

Toru Takemitsu, the great Japanese composer, was frequently inspired by the image of water. He composed a whole “Waterscape” cycle in the 1980s, and the contemplation of flowing movement led him to also consider visualizing dreams in I Hear the Water Dreaming. He drew on various conceptual backgrounds—including French philosopher Gaston Bachelard’s study of the different cultural symbolic meanings of water, along with aboriginal myths of “dreamtime” gleaned from Takemitsu’s travels to Australia—resulting in a unique mixture of emotionalism and intellectual rigor in his composition.

Benjamin Britten’s great opera Peter Grimes was based on a poem by the 18th-century poet George Crabbe, who lived in the village of Aldeburgh on the Suffolk coast near Britten's birthplace. The character of Grimes, who is a villain in Crabbe’s poem, is reimagined in the opera as a complex outcast who is brought down by his emotional instability and his deeply prejudiced environment. The Four Sea Interludes capture much of the opera’s special ambiance, featuring the sea itself as a protagonist of the work while conveying the austere atmosphere that provides the background to the plot. 

About Tan Dun
The world-renowned artist and UNESCO Global Goodwill Ambassador Tan Dun has made an indelible mark on the world’s music scene with a creative repertoire that spans the boundaries of classical music, multimedia performance, and Eastern and Western traditions. A winner of today’s most prestigious honors including the Grammy Award, Oscar/Academy Award, Grawemeyer Award, Bach Prize, Shostakovich Award, and most recently Italy’s Golden Lion Award for Lifetime Achievement, Tan Dun’s music has been played throughout the world by leading orchestras, opera houses, international festivals, and on radio and television. Most recently, Tan Dun was named as Dean of the Bard College Conservatory of Music. As dean, Tan Dun will further demonstrate music’s extraordinary ability to transform lives and guide the Conservatory in fulfilling its mission of understanding music’s connection to history, art, culture, and society.

As a conductor of innovative programs around the world, Tan Dun has led the China tours of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and Japan’s NHK Symphony Orchestra. His current season includes leading the Orchestre National de Lyon in a six-city China tour, the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra in a four-city tour of Switzerland and Belgium as well as engagements with the Rai National Symphony Orchestra, Oslo Philharmonic, Hong Kong Philharmonic and Melbourne Symphony Orchestra where he was recently named Artistic Ambassador. Tan Dun currently serves as the Principle Guest Conductor of the Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra. Dun has led the world’s most esteemed orchestras, including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Orchestre National de France, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Filarmonica della Scala, Münchner Philharmoniker, the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, among others.

The Bard College Conservatory of Music presents Marcus Roberts’ Modern Jazz Generation and the Bard Jazz Innovators, a concert led by award-winning pianist and composer Marcus Roberts. Roberts, who is also a professor of music at Bard, will perform with his eight-piece professional ensemble, Modern Jazz Generation, in a variety of player combinations throughout the evening with the Bard Jazz Innovators, a nine-piece student ensemble. The performance will take place at Olin Hall, Bard College, on April 20 at 8 pm. Admission is free, with a suggested donation of $15.

Pianist Marcus Roberts has been hailed as a “genius of the modern piano.” He is known throughout the world for his many contributions to jazz music, as well as his commitment to integrating the jazz and classical idioms to create something wholly new. Roberts’ rhythmic and melodic group improvisational style is the hallmark of his modern approach to the jazz trio.

“Mr. Roberts has dedicated himself to learning not only the jazz tradition but also the lilting music of the 19th century, and he brings an astonishing richness to his playing,” wrote Peter Watrous for the New York Times. 

About Marcus Roberts
Roberts grew up in Jacksonville, Florida, where his mother's gospel singing and the music of the local church left a lasting impact on his music. He began teaching himself to play piano at age five after losing his sight, but did not have his first formal lesson until age 12 while attending the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind. At age 18, he went on to study classical piano at Florida State University with Leonidas Lipovetsky, the world-renowned classical concert pianist. 

Currently, Roberts is a Professor of Music at the Florida State University College of Music, where he received his B.A degree and a Professor of Music at Bard College. He also holds honorary doctoral degrees from The Juilliard School, Brigham Young University, and Bard College, and has won numerous awards and competitions over the years, including the Helen Keller Award for Personal Achievement. Roberts is known for his generosity, providing support and mentoring to a large network of younger musicians, and he continues to strive to find ways to serve the blind and other disabled communities. In 2021, he served as the Artistic Director for the centennial gala, The Art of Inclusion, for the American Foundation for the Blind. He was also a featured speaker/performer at the 2021 Disability:IN annual conference.

His critically-acclaimed legacy of recorded music reflects his tremendous artistic versatility, as well as his unique approach to jazz performance, and his recordings include solo piano, duets, and trio arrangements of jazz standards along with original suites of music for trio, large ensembles, and symphony orchestra. In addition to his renown as a performer, Roberts is also an accomplished composer. He has been commissioned by Chamber Music America, Jazz at Lincoln Center, ASCAP, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and the Savannah Music Festival. 

The American Academy of Arts and Letters has announced the 16 recipients of this year’s awards in music. Among the winners, Bard College Conservatory and Bard Film and Electronic Arts alumnus Luke Haaksma BA/BM ’21 was awarded a Charles Ives Scholarship. Charles Ives Scholarships are $7,500 each and awarded to composers for continued study in composition, either at institutions of their choice or privately with distinguished composers. Harmony Ives, the widow of Charles Ives, bequeathed to the Academy the royalties of Charles Ives’s music, which has enabled the Academy to give awards in composition since 1970. The award winners were selected by a committee of Academy members: Julia Wolfe (chair), Annea Lockwood, David Sanford, Christopher Theofanidis, Augusta Read Thomas, Chinary Ung, and Melinda Wagner. The awards will be presented at the Academy’s Ceremonial on May 24, 2023. Candidates for music awards are nominated by the 300 members of the Academy.

Luke Haaksma is a composer and filmmaker currently based in New Haven, Connecticut. His work has been performed at various festivals, universities, and venues throughout the United States and abroad. Haaksma is a past winner of both the Diana Wortham Emerging Artist Scholarship and the Ione M. Allen scholarship for the performing arts. His piano etude “Crystal Murk” was selected by Jihye Chang to be toured internationally as part of her multi-year solo recital project, “Continuum 88.” While an undergraduate at Bard College and the Conservatory, Haaksma studied composition with Joan Tower, George Tsontakis, and Lera Auerbach, piano with Blair McMillen, and Hammered Dulcimer with David Degge. He was the Conservatory’s  Joan Tower Composition Scholar. He was awarded the Sidney Peterson prize in experimental film, “Best Original Score” by the Dreamachine international film festival, and Official Selections from other Montreal and Los Angeles based festivals. Luke was honored as a 2021 National Hammered Dulcimer Championship finalist at the Walnut Valley music festival in Winfield, Kansas. His most recent string quartet, “talking” piece, was premiered in New York by The Rhythm Method as part of the Lake George Composers Institute. This past summer he was a fellow at the Brandeis Composers Conference. Luke began graduate studies at the Yale School of Music this past fall.

The American Academy of Arts and Letters was founded in 1898 as an honor society of the country’s leading architects, artists, composers, and writers. Early members include William Merritt Chase, Childe Hassam, Julia Ward Howe, Henry James, Edward MacDowell, Theodore Roosevelt, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, John Singer Sargent, Mark Twain, and Edith Wharton. The Academy’s 300 members are elected for life and pay no dues. In addition to electing new members as vacancies occur, the Academy seeks to foster and sustain an interest in Literature, Music, and the Fine Arts by administering over 70 awards and prizes totaling more than $1 million, exhibiting art and manuscripts, funding performances of new works of musical theater, purchasing artwork for donation to museums across the country, and presenting talks and concerts.

The Bard Conservatory Orchestra presents a concert celebrating works by Robert Schumann (1810-56), Richard Strauss (1864-1949), and Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958). Conducted by Leon Botstein, music director, the program will feature Schumann’s Konzertstück for Four Horns and Orchestra, Op. 86, with horn players Erik Ralske, Javier Gándara, Hugo Valverde, and Barbara Jostlein Curry; Strauss’ Tod und Verklärung (Death and Transfiguration), Op. 24, and Ralph Vaughan Williams’s “A London Symphony.” The performance will be held on Saturday, March 11 at 8 p.m. in the Fisher Center’s Sosnoff Theater. To reserve tickets, visit fishercenter.bard.edu, or call 845-758-7900 (Mon-Fri 10 am-5 pm).
 
Schumann was one of the earliest champions of what is known today as the French horn. All three movements of the Konzertstück, written by Schumann in 1849, are played without pause, demanding the utmost of the four horn players, giving them the fanfare-type material commonly associated with the horn, but also plenty of lyrical melodies.  He considered this work to be one of the best he had ever written.
 
At its inception, the symphonic poem was a bold attempt to create drama without words and to test music’s expressive powers to the fullest. The genre found a practitioner of genius in the young Richard Strauss. In a series of orchestral works that established him as one of the leading avant-gardists of the day, Strauss did not hesitate to tackle in his music the most complex literary and philosophical topics possible.  “It occurred to me to present in the form of a tone poem the dying hours of a man who had striven towards the highest idealistic aims, maybe indeed those of an artist,” Strauss wrote of Death and Transfiguration in 1894. 
 
Musicologist Wilfrid Mellers wrote that Vaughan Williams was a “double man,” deeply immersed in the Christian tradition and yet a self-described agnostic, looking into the future while spiritually most at home in the past. The “city,” to his way of thinking, was the antithesis of the “country”; it represented culture as opposed to nature, bustling activity as opposed to rural tranquility—and the composer, in a sense, was drawn to both. London, therefore, was both a real place and a metaphor for Williams who, in his 45-minute A London Symphony completed in 1913, combined descriptive realism and philosophical meditation.

Dean of the Bard Conservatory Tan Dun, who is the award-winning Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon composer, has just signed with the Decca recording label. Tan Dun says, “Decca has always been a dream for me. As a young artist, I could never have imagined that one day we would embrace each other. I’ve worked with many recording labels over the years, but now, connecting with Decca, I understand. It is so pure and classical and yet cool and fresh and open to all sorts of music and cultures, it is a very special place. I feel deeply honored to be part of it.”

On March 3, Decca releases Five Souls, which Tan Dun describes as a “a journey from the universe to the metaverse where we discover our spirit, who we are and what we are meant to be.” The five movements for small ensemble include water percussion, harp, brass, strings, and didgeridoo. Listen to the first single from Five Souls, which was released today, here.

The first major new album from Decca, to be released on April 7, will be the world premiere recording of Tan Dun’s Buddha Passion: a tale of wonder, of truth and of gentle but irresistible transformation. The monumental work, involving massed choirs, large orchestra, six percussionists, and an array of soloists including indigenous singers, traditional Chinese instruments, and a dancing pipa player, is the first such "Passion" on a Buddhist rather than Christian narrative.

Another major world premiere recording, The Tears of Nature, will follow in September. The 25-minute percussion concerto was written in the wake of three major natural disasters—the Sichuan earthquake in 2008, the Japanese Tsunami in 2011, and Hurricane Sandy in 2012, all of which affected Tan Dun personally.

Copresidents of Decca Label Group, Tom Lewis and Laura Monks, say, “We are so proud to welcome Tan Dun to Decca. He is a global statesman for classical music; arguably one of the most inventive, energetic and warm-hearted composers alive. His story is quite extraordinary. He embodies the sometimes unimaginable and unique way in which music can change your life.”

Opening on February 11, renowned opera singer and recitalist Stephanie Blythe has dual upcoming roles in “The Puccini Duo,” San Diego Opera’s production of two one-act operas by Puccini. Blythe, a mezzo-soprano, will first sing a deeper contralto as the Principessa in Suor Angelica. She will then step into the title role of Gianni Schicchi in the baritone range traditionally assigned to a male singer. “I’m attracted to projects that allow me to explore different passions and transitions in my life. I think ‘transition’ is one of the most important words for any artist,” said Blythe in her interview with Broadway World. “Voices change from the moment you start singing. It’s never the same—from one day, one year, one decade to the next. It’s part of the body, and so affected by intellectual, physical, and spiritual change. And that has to be accepted.” 

Blythe is artistic director of Bard’s Graduate Vocal Arts Program, an appointment she adores. “I feel like my soul is fed every day I work with students and young artists, and especially the singers and pianists. They are so enterprising and have so many interests,” she said. “They don’t want to play concerts just to check academic boxes. There’s a thought-out reason based on who they are and what they want to say, and I think that’s marvelous.” 

Second annual festival highlights include Pierre-Laurent Aimard performing U.S. premieres of Kurtág solo piano works and The Sayings of Péter Bornemisza, Op. 7: Concerto for Soprano and Piano with Aimard and Tony Arnold; Kurtág’s quartet Officium breve in memoriam Andreae Szervánszky and Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 15, with movements from Cristóbal de Morales' 16th century Officium Defunctorum; and Schumann’s Frauenliebe und -leben paired with Kurtág’s Messages of the Late Miss R.V. Troussova
 
Admission is free for all performances 

 
Conceived and curated by pianist Shai Wosner, Signs, Games & Messages is an annual three-day, four-concert festival at Bard College Conservatory of Music that explores the music of Hungarian composer György Kurtág (b. 1926), as well as that of composers who influenced or were influenced by him. Using Kurtág as a point of departure into music regardless of century or style, the Festival places different pieces and composers in a dialogue outside of time. Performances take place at Olin Hall, Chapel of the Holy Innocents, and the Bitó Conservatory Building Performance Space on Friday, February 24 at 8:00 p.m., Saturday, February 25 at 1:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m., and on Sunday, February 26 at 2:00 p.m. Admission is free for all performances. 
 
Reflecting on his inspiration for the festival, Shai Wosner said:
 
“The title of the annual festival—Signs, Games & Messages—taken from the work by Kurtág, captures the essence of his music and how it constantly interacts with other music and unfolds as a series of highly personal and condensed utterances. This year, the program centerpieces are 'messages' that reflect on the fragility of life—in particular the rarely-performed and monumental Sayings of Péter Bornemisza, and the great song cycle Messages of the Late Miss R.V. Troussova. While sometimes late 20th-century music has a reputation for being ‘mathematical’ or ‘cerebral’, Kurtág stands for me as one of the big figures who forged a path for unapologetically visceral music, and opened the way for many who came after him.”
 
This year’s festival begins on Friday, February 24 with Pierre-Laurent Aimard performing solo piano works by Schubert and Kurtág, including U.S. premieres composed for Aimard by Kurtág during the pandemic and selections from the composer’s Játékok (Games)—short pieces stemming from the Hungarian tradition of blurring the lines between "educational" and "serious/concert" music. The program continues with Kurtág’s rarely performed The Sayings of Péter Bornemisza, Op. 7: Concerto for Soprano and Piano—a cornerstone of late 20th century repertoire widely considered one of Kurtág’s masterpieces—with Aimard and soprano Tony Arnold.  
 
The second program, during the afternoon on February 25, revolves around Bartok's Mikrokosmos (which inspired Kurtag's Games), performed by Bard Prep Division students ages 8-16, interspersed with other related 'game'-like pieces including Bizet’s Jeux d'enfants, Chick Corea’s Children’s Songs, Ravel’s Ma mère l'Oye, and selections by Bach, Chopin, Fauré, and Beethoven, performed by pianists including Frank Corliss, Kayo Iwama, Blair McMillen, Victoria Schwartzman, Susanne Son, Terrence Wilson, and Shai Wosner. 
 
That same evening, the third program centers on spirituality, juxtaposing Kurtág’s quartet Officium breve in memoriam Andreae Szervánszky with Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 15, both of which confront the reality of death and the possibility of renewed life. The pieces are interposed with movements from Cristóbal de Morales' 16th century requiem, Officium Defunctorum. Performers on this program include Bard’s Vocal Ensemble and String Quartet, and musicians from the Orion, Guarneri, and Borromeo quartets — violinists Daniel Phillips and Carmit Zori, violist Melissa Reardon, and cellist Peter Wiley —coming together for special performance of the Beethoven String Quartet. 
 
The final program on February 26 contrasts two song cycles about women: Schumann’s Frauenliebe und -Leben and Kurtág’sMessages of the Late Miss R.V. Troussova, performed by pianist Kayo Iwama, members of the Bard Vocal Ensemble, and the Bard Contemporary Ensemble, conducted by Benjamin Hochman. Schumann’s piece is based on a male-written text that reflects outdated views on women of the time, while Kurtág's cycle is set to 15 poems by Rimma Dalos that are far more current in their sensibility. Heard side by side, the contrasting cycles explore both how the fragmentation in Schumann's music greatly influenced Kurtág's work, and how male-created art has perceived and portrayed a woman’s experiences through time.

This January, the American Academy of Arts and Letters announced the winners of the 2023 Charles Ives Opera Prize and the Marc Blitzstein Memorial Awards. Bard Composer in Residence Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek will each receive a Marc Blitzstein Memorial Award of $10,000, which are given in the memory of Marc Blitzstein to composers, lyricists, or librettists to encourage the creation of works of merit for musical theater and opera. Mazzoli and Vavrek have collaborated on the operas Breaking the Waves, Proving Up, Songs from the Uproar, and The Listeners. In 1965 the friends of Academy member Marc Blitzstein (1905-1964) set up a fund in his memory for an award, now $10,000, to be given periodically to a composer, lyricist, or librettist, to encourage the creation of works of merit for musical theater and opera. The awards, to be given at the annual Ceremonial in May, “reflect the essential mission of the Academy to recognize, identify, and reward works of highest aspiration and superior craft by contemporary artists in our culture,” said Yehudi Wyner, a composer member and former president of the Academy.

Mezzo-soprano, and Bard Graduate Vocal Arts Program Alumna, Sun-Ly Pierce VAP ’19, whose upcoming roles include Laurene Powell Jobs in Calgary Opera’s production of “The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs” and Arsamene in Handel’s “Xerxes” at Detroit Opera, is featured as this month's Sound Bite in Opera News. ⁠“I love Handel. I love early music. I really love contemporary opera,” says Pierce. “I love the challenge of making a new work as immediate as possible for people who've never heard it before. I love the idea of being able to put my fingerprint on it.” ⁠Opera News’ Sound Bites series spotlights up-and-coming singers and conductors in the world of opera.

American classical singer Julia Bullock VAP ’11 released Walking in the Dark, her debut solo album, on December 9, 2022, on Nonesuch Records. NPR named the album one of the “10 Best Classical Albums of 2022" and listed it as number 14 on the “Top 50 Albums of 2022.” “Soprano Julia Bullock's affecting solo debut, with its breathtaking spin on a deep cut by the enigmatic Connie Converse and a sublime rendition of Samuel Barber's Knoxville: Summer of 1915, traces the tenuous connections individuals share with one another and their own senses of purpose on earth,” writes NPR Music producer Tom Huizenga.

Dean of Bard Conservatory Tan Dun has been appointed Hong Kong’s ambassador for cultural promotion. As the ambassador, Tan will initiate large-scale art projects and invite local artists to promote international cultural exchanges. “To me, Hong Kong is one of the most multicultural cities,” says Tan. “The exchange of different kinds of culture is flourishing in this metropolis, where East meets West.” His five-year appointment begins on January 1, 2023.

Bard Conservatory Orchestra, Conducted by Leon Botstein, Performs Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker for In-Person and Remote Audiences, December 3

Fisher Center Premieres SITI Company’s Production of Dickens’
A Christmas Carol, Co-Directed by Anne Bogart ’74 and Darron L West,
Concluding SITI Company’s “Finale Season,” December 16–18

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON —The Fisher Center at Bard celebrates the holidays with two seasonal classics given fresh interpretations by world-renowned artists with deep connections to the college. Leon Botstein leads the Bard Conservatory Orchestra in a symphonic concert performance of Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker on December 3, and the Fisher Center presents the world premiere of SITI Company’s reimagining of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, co-directed by Anne Bogart ‘74 and Tony Award winner Darron L West. The work, commissioned by the Fisher Center, is the final production in SITI Company’s 30th anniversary “Finale Season,” and runs for three performances, December 16-18.

In its special holiday performance on December 3, the 80-piece Bard Conservatory Orchestra, with a 24-member children’s chorus, takes on Tchaikovsky’s score for perhaps the most widely performed holiday classic, the two-act ballet The Nutcracker. The concert showcases the skill of the exceptional young players comprising the orchestra. It gives Fisher Center audiences a world-class rendering of the music, which Bard visiting associate professor of music Peter Laki, in a program note, contends is “the only thing critics liked about the piece from the start,” and is “what has ensured The Nutcracker’s place in the repertoire for 130 years, and is likely to keep it there.”

After fruitful work-in-progress performances in December 2021, SITI Company returns to the Fisher Center to premiere a uniquely SITI A Christmas Carol. They conjure the ghosts of the past, present, and future to speak to our society’s immediate need for gratitude, charity, fairness, justice, and equity. The cast includes Akiko Aizawa, Will Bond, Gian-Murray Gianino, Leon Inguslrud, Ellen Lauren, Kelly Maurer, Barney O’Hanlon, Stephen Duff Webber, and special guests Violeta Picayo and Donnell E. Smith. The production features costumes and scenery by James Schuette, lighting by Brian H Scott, and sound by Darron L West.

Gideon Lester, Artistic Director of the Fisher Center, says, “For 30 years, the legendary SITI Company has been one of the most inspiring and influential American theater ensembles. It’s an honor for the Fisher Center at Bard to collaborate with the company to create their ‘finale’ production—a wholly original adaptation of A Christmas Carol that brings Dickens’ words to new life through the theatrical power of imagination—in SITI’s inimitable style. Anne Bogart is a Bard alum, so this is a fitting homecoming. We’re delighted to continue our collaboration with her at her alma mater and to welcome her superb collaborators back to the Sosnoff Theater.”

Anne Bogart has said, “SITI Company and I are thrilled to return to Bard to share our encounter with Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. I graduated from Bard in 1974, and my trajectory was deeply affected by all of my experiences there. Bard instilled in me a sense of adventure and an enduring curiosity.”

Performance Schedule and Tickets

Bard Conservatory Orchestra, conducted by Leon Botstein, performs The Nutcracker on Saturday, December 3, at 8 pm EST, in the Fisher Center’s Sosnoff Theater. In-person tickets are available for a suggested donation of $15–20, and livestream access is pay-what-you-wish.

Fisher Center presents SITI Company’s A Christmas Carol Friday, December 16, at 8 pm; Saturday, December 17, at 6 pm; and Sunday, December 18, at 2 pm. Tickets are $25–65, with $5 tickets for Bard students made possible by the Passloff Pass and a 20% discount for groups of six or more.

Tickets for both events can be reserved at fishercenter.bard.edu, by phone at 845-758-7900 (Monday–Friday, 10 am–5 pm EST), or by email at [email protected].

The Bard Conservatory of Music presents Uncaged, a centennial concert in honor of John Cage performed by the Bard Conservatory Orchestra under the direction of Tan Dun. The first part of the program features John Cage’s Credo in US (1942); Third Construction (1941), with members of the Conservatory percussion studio; 4′ 33″ (1952); and Atlas Eclipticalis (1961-62). Following a 15-minute intermission, the second part of the concert features Tan Dun’s Percussion Concerto: The Tears of Nature (2012). The performance will be held on Friday, November 4 at 8 pm in the Fisher Center’s Sosnoff Theater. Tickets are $15-$20 suggested donation. Virtual livestream tickets are pay-what-you-wish. To reserve tickets, visit fishercenter.bard.edu, call 845-758-7900 (Mon-Fri 10 am-5 pm), or email [email protected].

The world-renowned artist and UNESCO Global Goodwill Ambassador Tan Dun has made an indelible mark on the world’s music scene with a creative repertoire that spans the boundaries of classical music, multimedia performance, and Eastern and Western traditions. A winner of today’s most prestigious honors, including the Grammy Award,Oscar/Academy Award, Grawemeyer Award, Bach Prize, Shostakovich Award, and most recently Italy’s Golden Lion Award for Lifetime Achievement, Tan Dun’s music has been played throughout the world by leading orchestras, opera houses, international festivals, and on radio and television. Tan Dun is Dean of the Bard College Conservatory of Music. As dean, Tan Dun further demonstrates music’s extraordinary ability to transform lives and guide the Conservatory in fulfilling its mission of understanding music’s connection to history, art, culture, and society.

As a conductor of innovative programs around the world, Tan Dun has led the China tours of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and Japan’s NHK Symphony Orchestra. His current season includes leading the Orchestre National de Lyon in a six-city China tour, the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra in a four-city tour of Switzerland and Belgium, as well as engagements with the Rai National Symphony Orchestra, Oslo Philharmonic, Hong Kong Philharmonic, and Melbourne Symphony Orchestra where he was recently named Artistic Ambassador. Tan Dun currently serves as the Principal Guest Conductor of the Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra. In 2016, Tan Dun conducted the grand opening celebration of Disneyland Shanghai, which was broadcast to a record-breaking audience worldwide. Tan Dun has led the world’s most esteemed orchestras, including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Orchestre National de France, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Filarmonica della Scala, Münchner Philharmoniker, the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, among others.

Renée Anne Louprette, assistant professor of music, director of the Bard Baroque Ensemble, and College organist, is spending her fall semester sabbatical conducting research supported by a Fulbright US Scholar Award in Brașov, Romania. Hosted by Transylvania University, Louprette’s project focuses on the rich cultural heritage of historic pipe organs in the Transylvanian region and the efforts of local artisans to rescue, preserve, and restore these instruments. She has given recital performances in the urban centers of Brașov and Sibiu, completed audio and video recordings of 18th-century instruments in fortified churches of Mediaș, Saschiz, and Hărman, and of the 1930 Wegenstein organ in the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Bucharest. She is also conducting interviews and collecting critical documentation related to notable 18th-century organ builders and recent restorations. She hopes that these efforts will help cast new light on this precious musical heritage unique to Romania as a cross-cultural center of Eastern Europe.

Jessie Montgomery, composer in residence at Bard, has been named Musical America’s 2023 Composer of the Year. “Jessie Montgomery grew up surrounded by jazz and activism. A  Juilliard-trained violinist, she gravitated towards composition in her 20s, and later learned to associate her own Black identity with her music. The resulting body of work has been embraced all around the world for its freshness and energy,” writes Musical America. The 62nd annual Musical America awards will be presented at an awards ceremony in New York City on December 4.

Bard composer in residence Missy Mazzoli (2022) and Asher B. Edelman Professor in the Arts Joan Tower (2020) were recent recipients of this award.

Lucy Fitz Gibbon, Bard Conservatory voice faculty, releases a new album, the labor of forgetting, the inaugural album from independent label False Azure Records, on November 4. The album features husband-and-wife duo soprano Lucy Fitz Gibbon and pianist Ryan McCullough performing three world premieres by composers Katherine Balch and Dante De Silva, with new poetry by Katie Ford. “Though sonically distinct, each of the included works explores the effects of time and distance on memory and human relationships, a fitting response to the lingering isolation and irreality of the last several years,” writes the record label of the album.

Countertenor Chuanyuan Liu, who graduated from the Bard Conservatory of Music’s Vocal Arts Program in 2021, has been named a grantee of the Met’s Education Fund. Education Fund grants are available to semifinalists, finalists, and Grand Finals winners of the Metropolitan Opera Eric and Dominique Laffont Competition, following an audition with the Met artistic staff. The grants are intended to support the development of these young artists and are made possible by the generosity of donors. Since the 2021 Laffont semifinals, Chuanyuan Liu has been involved in three world premiere projects: Pittsburgh Opera’s production of In a Grove, with music by Christopher Cerrone and libretto by Stephanie Fleischmann; Philadelphia Orchestra’s concert version of Kevin Puts and Greg Pierce’s The Hours; and Huang Ruo and David Henry Hwang's highly anticipated new opera M. Butterfly 蝴蝶君 at Santa Fe Opera. Liu has committed himself to an Asian-focused project each year stating, “as someone who grew up in China and spent all of my adulthood in the US, I have seen firsthand the differences but also the common ground. I want to use as much power as I have to build a bridge.”

Pianist Jong Sun Woo, who graduated from the Bard Conservatory of Music’s Advanced Performance Studies Program in 2018, is the recipient of the 2022 Gerald Moore Award for outstanding piano accompanists. With this award, she will receive a prize of £5,000 and the opportunity to play at London’s prestigious Wigmore Hall. The Gerald Moore Award is presented biennially to exceptional piano accompanists, usually in the early stages of very promising careers. Now in its 30th year, the Gerald Moore Award has been its own registered charity but from 2022 has made its new home at the UK’s Royal Philharmonic Society. “My favourite activity as a child was to play pretend with a friend. Playing the song repertoire is not far from that . . . Being a song pianist means that I have the limitless possibilities of parallel universes under my fingers,” said Woo.

For Opera News, David Shengold reviews the Bard College Conservatory of Music’s March 2022 production of Richard Strauss’s opera Salome with libretto by Oscar Wilde, directed by R. B. Schlather. In his review, he praises the Conservatory Orchestra, conducted by Leon Botstein. “The performance also aroused admiration for the Bard Conservatory Orchestra: the eighty-six student players for Salome orchestra played the difficult score with notable beauty and precision,” he writes.  The Fisher Center staging was directed by R. B. Schlather.

Stephen Jones, who graduated from the Bard College Conservatory’s Advanced Performance Studies (APS) Program in 2019, joins the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra as Assistant Principal Bass in the 2022-23 season. Following extensive national auditions, Jones won the Trish & Rick Bryan Chair, a tenure-track position with the orchestra. “Each of these musicians won highly competitive auditions, joining the ranks of the exceptional players who make up the CSO,” said President and CEO of the CSO Jonathan Martin.

Jones began playing the double bass at the age of 13 and later received his undergraduate degree from the Eastman School of Music, where he studied with James VanDemark followed by additional studies at Bard College with Leigh Mesh. During his time at Bard he received additional coaching from Daniel Phillips of the Orion Quartet, Tara Hellen O'Connor, Lera Auerbach and Dawn Upshaw. He has recently completed his master’s degree at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music where he studied with Owen Lee.

 

The Bard College Conservatory of Music has appointed acclaimed composers Jessie Montgomery and Missy Mazzoli to the faculty as composers in residence. Composer, violinist, and educator Montgomery has been called “One of the most distinctive and communicative voices in the US, as a player and a creator” (BBC). Grammy-nominated composer, pianist, and keyboardist Mazzoli was recently deemed “one of the more consistently inventive, surprising composers now working in New York” (New York Times). They both join the Bard Conservatory in fall 2022.

Jessie Montgomery is an acclaimed composer, violinist, and educator. A recipient of the Leonard Bernstein Award from the ASCAP Foundation, the Sphinx Medal of Excellence, Montgomery’s works are performed frequently around the world by leading musicians and ensembles. Her music interweaves classical music with elements of vernacular music, improvisation, poetry, and social consciousness, making her an acute interpreter of 21st century American sound and experience. Her profoundly felt works have been described as “turbulent, wildly colorful and exploding with life” (The Washington Post).

Her growing body of work includes solo, chamber, vocal, and orchestral works. Some recent highlights include Shift, Change, Turn (2019) commissioned by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Coincident Dances (2018) for the Chicago Sinfonietta, and Banner (2014)—written to mark the 200th anniversary of “The Star-Spangled Banner”—for The Sphinx Organization and the Joyce Foundation, which was presented in its UK premiere at the BBC Proms on 7 August 2021.

Summer 2021 brought a varied slate of premiere performances, including Five Freedom Songs, a song cycle conceived with and written for soprano Julia Bullock, for Sun Valley and Grand Teton Music Festivals, San Francisco and Kansas City Symphonies, Boston and New Haven Symphony Orchestras, and the Virginia Arts Festival (7 August); a site-specific collaboration with Bard SummerScape Festival and Pam Tanowitz Dance, I was waiting for the echo of a better day (8 July); and Passacaglia, a flute quartet for The National Flute Association’s 49th annual convention (13 August).

Since 1999, Montgomery has been affiliated with The Sphinx Organization, which supports young African American and Latinx string players and has served as composer-in-residence for the Sphinx Virtuosi, the organization’s flagship professional touring ensemble.

A founding member of PUBLIQuartet and a former member of the Catalyst Quartet, Montgomery holds degrees from the Juilliard School and New York University and is currently a PhD Candidate in Music Composition at Princeton University. She is professor of violin and composition at The New School. In May 2021, she began her three-year appointment as the Mead Composer-in-Residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. jessiemontgomery.com

Recently deemed “one of the more consistently inventive, surprising composers now working in New York” (New York Times), “Brooklyn’s post-millennial Mozart” (Time Out NY), and praised for her “apocalyptic imagination” (Alex Ross, The New Yorker), Missy Mazzoli has had her music performed by the Kronos Quartet, LA Opera, eighth blackbird, the BBC Symphony, the Minnesota Orchestra, Scottish Opera and many others. In 2018 she became, along with Jeanine Tesori, the first woman to receive a main stage commission from the Metropolitan Opera, and was nominated for a Grammy award in the category of “Best Classical Composition.” 

From 2018-2021 Mazzoli was Mead Composer-in-Residence at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and from 2012-2015 was Composer-in-Residence with Opera Philadelphia. Her 2018 opera Proving Up, created with longtime collaborator librettist Royce Vavrek and based on a short story by Karen Russell, is a surreal commentary on the American dream. It was commissioned and premiered by Washington National Opera, Opera Omaha and Miller Theatre, and was deemed “harrowing… a true opera for its time” by The Washington Post. 

Mazzoli’s 2016 opera Breaking the Waves, commissioned by Opera Philadelphia and Beth Morrison Projects, was called “one of the best 21st-century American operas yet” by Opera News. Breaking the Waves received its European premiere at the 2019 Edinburgh Festival; future performances are planned at LA Opera, Houston Grand Opera, and the Adelaide Festival. Her next opera, The Listeners, will premiere in 2022 at the Norwegian National Opera, Chicago Lyric Opera and Opera Philadelphia. 

Mazzoli is also active in the orchestral and chamber music field, recently writing new works for the National Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, BBC Philharmonia, and the Bergen Symphony, among others. In 2016, Mazzoli and composer Ellen Reid founded Luna Lab, a mentorship program for young female, non-binary and gender nonconforming composers created in partnership with the Kaufman Music Center. 

Mazzoli attended the Yale School of Music, the Royal Conservatory of the Hague and Boston University.  She has studied with (in no particular order) David Lang, Louis Andriessen, Martin Bresnick, Aaron Jay Kernis, Martijn Padding, Richard Ayres, John Harbison, Charles Fussell, Martin Amlin, Marco Stroppa, Ladislav Kubik, Louis DeLise and Richard Cornell. Her works are published by G. Schirmer. missymazzoli.com

The Borromeo String Quartet (BSQ), now entering its 33rd season, will welcome violist and Bard Conservatory faculty member Melissa Reardon as the newest member of the ensemble. Reardon takes the place of Mai Motobuchi, who is retiring from performing after a remarkable 22-year tenure in the quartet. Leading a multifaceted career, Reardon is an artist in residence at Bard College and the Bard Conservatory, artistic director of the Portland Chamber Music Festival, and a founding member and executive director of East Coast Chamber Orchestra.

A Grammy-nominated performer, Reardon was the violist of the Ensō Quartet from 2006 to 2018. On joining the BSQ, she says, “I have long admired the Borromeo String Quartet and I feel so incredibly excited and lucky to join Nick Kitchen, Kris Tong, and Yeesun Kim. I have some big shoes to fill and hope to honor Mai Motobuchi’s legacy in the group. It is a dream come true to have the opportunity to play quartets with these musicians!” Reardon begins performing with the BSQ in August 2022.

Viveca Lawrie wasn’t looking to come to Bard. She was discovered—by a member of the faculty at the Bard College Conservatory of Music. 
 
Lawrie recalls that Edward Carroll, who teaches trumpet, heard her play and asked her to apply to Bard. She enrolled in the Conservatory, as a bachelor of music student in trumpet performance, and in the College, as a bachelor or arts student majoring in French studies, with a concentration in medieval studies. “The double degree appealed to me,” says the Sedona, Arizona, native. “Trumpet and French are two things I enjoy.” 
 
Her first impression of Bard was of “a beautiful campus.” Her next impression was one of welcome. “It’s a small community and I felt part of it right away.” She soon met Karen Sullivan, Irma Brandeis Professor of Romance Literature and Culture, “and that set me up for the rest of my academic career.” She credits Sullivan with teaching classes “that were 100 percent fun,” and Carroll with “being on board with my love of contemporary music, and help with the technical side” of horn virtuosity. “Bard is very good at matching you with someone,” she says. 
 
At the Conservatory, she and colleagues played together and critiqued one another in “brass class.” “We are a tight-knit group. We really support each other,” she says. “Elsewhere there’s competition, but it’s never been that way here.” 
 
At Bard, “I definitely learned how to write an essay and push the boundaries of how to study.” A surprise was realizing how much she enjoyed academic research and “learning history from the perspective not of the conqueror but of those not in power. This is something that will forever influence how I approach all my research.”
 
With work for her Senior Project in Welsh Arthurian legend, and her Graduation Recital in trumpet, she has little time for extracurricular activities. But she works in the Conservatory audio-visual office on live streaming and recording, and gave AV assistance to a student-organized concert to benefit a Conservatory student whose family is suffering from consequences of COVID-19.
 
For Lawrie, that kind of outreach exemplifies the Bard community. “I meet people who are interested in what I’m doing and I’m open to what they’re doing. It’s healthy that we all show such curiosity.”
 
After graduation, she plans to apply to an MA program in Wales, then a PhD in comparative literature; she also wants to commission composers of contemporary works. “I think people should have multiple options,” she says.
 
How should high school students prepare for Bard? “Come with an open mind. I can’t stress enough how wonderful a preparation Bard’s Language and Thinking Program is for thinking about the world.” She adds, “And come uncomfortable, because you won’t be used to such focused thinking. But don’t feel afraid of it, and be open to listening to others.” 
 
Bard has changed Lawrie’s life in myriad ways. “I am a lot more confident,” she says. “As a homeschooled student, I learned to live on my own. Here I’ve learned how to make friends. I’ve learned—through the support system, counseling, and Upper College students who do tutorials—how to deal when things don’t go my way. Every professor lets me know I can come to them with any problem, especially in the Conservatory. And the French Studies Program has more of a support system than I could imagine, in terms of recommendations, tutoring, wanting to help. Not a lot of colleges have that.”

Micah Gleason GCP ’21, VAP ’22 is currently the music director and conductor on a project in residency at the cell theatre in Manhattan. The Final Veil is a new movement chamber opera based on the true story of Franceska Mann, a Polish-Jewish ballet and burlesque dancer who was captured by the Nazis and used her skills as a dancer to attempt to escape. It was composed by JL Marlor and co-conceived with dancer/director Cassandra Rosebeetle. The show also includes two current VAP students, Abby Cheng and Katherine Lerner-Lee.

Performances are July 14–31, on Thursday Friday, Saturday at 8pm, and Sunday at 5pm at the cell theatre. Book tickets and learn more here.
 

Bard Conservatory of Music horn faculty member Barbara Jöstlein Currie will perform and teach at the International Horn Society symposium at Texas A&M University in Kingsville, Texas. Performing the opening event recital together with fellow Bard horn faculty member Julia Pilant, they will be joined by Philadelphia Orchestra Principal Horn Jennifer Montone. For this recital, Currie commissioned a new piece for horn and piano from Bard Advanced Performance Studies horn student Liri Ronen. The piece is called “Verdant Place,” which is Ronen’s translation of the German title “Anmutige Gegend,” from Faust, Part II by Goethe. The recital will be held at the school of music Performance Hall at Texas A&M University on Monday, August 1 at 8 pm CT. 

Other events, such as an opera excerpt masterclass and a presentation on “How to Succeed in a Time of Need, the Story of the Met Orchestra during the Pandemic,” will be given by on Tuesday, August 2. 

Currie has invented an accessory for brass instruments and created a new company called Brass Witch, which will debut at the symposium. 
Using strong NeoDymium “rare Earth” magnets, she found a new way to attach a pencil to all makes and types of brass instruments. This new product is a vast improvement over the existing hard plastic pencil clip which regularly scratches the surfaces of the instrument and frequently falls off of the instrument. This patent-pending design was tested by many of Currie’s Met Orchestra colleagues, many of whom are also Bard faculty members. Being used in such a rigorous environment such as during 6-hour-long performances of Wagner’s “Die Meistersinger”, or while teaching outside in a tent at Bard during the early stages of the pandemic were great practical ways to test the durability of the product. 

For more information, please visit Brass Witch.

“Bard College's Graduate Vocal Arts Program produced a lively, delightful and musically assured staging of Leoš Janáček's nonpareil Cunning Little Vixen,” writes David Shengold for Opera News. “Doug Fitch's handsome, inventive production and James Bagwell's assured musical direction demonstrated their understanding of this very particular—even peculiar—piece. [...] Bagwell led the youthful Orchestra Now with considerable grace.”

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. “It’s been in my brain for a long time,” said Feltkamp of the collection. “I really, really love art song, but so much of it was so gendered and I found that it was really hard to connect to it for that reason. Because it was either you had to sing this very feminine music about being a woman or it was this music that . . . was still very much about being a man in the world in the 18th century or whatever.” The compositions featured in the anthology are from 2007 to 2019. “It's really a starting place as a singer to find repertoire, and as a teacher it’s also a place to find things to suggest to students, to teach to students,” says Feltkamp.

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. Virtual livestream tickets are pay what you wish. To purchase or reserve tickets visit fishercenter.bard.edu, call 845-758-7900 (Mon-Fri 10am-5pm), or email [email protected].

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).

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. “I think part of the reason people have been interested is that because, just like when I found the Bon Appetit channel, it’s beautiful and it feels really positive and uplifting," Radziun says. "I hear from people and they'll say ‘I just wanted to let you know that your posts have been a really bright spot in my life.’”

Full Story in the Star Tribune

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.

Read the Review in the New York Times

 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Bard College Conservatory of Music and Graduate Vocal Arts Program present Songs From The Real World: The French Cabaret, a benefit for the Bard Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Scholarship Fund. The concert features renowned mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe (artistic director), pianist Kayo Iwama (associate director), as well as members of the Graduate Vocal Arts Program and Conservatory Collaborative Piano Fellowship exploring the beginnings of the world of French cabaret, a musical movement that was born to explore an exotic and bohemian ideal, expressing social and political satire through song. The performance will be held on Saturday, November 6 at 8 pm in the Fisher Center’s Sosnoff Theater. Tickets start at $25, with $5 tickets for Bard students made possible by the Passloff Pass. Virtual livestream tickets are pay what you wish. All ticket sales benefit the Bard Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Scholarship Fund. To purchase or reserve tickets visit fishercenter.bard.edu, call 845-758-7900 (Mon-Fri 10am-5pm), or email [email protected].

“One of the most important missions of the Bard Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Program is to teach the art of communication and collaboration. So it makes perfect sense that on the heels of a worldwide pandemic that took us all out of the public world and cast us into very private and often solitary settings, that we would emerge through the world of French chanson,” writes Artistic Director Stephanie Blythe. “These extraordinarily popular songs began in the 1880’s with the appearance of the chanson realiste—unapologetically truthful statements about life on the streets of Paris and all the elements that defined those lives—working class poverty, debauchery, sex, crime, and much of it seen through the lens of romantic, smoky cafés and rain soaked, cobblestone streets. Here was found a healthy dose of nostalgia, peppered with wit and charm, as well as a deep sadness and longing, and not a little accordion. These songs are a perfect way to initiate an intimate dialogue with an audience—one that we have been developing even more keenly after such a long, forced separation from all of you. Through the art of the chanson, we see what it means to be fully human, something we have all been taking a hard look at over the last year and a half.”

The evening’s program includes a repertoire of French cabaret songs spanning 1866 through 1968, and includes “Les temps des cerises” (1866) by Jean-Baptiste Clément (1836-1903), “La Vie en rose” (1945) by Louiguy (1916-91), “Le serpents qui danse” (1957) by Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), and “Les moulins de mon coeur” (1968) by Michel Legrand (1932-2019) among many others.

Stephanie Blythe, world-renowned mezzo-soprano and artistic director of the Graduate Vocal Arts Program at the Bard College Conservatory of Music, will kick off the San Diego Opera’s 2021–22 season on Saturday, October 23 with a tribute to lyricist Johnny Mercer. Mercer cowrote more than 1,500 songs in his half-century career, helping to create the Great American Songbook of the 20th century​​. “He was known as the king of lyrics and he worked with many of the best composers because he was such a great collaborator,” Blythe says in this interview.

The Violin Channel’s VC Live is streaming “Asian American Voices: American Stories & Music,” an online concert featuring a selection of important live symphonic works recorded at this year’s China Now Music Festival presented by the US-China Music Institute of the Bard College Conservatory of Music. Tune in at 7 PM (ET) on Tuesday, October 19 for this special event.

“Asian American artists are taking a greater role in the music world of the 21st Century,” said China Now Music Festival Artistic Director Jindong Cai, who recently sat down with The Violin Channel in an interview. “You can witness this in any symphony orchestra, opera house, or conservatory and the creation of the US-China Music Institute is a reflection of this trend. I hope I can use my experience to create a strong platform to enable a greater appreciation of the music from China and to provide new opportunities for artists to perform Chinese music.”

“The US-China Music Institute of the Bard College Conservatory of Music is proving a leading force in introducing music from contemporary China to the United States, and in promoting musical exchanges between the countries,” writes The Violin Channel. 

“Asian American Voices: American Stories & Music”
Presented by US-China Music Institute of the Bard College Conservatory of Music 
Tuesday, October 19 at 7 PM (ET)

Del Sol Quartet & China Now Festival Chorus
Huang Ruo | Angel Island: Oratorio for voices and String Quartet

Conductor Jingdong Cai & The Orchestra Now | Li Yi (tenor) | Nina Yoshida Nelsen (mezzo-soprano) | Helen Zhibing Huang (soprano) | David Henry Hwang (librettist, live narration)
Huang Ruo | Selections from An American Soldier

Conductor Jingdong Cai & The Orchestra Now | Yixin Wang (guzheng)
Xinyan Li | Awakening Light

Conductor Jingdong Cai & The Orchestra Now
Peng-Peng Gong | A Chinese in New York (2019)

   

This Year’s Theme, Asian American Voices, Focuses on Moving Society Forward Through Music

The US-China Music Institute of the Bard College Conservatory of Music announces the fourth season of the China Now Music Festival, from October 12 to 17. The festival’s concerts will take place at The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College and streaming online. Through an annual series of concerts and academic activities, the China Now Music Festival is dedicated to promoting an understanding and appreciation of music from contemporary China. This year’s theme broadens the festival’s scope to include the voices of a wide array of Asian American composers, with the aim of exploring their importance in contemporary American music and society. “Asian American voices are American voices, and Asian American music is American music. We should always cherish the cultural diversity in American society,” says China Now Music Festival Artistic Director Jindong Cai.

The fourth annual China Now Music Festival, Asian American Voices, arrives in the midst of a particularly challenging time, shadowed by the global pandemic and recent rise in anti-Asian discrimination and violence. The repertoire thus reflects how Asian American composers have responded to this particular moment, as well as to the historical reception of Asians in America. 

“Music is not just an art form but should help move society forward,” says Huang Ruo, the festival’s composer-in-residence.  

The festival features three important works by New York–based composer, Huang Ruo. Born in China in 1976 and based in the United States, Huang has established a career as a major figure in classical music today. Spanning many genres and traditions, Huang’s work often aims to integrate Chinese and Western influences into multidimensional soundscapes. Key festival performances include a preview of excerpts from his latest composition, Angel Island; A Dust in Time, a piece he composed in response to the pandemic; and selections from his opera An American Solider, with libretto by David Henry Hwang. The festival programming also showcases new works by a range of Asian American composers. These works delve into the Asian American experience stretching back 100 years to today.

“The recent spike in anti-AAPI hate reminds us that Asian Americans must lift up our voices and show the world who we are, in all our strength, complexity, and humanity,” says playwright David Henry Hwang.

On Tuesday, October 12 at 8pm, the festival’s opening concert, Asian American Voices: Composing for History, music of Huang Ruo, conducted by China Now Artistic Director Jindong Cai, will be held at the Fisher Center for Performing Arts. The Orchestra Now will perform Huang’s 2020 meditation on the pandemic, A Dust in Time: A Passacaglia for Strings, which mirrors a Tibetan sand mandala in its musical structure. The festival’s ensemble­–in-residence, the San Francisco-based Del Sol Quartet, will also present a preview of excerpts from Huang’s latest work, Angel Island: Oratorio for Voices and String Quartet. Angel Island sets to music the haunting Chinese poetry, more than 200 poems, inscribed on the walls of the Angel Island immigration center in San Francisco by detained immigrants during the early 20th century.

On Wednesday, October 13, 2021 at 8pm, Asian American Voices: Undercurrents in Contemporary American Music, a multimedia chamber concert, will be held at the Fisher Center at Bard College. Korean-American composer Jin Hi Kim presents the world-premiere of A Ritual for COVID-19, a multimedia composition inspired by the Korean shamanistic ‘ssitkimkut’ ritual for purifying the spirits of the dead. The Del Sol Quartet will perform new compositions by Erberk Eryilmaz, Takuma Itoh, Vijay Iyer, Erika Oba, and Jungyoon Wie, representing many diverse voices to reflect various aspects of Asian American society and history, from the early years of Japanese immigration—with Itoh’s piece Picture Brides—to selections from the quartet’s ‘Joy Project’—an effort to respond to current social and political change, technology, and artistic innovation.

On Saturday, October 16 at 3pm, Asian American Voices: Symphonic Portraits, with The Orchestra Now, a festival concert, will be held at the Fisher Center for Performing Arts. Jindong Cai will lead The Orchestra Now to showcase three symphonic works by the composers Tan Dun, dean of the Bard Conservatory; Xinyan Li, Bard Conservatory faculty member; and Peng-Peng Gong, Shanghai-based composer and pianist. Tan’s Prayer and Blessing is his initial response to the pandemic, composed in early 2020. Li’s Awakening Light, concerto for guzheng and orchestra, was commissioned by the festival to be performed by the winner of the 2019 Bard Conservatory Concerto Competition, Yixin Wang. Gong’s A Chinese in New York is a raw description of the experience of a Chinese student confronting cultural differences in America. 

The second half of the concert will feature several moving episodes from composer Huang Ruo’s 2014 opera, An American Soldier. The opera tells the powerful and haunting true story of the death of US Army Private Danny Chen, who was born and raised in New York's Chinatown and died in Afghanistan in 2001 after being subjected to relentless hazing and racial maltreatment by his superiors. The episodes presented here will be introduced by the opera’s librettist, Tony award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang. 

On Sunday, October 17 at 5pm, the festival will offer a free livestream of American Stories, American Music: a Symphonic Concert Online. The program begins with the Del Sol Quartet and China Now Festival Chorus performance of a preview of excerpts from Angel Island: Oratorio for Voices and String Quartet. The concert will also feature the previous day’s live performance of selected episodes from An American Soldier, with The Orchestra Now, soloists, and live narration by librettist David Henry Hwang, along with other pieces previously recorded at Bard’s Fisher Center. This concert will be broadcast in partnership with The Violin Channel. 

An online panel discussion and performance, Asian American Voices: Artists Confronting Society, on Thursday, October 14 at 8pm will bring together some of the major voices in the 2021 China Now Music Festival. Featured composer Huang Ruo, Tony award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang, artistic director of the China Now Music Festival Jindong Cai, violist Charlton Lee of the Del Sol Quartet, and others will discuss their experience as Asian American artists and reflect on how this particular moment in history has shaped their creative process and their views on the role of the artist in society. Following the panel discussion, the Del Sol Quartet will offer an excerpt of their new recording of Huang Ruo’s meditation on the pandemic, A Dust in Time.

For more information about the China Now Music Festival and for full programming details, visit barduschinamusic.org/asian-american-voices.

Tickets for October 12 and 13 have a suggested donation of $15 or $20. Tickets for October 16 are $25, $30, $35, and $40. To purchase tickets for the Fisher Center concerts, visit fishercenter.bard.edu, call 845-758-7900 (Mon-Fri 10am-5pm), or email [email protected]. 

NOTE: Due to unforeseen events, the concert originally scheduled to take place at Jazz at Lincoln Center on October 17 will now be presented online. Online Festival events are presented free to the public. Registration links can be found on the Festival website at barduschinamusic.org/asian-american-voices.

The Bard College Conservatory of Music presents the Bard Conservatory Orchestra with members of The Orchestra Now (TŌN) performing Gustav Mahler’s Second Symphony, “Resurrection” conducted by music director Leon Botstein. The concert features soloists Sungyeun Kim (soprano) and Joanne Evans (mezzo) from the Bard Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Program, as well as vocalists from Bard College Chamber Singers, Bard Festival Chorale, and Bard Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Program, led by choral director James Bagwell. The performances will be held on Saturday, October 23 at 8 pm and Sunday, October 24 at 3 pm in the Fisher Center’s Sosnoff Theater. Tickets have a suggested donation of $20 for Orchestra; $15 for Parterre & Balcony; and are free for Bard community with ID and for virtual livestream. Ticket sales benefit the Conservatory scholarship fund. To purchase or reserve tickets visit fishercenter.bard.edu, call 845-758-7900 (Mon-Fri 10am-5pm), or email [email protected].

Mahler composed Symphony No. 2 in C Minor, “Resurrection” over the span of nearly seven years (1888–94) with it emerging as one of his most powerful and successful compositions. When he began writing it in 1888, at age 28, he had no idea of the overall structure or how it would end; the process of discovery—and self-discovery—that unfolded during this time pondering issues no less weighty than the meaning of life and death. The conclusion was a particular problem and the solution proved something of a revelation: a choral finale setting the “Resurrection” poem by the 18th-century German writer Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, which Mahler adapted with his own words. What became known as the “Resurrection” Symphony is one of the longest, most ambitious, and profoundly moving orchestral works ever composed. 

The Second Symphony held special place for Mahler. It was the first of his symphonies he conducted in Vienna (and also as his farewell to the city in 1907), as well as the first that he presented in Munich, New York, and Paris. Mahler told his confidant Natalie Bauer-Lechner: “Never again will I attain such depths and heights, as Ulysses only once in his life returned from Tartarus. One can create only once or twice in a lifetime works on such a great subject.”

Chaojun Yang, who earned a BM in piano performance and BA in French studies through the Bard College Conservatory of Music’s dual-degree program, talks to IPR’s Kate Botello about the importance of risk taking in musical performance, and helping audiences understand the connections between the music and its broader historic, aesthetic, and humanistic world.

Christina Jones has been working with the A. J. Williams-Myers African Roots Center in Kingston on The Green Book Project, in which she has sifted through archival materials to uncover more about how the Green Book played a role in local Black history. Christina graduated this year from the Bard College Conservatory of Music with a double degree in anthropology with a concentration in Africana studies and cello performance. This fall she will head to Cambridge University to pursue her graduate studies.

“[T]here has been progress for us,” Bard Conservatory Dean Tan Dun tells the New York Times. “I am the first Eastern composer to be the dean of a Western conservatory, at Bard. That’s like a Chinese chef becoming the chef of an Italian restaurant. That’s the future: a different way of approaching color, boundary-less, a unity of the soul.”
 

Grace Molinaro ’24, a dual degree Bard Conservatory and Middle Eastern Studies major at Bard College, has been awarded a U.S. Department of State Critical Language Scholarship to study Arabic during the summer of 2021. The U.S. Department of State’s Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) Program is part of a U.S. government effort to expand the number of Americans studying and mastering critical foreign languages. CLS scholars gain critical language and cultural skills that enable them to contribute to U.S. economic competitiveness and national security. Molinaro is one of nearly 700 competitively selected American students at U.S. colleges and universities who received a CLS award in 2021.

“I feel extremely lucky to have received this scholarship because it will help me develop my ability to better express my thoughts in Arabic and communicate across borders—linguistic, national, cultural, and others,” said Molinaro. “I am hoping it will help me get to know the community in my home area better, since a lot of people speak Arabic, and I especially hope that this experience will give me the skills and tools to communicate, negotiate, and foster understanding through language.”

About the Critical Language Scholarship Program
The Critical Language Scholarship Program provides opportunities to U.S. undergraduate and graduate students to spend eight to ten weeks studying one of 15 critical languages: Arabic, Azerbaijani, Bangla, Chinese, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Portuguese, Punjabi, Russian, Swahili, Turkish, or Urdu. The program includes intensive language instruction and structured cultural enrichment experiences designed to promote rapid language gains. The CLS Program is developed in partnership with local institutions in countries where these languages are commonly spoken. CLS scholars are expected to continue their language study beyond the scholarship and apply their critical language skills in their future careers. Since 2006, CLS has awarded scholarships to more than 8,000 American students to learn critical languages around the world. CLS scholars are among the more than 50,000 academic and professional exchange program participants supported annually by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. These exchange programs build respect and positive relations between the people of the United States and the people of other countries. The CLS Program is a program of the U.S. Department of State and is supported in its administration by American Councils for International Education. For more information, visit clscholarship.org.

About Bard College
Founded in 1860, Bard College is a four-year residential college of the liberal arts and sciences located 90 miles north of New York City. With the addition of the Montgomery Place estate, Bard’s campus consists of nearly 1,000 parklike acres in the Hudson River Valley. It offers bachelor of arts, bachelor of science, and bachelor of music degrees, with majors in nearly 40 academic programs; graduate degrees in 11 programs; eight early colleges; and numerous dual-degree programs nationally and internationally. Building on its 161-year history as a competitive and innovative undergraduate institution, Bard College has expanded its mission as a private institution acting in the public interest across the country and around the world to meet broader student needs and increase access to liberal arts education. The undergraduate program at our main campus in upstate New York has a reputation for scholarly excellence, a focus on the arts, and civic engagement. Bard is committed to enriching culture, public life, and democratic discourse by training tomorrow’s thought leaders. For more information about Bard College, visit bard.edu.(6/15/21)

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), in partnership with Arts Midwest, has awarded Bard College a $19,985 NEA Big Read grant to support the Big Read Hudson Valley: Spanning the Hudson River with Words, a dynamic community-wide reading program offering reading groups, performances, workshops, and events in Red Hook, Rhinebeck, and Kingston. Focused on the Big Read selection, The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. Big Read Hudson Valley, which takes place next March-April, 2022, is a collaboration among Bard College and its Master of Arts in Teaching Program and La Voz magazine, with support from Bard’s Written Arts Program, the Bard Conservatory, and Conjunctions literary journal, along with partner libraries and community organizations, including Radio Kingston, the Kingston Library, the Red Hook Library, Tivoli Library, Starr Library, the Reher Center for Immigrant Culture and History, Ramapo for Children, Oblong Books, and Rough Draft Bar & Books.

“For 15 years the NEA Big Read has supported opportunities for communities to come together around a book, creating a shared experience that encourages openness and conversations around issues central to our lives,” said Ann Eilers, acting chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. “We congratulate all of the new NEA Big Read grantees and look forward to seeing the range of meaningful activities they create for their communities.”

Big Read Hudson Valley is one of 61 grants totaling $1,070,000 supported by NEA Big Read in 2021-2022. The grants, managed by Arts Midwest, will support dynamic community reading programs designed to encourage conversation and discovery, all inspired by a book from the NEA Big Read library. The 2021-2022 NEA Big Read grantees are located in 28 states, with 43 percent of the organizations located in communities with populations under 50,000. Nearly half (44 percent) of the recipients are first-time recipients of an NEA Big Read grant. Each organization is receiving a matching grant ranging from $5,000 to $20,000.

About the National Endowment for the Arts Big Read
The National Endowment for the Arts Big Read, a partnership with Arts Midwest, broadens our understanding of our world, our communities, and ourselves through the joy of sharing a good book. Since 2006, the National Endowment for the Arts has funded more than 1,700 NEA Big Read programs, providing more than $23 million to organizations nationwide. In addition, Big Read activities have reached every Congressional district in the country. Over the past 15 years, grantees have leveraged more than $50 million in local funding to support their NEA Big Read programs. More than 5.7 million Americans have attended an NEA Big Read event, over 90,000 volunteers have participated at the local level, and over 40,000 community organizations have partnered to make NEA Big Read activities possible. Visit arts.gov/neabigread for more information about the NEA Big Read, including reader resources—such as book overviews, discussion questions, and interviews with the authors—as well as community stories from past NEA Big Read grantees. Organizations interested in applying for an NEA Big Read grant in the future should visit Arts Midwest’s website for more information.

Established by Congress in 1965, the National Endowment for the Arts is the independent federal agency whose funding and support gives Americans the opportunity to participate in the arts, exercise their imaginations, and develop their creative capacities. Through partnerships with state arts agencies, local leaders, other federal agencies, and the philanthropic sector, the Arts Endowment supports arts learning, affirms and celebrates America’s rich and diverse cultural heritage, and extends its work to promote equal access to the arts in every community across America. Visit arts.gov to learn more.

Arts Midwest believes that creativity has the power to inspire and unite humanity. Based in Minneapolis, Arts Midwest grows, gathers, and invests in creative organizations and communities throughout the nine-state region of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. One of six nonprofit United States Regional Arts Organizations, Arts Midwest’s history spans more than 30 years. For more information, visit artsmidwest.org.

About Bard College
Founded in 1860, Bard College is a four-year residential college of the liberal arts and sciences located 90 miles north of New York City. With the addition of the Montgomery Place estate, Bard’s campus consists of nearly 1,000 parklike acres in the Hudson River Valley. It offers bachelor of arts, bachelor of science, and bachelor of music degrees, with majors in nearly 40 academic programs; graduate degrees in 11 programs; eight early colleges; and numerous dual-degree programs nationally and internationally. Building on its 161-year history as a competitive and innovative undergraduate institution, Bard College has expanded its mission as a private institution acting in the public interest across the country and around the world to meet broader student needs and increase access to liberal arts education. The undergraduate program at our main campus in upstate New York has a reputation for scholarly excellence, a focus on the arts, and civic engagement. Bard is committed to enriching culture, public life, and democratic discourse by training tomorrow’s thought leaders. For more information about Bard College, visit bard.edu.(6/10/21)

The National Endowment for the Arts has approved a $30,000 Grants for Arts Projects award for “Freedom on the Move: Songs in Flight,” a project envisioned and led by art song organization Sparks & Wiry Cries for the commission of two world premieres and a subsequent performance tour in 2023. This ambitious musical project is a direct response to Cornell University’s Freedom on the Move (FOTM) database, housing digitized, searchable fugitive slave advertisements, resulting in a co-commission by Sparks & Wiry Cries and the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society. The grant was written by Sparks cofounders Martha Guth, Ithaca College, and Erika Switzer, Bard artist in residence; director, Postgraduate Collaborative Piano Fellowship; and faculty in Bard’s undergraduate Music Program, Graduate Vocal Arts Program, and Conservatory of Music, with Sparks Managing Editor Lucy Fitz Gibbon, faculty in Bard College's Conservatory of Music and Graduate Vocal Arts Program.

The first commission is a song cycle by composer Shawn Okpebholo featuring four prominent classical musicians—soprano Karen Slack, countertenor Reginald Mobley, baritone Will Liverman, and pianist and Bard Conservatory faculty Howard Watkins—interlaced with material curated and performed by the singer and multi-instrumentalist Rhiannon Giddens. Okpebholo’s cycle sets poetry curated by Tsitsi Ella Jaji, Duke University, whose work along with that of poet Crystal Simone Smith, Duke University, contextualizes and responds to documents in the FOTM database. This interdisciplinary song cycle will be accompanied by a choral work by Joel Thompson, drawing on the Spiritual tradition as well as the FOTM database. After a New York City premiere in early 2023, the project will travel to Philadelphia, Durham, and the Finger Lakes region of New York, in performances co-presented by the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Lincoln University, Duke University, Cornell University, Ithaca College, the Harriet Tubman Home, Inc., in partnership with Sparks & Wiry Cries.

This project is among the more than 1,100 projects across America totaling nearly $27 million that were selected during this second round of Grants for Arts Projects fiscal year 2021 funding.

“As the country and the arts sector begin to imagine returning to a post-pandemic world, the National
Endowment for the Arts is proud to announce funding that will help arts organizations such as Cornell’s Music Department reengage fully with partners and audiences,” said NEA Acting Chairman Ann Eilers. “Although the arts have sustained many during the pandemic, the chance to gather with one another and share arts experiences is its own necessity and pleasure.”

For more information on the projects included in the Arts Endowment grant announcement, visit
arts.gov/news.

# # #

About Sparks & Wiry Cries
Sparks & Wiry Cries curates opportunities for art song creators, performers, and scholars through innovative initiatives that capture the stories of our diverse communities. For more information, visit sparksandwirycries.org.


About Freedom on the Move
Due to the breaking of family bonds and the illegality of literacy amongst enslaved people, there
remains a paucity of written records to track individual lives during the period of slavery. The Freedom on the Move database notes that it compiles “thousands of stories of resistance that have never been accessible in one place. Created to control the movement of enslaved people, the ads ultimately preserved the details of individual lives—their personality, appearance, and life story. Taken collectively, the ads constitute a detailed, concise, and rare source of information about the experiences of enslaved people.” Cornell Department of History’s Dr. Ed Baptist and William Block, director of the Cornell Institute for Social and Economic Research (CISER), are the principal investigators for FOTM, a joint project of the Department of History, CISER and Cornell University Library. Songs in Flight seeks to bring awareness to these individuals and to the creative possibilities made possible through FOTM, building a living monument to this erased history by highlighting stories of strength rather than stories of oppression. For more information, visit freedomonthemove.org.

About Bard College
Founded in 1860, Bard College is a four-year residential college of the liberal arts and sciences located 90 miles north of New York City. With the addition of the Montgomery Place estate, Bard’s campus consists of nearly 1,000 parklike acres in the Hudson River Valley. It offers bachelor of arts, bachelor of science, and bachelor of music degrees, with majors in nearly 40 academic programs; graduate degrees in 11 programs; eight early colleges; and numerous dual-degree programs nationally and internationally. Building on its 161-year history as a competitive and innovative undergraduate institution, Bard College has expanded its mission as a private institution acting in the public interest across the country and around the world to meet broader student needs and increase access to liberal arts education. The undergraduate program at our main campus in upstate New York has a reputation for scholarly excellence, a focus on the arts, and civic engagement. Bard is committed to enriching culture, public life, and democratic discourse by training tomorrow’s thought leaders. For more information about Bard College, visit bard.edu.(5/27/21)

The American Academy in Berlin has awarded Christopher H. Gibbs, James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Music at Bard College, a 2021-22 Berlin Prize. The Berlin Prize is awarded annually to American or US-based scholars, writers, composers, and artists who represent the highest standards of excellence in their fields, from the humanities and social sciences to journalism, public policy, fiction, the visual arts, and music composition. Gibbs, who is also artistic codirector of the Bard Music Festival and a professor at the Bard College Conservatory of Music, was named a spring 2022 Berlin Prize fellow. Fellows spend a semester at the Academy’s lakeside Hans Arnhold Center, a historic nineteenth-century villa located in Berlin’s Wannsee district.

“Gibbs has long been committed to so-called public musicology, especially to forging links between music scholarship and general audiences through curated concerts and festivals,” writes the American Academy in Berlin in its award citation. “In Berlin, he will explore the past, present, and future of concert life in the city.”

“I am thrilled by the opportunity to think intensely about curation, something familiar with museums but much less so with music,” said Gibbs. “Berlin’s rich musical history and its innovative scene today provide abundant material to help reimage the future, especially in the wake of the pandemic and amid struggles for social justice.”

About the 2021-22 Berlin Prize
Chosen by an independent selection committee, the 2021-22 class of Berlin Prize fellows will pursue a wide array of scholarly and artistic projects, including histories of the legalities of small wars among European empires, the Visigothic political order, competing conceptions of self-government in English and American political thought, Algerian Jewish life, and the Greek Revolution; two new novels and a graphic memoir; investigations into lithium extraction in the US, Chile, and Argentina; EU-China-US relations in the context of global supply chains; the relationship between declining coal-use and the rise of populism; European attitudes toward global democratic decline; and new works by a composer, translator, and two visual artists.

The Berlin Prize provides recipients the time and resources to advance important scholarly and artistic projects, free from the constraints of other professional obligations. Fellows work throughout the semester with Berlin peers and institutions in the Academy’s well-established network, forging meaningful connections that lead to lasting transatlantic relationships. During their stays, fellows engage German audiences through lectures, readings, and performances, which form the core of the American Academy’s public program. For more information, click here.

About Christopher H. Gibbs
Christopher H. Gibbs is James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Music at Bard College; faculty, Bard College Conservatory of Music; and artistic codirector, Bard Music Festival. He is the executive editor of The Musical Quarterly; editor of The Cambridge Companion to Schubert (1997); author of The Life of Schubert (2000), which has been translated into five languages; coeditor of Franz Liszt and His World (2006) and Franz Schubert and His World (2014); and coauthor of The Oxford History of Western Music, College Edition (2013; 2nd ed., 2018). He is a contributor to New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 19th-Century Music, Schubert durch die Brille, Current Musicology, Opera Quarterly, and Chronicle of Higher Education. Additionally, he has served as program annotator and musicological consultant to the Philadelphia Orchestra (2000– ); musicological director of the Schubertiade at the 92nd Street Y in New York City; musicological adviser for the Schubert Festival at Carnegie Hall (1997); and artistic codirector of the Bard Music Festival (2003– ). Among Gibbs’s previous honors were the Dissertation Prize of the Austrian Cultural Institute, ASCAP–Deems Taylor Award, and American Council of Learned Societies fellowship. He previously taught at SUNY Buffalo (1993–2003). BA, Haverford College; MA, MPhil, PhD, Columbia University. At Bard since 2002.

About Bard College
Founded in 1860, Bard College is a four-year residential college of the liberal arts and sciences located 90 miles north of New York City. With the addition of the Montgomery Place estate, Bard’s campus consists of nearly 1,000 parklike acres in the Hudson River Valley. It offers bachelor of arts, bachelor of science, and bachelor of music degrees, with majors in nearly 40 academic programs; graduate degrees in 11 programs; eight early colleges; and numerous dual-degree programs nationally and internationally. Building on its 161-year history as a competitive and innovative undergraduate institution, Bard College has expanded its mission as a private institution acting in the public interest across the country and around the world to meet broader student needs and increase access to liberal arts education. The undergraduate program at our main campus in upstate New York has a reputation for scholarly excellence, a focus on the arts, and civic engagement. Bard is committed to enriching culture, public life, and democratic discourse by training tomorrow’s thought leaders. For more information about Bard College, visit bard.edu.(5/13/21)