Bard Conservatory of Music News Archive

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

“The Kurtág Festival is a remarkable opportunity for students, faculty, guest artists, and audiences to engage deeply with the work of one of the most profound musical voices of our time,” said Frank Corliss, director of the Bard College Conservatory of Music. “This recurring festival fosters a unique environment where musicians of all ages come together to explore, interpret, and celebrate Kurtág’s artistry in conversation with other great composers.”

Named after one of Kurtág’s signature compositions, Signs, Games & Messages is an annual festival dedicated to exploring his music and the composers who have shaped or been shaped by his artistry. This unique celebration fosters a timeless dialogue between composers, musicians, and styles, with Kurtág’s work as the central thread. 

For more information, please visit https://www.bard.edu/conservatory/events/ or contact Kat Ottosen [email protected]. 

FESTIVAL SCHEDULE:

PROGRAM ONE: Bartók and Kurtág
Friday, February 28 at 7:00 pm at the Conservatory Performance Space, Bard College 61 Blithewood Ave, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, 12504
Featuring guest artists Hiromi Kikuchi (violin) and Ken Hakii (viola), this program explores the musical conversation between Béla Bartók and György Kurtág, two of Hungary’s most significant composers.

PROGRAM TWO: Piano Marathon, Bartók’s Mikrokosmos (Books IV, V, and VI)
Saturday, March 1 at 2:00 pm at the Conservatory Performance Space, Bard College 61 Blithewood Ave, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, 12504
An exhilarating performance of Bartók’s Mikrokosmos by students and faculty of the Conservatory, showcasing the depth and brilliance of his pedagogical masterpiece.

PROGRAM THREE: Literary Inspirations I, Lichtenberg, Joyce, and Kurtág
Saturday, March 1 at 7:00 pm at the Chapel of the Holy Innocents, 1387 Annandale Rd, Annandale-On-Hudson, NY, 12504
A thought-provoking program featuring works by Kurtág, Bach, Gubaidulina, Purcell, Eötvös, Cage, and more, exploring the interplay of literature and music. Performed by faculty, students and guest artists.

PROGRAM FOUR: Literary Inspirations II, Beckett and Kurtág
Sunday, March 2 at 4:00 pm at the Conservatory Performance Space, Bard College 61 Blithewood Ave, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, 12504
A profound musical journey through works by Kurtág, Schubert, and Beethoven, highlighting not only Beckett’s influence on Kurtág but also musical inspirations shared by both Kurtág and Beckett.

2025 Kurtág Festival performers Include: Guest Artists Ken Hakii (viola), Hiromi Kikuchi (violin), Will Langlie-Miletich (double bass); and Faculty Members Luosha Fang ’11 (violin), Lucy Fitz Gibbon (soprano), Benjamin Hochman (piano), Kayo Iwama (piano), Philip McNaughton (bassoon), Daniel Phillips (violin), Raman Ramakrishnan (cello), Melissa Reardon (viola), Terrence Wilson (piano), and Carmit Zori (violin).

This festival has been permanently endowed through the generous support of László Z. Bitó '60 and Olivia Cariño.

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

Each year, “The Sound of Spring” showcases exemplary symphonic works from the modern and contemporary repertoire, often featuring concertos for traditional Chinese instruments. This year included the world premiere of “Majestic Gallop,” a piece inspired by the vast Mongolian grasslands of Hulunbuir, galloping horses, and the simple life of herders, composed by Bard Visiting Professor of Chinese Music Xinyan Li and performed by sheng virtuoso Wang Lei. “The sheng is an amazing, brilliant instrument. It has more than 3,000 years of history and shares a similar mechanism as an accordion or organ. Whichever country music comes from, they should blend with each other. When we play Chinese and Western music together, it is a great way to collaborate,” said Wang.

Further reading:
“Sound of Spring” concert held in New York City to celebrate Chinese New Year (People’s Daily Online)
Chinese New Year Concert at Bard (The Millbrook Independent)

Bard alumna Jacquelyn Stucker VAP ’13 was interviewed by Opera Wire in advance of her performance in We Are the Lucky Ones at Amsterdam’s Opera Forward Festival. Opera Forward is a showcase of new performances and student production labs that is in its ninth year, and this year’s theme is looking to the past while “search[ing] for a way forward in an era of polarization, crisis, and conflict.” We Are the Lucky Ones is based on interviews with 70 people born in Western Europe in the 1940s, raising questions about “the relationship between the private and the political, the impact of our choices and what truly matters.”

Stucker spoke with Opera Wire about her career in performance and how she became enamored with opera starting at age 20. She credits soprano Dawn Upshaw, the founder of the Bard Conservatory Vocal Arts Program, as the biggest influence on her career: “She taught me how to think about music from a composer’s or an instrumentalist’s point of view in a completely different way.” She also spoke about some of her favorite art outside of opera, including Radiohead’s “In Rainbows,” Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Márquez, and the paintings of Egon Schiele.

The sixth annual “The Sound of Spring” concert celebrating the Chinese New Year will be held on January 25 and 26, 2025, at the Fisher Center at Bard College and Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City. Both performances will begin at 3 pm. The Orchestra Now performs under the baton of conductor Jindong Cai, with featured soloists Wang Lei, professor of Sheng at the Central Conservatory of Music; Yan Guowei, winner of the Golden Prize at the China Music Golden Bell Award for Erhu; Zhang Jingli, a renowned percussionist; and Bard graduate student and pipa virtuoso JinOu Anastasia Dong, presenting a musical celebration to usher in the Spring Festival.

Each year, “The Sound of Spring” showcases exemplary symphonic works from the modern and contemporary repertoire, often featuring concertos for traditional Chinese instruments. This year, Maestro Jindong Cai, director of the US–China Music Institute, introduces the pipa concerto “Sisters of the Grassland,” a milestone work in the development of Chinese ethnic music. Based on Wu Yingju’s animated film of the same name and inspired by Inner Mongolian folk songs, the piece portrays the heroic efforts of two Mongolian sisters, Longmei and Yurong, as they courageously battle a blizzard to protect their flock. Composed in 1972 by Wu Zuqiang, Wang Yanqiao, and Liu Dehai, the piece established the precedent for pipa concertos with orchestral accompaniment. In January 1979, shortly after the formal establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the United States, Seiji Ozawa conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra in a performance of “Sisters of the Grassland” during their historic visit to China, followed soon after by its US premiere.

The concert will also feature multiple works by contemporary Chinese composers, including three concertos for Chinese instruments and orchestra. The erhu concerto “Ink Plum” by renowned artist and educator Yu Hongmei, inspired by Wang Mian’s poem “Ink Plum” from the Yuan Dynasty, combines classical poetry with modern compositional techniques with a grand yet nuanced effect. The concerto will be performed by Yan Guowei, associate professor of Erhu at the Central Conservatory of Music, who is celebrated as one of China’s top ten young Erhu performers and a recipient of the prestigious “Golden School Badge” award from the Central Conservatory.

The percussion concerto “Cang Cai,” composed by Tang Jianping in 2003, merges the sounds of Chinese Peking Opera and with crashing cymbals. The work will be performed by Zhang Jingli, a distinguished percussionist and professor at the Central Conservatory of Music. Zhang has served as principal percussionist of the China Symphony Orchestra and the China Philharmonic Orchestra and is a frequent judge at international percussion competitions.

This year’s concert will also feature the world premiere of “Majestic Gallop” by composer and Visiting Professor of Chinese Music at Bard College Xinyan Li. A concerto for sheng and orchestra, the piece will be performed by Wang Lei, professor at the Central Conservatory of Music and sheng virtuoso. The piece is inspired by the vast grasslands of Hulunbuir, galloping horses, and the simple life of herders, showcasing the expressive power of the sheng and incorporating Mongolian long tunes.

In addition to the classic “Spring Festival Overture” and the aforementioned concertos, the concert will present two symphonic works: “East and West III: Tao for All” by Zhang Shuai, and “The Majestic Land” by Li Shaosheng. Zhang’s “East and West III” draws inspiration from the Tao Te Ching and reflects the composer’s deep philosophical insights into Taoism, nature, and life. Li’s “The Majestic Land” will close the concert. The work portrays the grandeur of China’s landscapes throughout the day, from the sunrise over Mount Tai to the starry sky above China’s 500-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST).

This year’s “The Sound of Spring” will once again feature a pre-concert demonstration with Chinese traditional instruments, offering the public the opportunity to engage with instruments and meet musicians starting at 2pm, an hour before each concert.

Sixth Annual “The Sound of Spring” Chinese New Year Concert 
PERFORMANCE DETAILS

Saturday, January 25, 2025, 3 pm
(Pre-concert event in the Fisher Center lobby at 2 pm)
Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College
Tickets $25
http://barduschinamusic.org/events/spring-25-bard

Sunday, January 26, 2025, 3 pm
(Chinese traditional instrument demonstrations and Spring Festival activities at 2 pm in the Rose Theater Lobby)
Rose Theater, Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall
10 Columbus Circle, New York, 5th Floor
Tickets: From $25
Ticket Purchase: Online at https://ticketing.jazz.org/ or by phone at 212-721-6500 (or in person at the box office to avoid service fees)
http://barduschinamusic.org/events/spring25
 

Bard College senior Aleksandar Vitanov ’25 has been announced as a recipient of a prestigious Schwarzman Scholarship for 2025-26. Vitanov, who is pursuing a double degree in Politics and Music Performance at Bard and the Bard Conservatory, is one of 150 scholars—representing 38 countries and 105 universities from around the world—who will receive the opportunity to attend a one-year, fully-funded master’s degree program in global affairs at Schwarzman College, Tsinghua University in Beijing, China.

“I am very grateful to the Schwarzman Scholars Program for this opportunity,” Vitanov said. “I would also like to express my appreciation to my family and all of my mentors for their support throughout my journey.”

Schwarzman Scholars has become one of the most selective graduate fellowship programs, with this year’s admitted students marking its tenth cohort. The program supports up to 200 students annually and is designed to build a global community of future leaders who will serve to deepen understanding between China and the rest of the world. This year, Schwarzman Scholars received the highest number of applications in its ten-year history, with the class of 2025-26 selected from a pool of nearly 5,000 candidates worldwide.

“Our tenth cohort fills me with optimism for the future,” said Stephen A. Schwarzman, founding trustee of Schwarzman Scholars. “This year’s selected Scholars are keenly interested in learning about China and broadening their understanding of global affairs, which are both now more important than ever. Our network, now ten classes strong, is already starting to make a global impact, and I am proud of our program’s continued success. I look forward to watching this inspiring community continue to grow.”

Vitanov, originally from North Macedonia, is a student fellow at the Hannah Arendt Center and founder and former president of the Alexander Hamilton Society at Bard. He interned at Hudson’s Europe and Eurasia Center and Charney Research. Vitanov also founded the Musical Mentorship Initiative to provide free music education to Bard’s local community, and won, with a group of classmates, the Davis Projects for Peace prize to expand the initiative to Nairobi and Mombasa, Kenya. As a Schwarzman Scholar, Vitanov hopes to study China’s strategy in Southeastern Europe.

Special Event Collaboration American Ballet Theatre Studio Company
 
TŌN Makes First Visit to Europe with Two Concerts in Germany on May 6 & 8
 
Soloists Include Violinist Anna Reszniak, Cellist Benedict Kloeckner, Clarinetist Miles Wazni,
and Guest Conductor Charles Barker

New York, NY, January 7, 2025 — The Orchestra Now (TŌN) begins its winter/spring, 10^th anniversary season with performances led by music director Leon Botstein at the Fisher Center at Bard College on February 8, and continues through April 6.

Highlights include a Carnegie Hall preview concert offering three orchestral transcriptions of works by master composers Beethoven, Chopin, and Smetana (February 8-9); the TŌN spring benefit, a unique collaboration with the dancers of American Ballet Theatre Studio Company (February 28 and March 1); and the season’s closing concert at Bard with works by Kaija Saariaho, Albéric Magnard, and Carl Maria von Weber with soloist and winner of the 2023 Bard Conservatory Concerto Competition, clarinetist Miles Wazni (April 5-6).

Marking the Orchestra’s first visit abroad during its 10^th anniversary, TŌN performs two concerts in Germany: one at the Koblenz IMUKO Festival (Internationale Musik-Kontakte) (Koblenz, May 6); and the second commemorating the end of the Second World War in Europe 80 years ago and performed in a concert hall built on the same grounds where the Nazi regime was rallying (Nuremberg, May 8).

THE FISHER CENTER AT BARD COLLEGE, SOSNOFF THEATER

Transcription as Translation: A Carnegie Hall Preview Concert
Saturday, February 8, 2025, at 7 PM
Sunday, February 9, 2025, at 2 PM
Leon Botstein, conductor
Mily Balakirev: Chopin Suite
Bedřich Smetana (orch. Szell): From My Life (String Quartet in E Minor)
Beethoven (orch. Weingartner): Hammerklavier (Piano Sonata No. 29)
In 1910, the last year of his life, Russian composer and pianist Mily Balakirev transcribed four pieces into an orchestral suite to celebrate the centenary of Chopin’s birth. To honor another centenary in 1927, that of Beethoven’s death, Austrian conductor and composer Felix Weingartner crafted a full orchestration of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 29, the Hammerklavier. While teaching composition at Mannes College of Music in 1940, acclaimed Hungarian-born American conductor George Szell created an orchestral transcription of Smetana’s E-minor String Quartet, From My Life.
This program will be performed at Carnegie Hall on February 11

Spring Benefit: TŌN + ABT Studio Company
Friday, February 28, 2025, at 7:30 PM
Saturday, March 1, 2025, at 7:30 PM
Charles Barker, conductor
American Ballet Theatre Studio Company
Tarantella: George Balanchine, choreography; Music by Louis Moreau Gottschalk
Crimson Flame: Madison Brown, choreography; Music by Philip Glass
Birthday Variations (Pas de Deux): Gerald Arpino, choreography; Music by Giuseppe Verdi
Night Falls: Brady Farrar, choreography; Music by Frederic Chopin
Swan Lake Act III (Pas de Deux): Kevin McKenzie, choreography, after Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov; Music by Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky
Human: Yannick Lebrun, choreography; Music by Blick Bassy
U Don’t Know Me: Houston Thomas, choreography; Music by Avro Pärt
Plus additional works to be announced.
Two of New York’s finest artistic training programs join forces as the graduate musicians of The Orchestra Now welcome the dancers of American Ballet Theatre Studio Company to the Fisher Center at Bard for a performance of music and dance.

Weber & Laterna Magica
Saturday, April 5, 2025, at 7 PM
Sunday, April 6, 2025, at 2 PM
Leon Botstein, conductor
Miles Wazni, clarinet
Kaija Saariaho: Laterna Magica
Carl Maria von Weber: Clarinet Concerto No. 2 in E-flat major, Op. 74
Albéric Magnard: Symphony No. 4
The final performance of TŌN’s 10^th season at the Fisher Center begins with Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho’s Laterna Magica (The Magic Lantern), inspired by filmmaker Ingmar Bergman’s autobiography of the same name, and commissioned by the Berlin Philharmonic and the Lucerne Festival. As she read the book, Saariaho said her composition was inspired by “the Laterna Magica, the first machine to create the illusion of a moving image: as the handle turns faster and faster, the individual images disappear and instead the eye sees continuous movement.” The work’s 2009 world premiere was given by the Berlin Philharmonic and Simon Rattle. The Orchestra is then joined by clarinetist Miles Wazni, a winner of the 2023 Bard Conservatory Concerto Competition, for Carl Maria von Weber’s virtuosic three-movement Clarinet Concerto No. 2, written for the notable clarinetist Heinrich Baermann, the soloist at the 1813 premiere. The concert closes with composer Albéric Magnard’s final symphony. Often referred to as the “French Bruckner,” his work is fully rooted in late 19th-century French Romantic tradition. Magnard became a national hero in 1914 when he died defending his property from German invaders.
Tickets, priced at $15 - $35, are available online at fishercenter.bard.edu, or by calling the Fisher Center at 845.758.7900.

THE ORCHESTRA NOW IN GERMANY
TŌN performs two concerts in Germany, marking the Orchestra’s first visit abroad on the occasion of its 10^th anniversary. The May 6 concert in Koblenz is part of the Koblenz IMUKO Festival (Internationale Musik-Kontakte), which has a dedicated focus on multicultural engagement, bringing together artists from different genres and cultures to perform, collaborate, and share their musical traditions to strengthen a sense of global community. The featured soloist is acclaimed cellist Benedict Kloeckner, artistic director of the IMUK0 Festival.

The May 8 performance in Nuremberg, at the invitation of the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra, commemorates the date exactly 80 years ago, when the Second World War in Europe ended in 1945. The memorial concert features music by Mendelssohn, whose music was banned during the Nazi era owing to his Jewish heritage. By featuring Mendelssohn’s music, the concert seeks to recall the hope that the 1945 victory in Europe over Nazism would bring peace and tolerance in a new world without war. The program spotlights Polish violinist Anna Reszniak, concertmaster of the Nürnberger Symphoniker, and award-winner of the Poznan Wieniawski Competition and the Sion-Valais Shlomo Mintz competitions, among many others.
The May 8 concert in Nuremberg will be broadcast live on German radio by Bayerischer Rundfunk.

Tuesday, May 6, 2025, at 7:30 PM
Koblenz, Germany, Rhein-Mosel Halle
Leon Botstein, conductor
Benedict Kloeckner, cello
Max Bruch: Adagio on Celtic Melodies for cello and orchestra, Op. 56
Robert Schumann: Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, Op. 97, “Rhenish”
Max Bruch: Ave Maria for cello and orchestra, Op. 61
Felix Mendelssohn: Symphony No. 5, “Reformation”

Thursday, May 8, 2025, at 8:00 PM
Nuremberg, Germany, Musiksaal der Kongresshalle
Leon Botstein, conductor
Anna Reszniak, violin
Chamber Choir of the Nuremberg University of Music, directed by Peter Dijkstra
All-Felix Mendelssohn Program:
Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64
Symphony No. 5 in D major/D minor, Op. 107, “Reformation”
Choral Cantata Verleih uns Frieden

For detailed information about the 2025 winter/spring season, visit ton.bard.edu.
 

On December 20, Bard College Conservatory of Music will present “Come Out of the Cold: A Winter Cabaret,” a celebration of seasonal cheer, warmth, and song. The inaugural, intimate winter cabaret, which will take place at the Fisher Center Luma Theater on Bard’s Annandale campus at 7 PM, will wrap up the Conservatory's fall concert season with a program that blends treasured holiday classics and art song intended to transport audiences to a world of winter joy and musical splendor.

“Although we regret that internationally renowned mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe cannot perform as previously announced due to illness, we are delighted to welcome acclaimed opera star and countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, who will join the talented singers of the Graduate Vocal Arts Program and the exceptional Conservatory Piano Fellows for this one-night-only, holiday-infused evening,” said Conservatory director Frank Corliss.

Celebrated for his radiant voice and compelling stage presence, Anthony Roth Costanzo will bring his unique artistry to the Luma Theater stage. Costanzo, who is currently general director and president of Opera Philadelphia, has appeared with many of the world’s most prestigious opera companies and orchestras including the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera, Opera National de Paris, Teatro Real, New York Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, and many others.

The program features cherished seasonal songs including “Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming,” “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” (Pola & Wyle), “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” (Martin & Blane), and “White Christmas” (Irving Berlin).

“We are thrilled to close our fall concert season with a performance that brings together the beauty of winter with the festive spirit of the holidays,” said Corliss. “This concert will highlight the talent of our young artists, alongside members of the renowned Vocal Arts Program faculty, and is a perfect way to ring in the season.”

Tickets: Priced at $45 general admission ($5 for Bard students). Tickets are limited and may be purchased at https://fishercenter.bard.edu/events/winter-cabaret/ or by calling the Fisher Center’s Box Office at 845-758-7900.

The Bard College Conservatory Orchestra presents a concert performance with Music Director Leon Botstein conducting and featuring soloists from the Bard Graduate Vocal Arts Program. The program includes Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 8 in B Minor “Unfinished”; Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy’s Psalm 42, Op. 42, Wie der Hirsch schreit (As the hart cries out); and Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10 in E minor, Op. 93. The performance will be held on Saturday, December 14, at 7 pm in the Fisher Center’s Sosnoff Theater. Tickets have a suggested donation of $15–$20 or free for Bard students and members of the Bard community. The performance will be livestreamed. Virtual livestream tickets are pay what you wish. All ticket sales benefit the Bard College Conservatory Scholarship Fund. For tickets and information visit fishercenter.bard.edu or call 845-758-7900 (Mon-Fri 10am-5pm).

Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 8 in B Minor “Unfinished,” composed just over 200 years ago, heralds a new Romantic sound in its orchestration, provides a supreme example of Schubert’s lyrical gifts, displays his bold harmonic daring, and projects an extraordinary range of emotions. Beginning in 1830, Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy composed an impressive series of psalm settings and drafted Psalm 42 (“As the hart cries out for fresh water”) while on his honeymoon in the summer of 1837. Psalm 42 became one of his most popular religious compositions, unfolding in seven movements, beginning with a chorus that is calm and lyrical and ending in a triumphant finale. Dmitri Shostakovich began writing his Tenth Symphony in the summer of 1953, a few months after Stalin died, and completed it quickly. Premiering in Leningrad in December 1953, the work received a mixed reception but has since emerged for many listeners as Shostakovich’s greatest symphonic achievement. “In this work I wanted to convey human feelings and passions,” he has stated.

This concert in the Fisher Center’s Sosnoff Theater is dedicated to the late Richard B. Fisher, whom we celebrate on the 20th anniversary of his death. Richard Fisher was a man of deep intellectual curiosity, an enlightened patron of the arts, chairman emeritus of Morgan Stanley, and former chair of Bard College’s Board of Trustees. The magnificent Fisher Center building and the extraordinary arts experiences that take place within it are a tribute to his vision.

Bard College Conservatory of Music is pleased to announce that baritone Tyler Duncan will join its faculty in the Graduate Vocal Arts program. Duncan, whose voice faculty appointment will begin in fall 2025, has performed worldwide to great acclaim in both opera and concert repertoire, and with several of the world’s leading orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Tafelmusik, Minnesota Orchestra, and the Kansas City Symphony. He has performed numerous roles at The Metropolitan Opera, including Fiorello in Il barbiere di Siviglia, Moralès in Carmen, Prince Yamadori in Madama Butterfly, and the Journalist in Lulu. Other notable appearances have included Mr. Friendly in the 18th-century ballad opera Flora and Sprecher in Die Zauberflöte at the Spoleto Festival USA, Raymondo in Handel’s Almira, Dandini in La Cenerentola with Pacific Opera Victoria and Demetrius in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Princeton Festival. Duncan has also been the recipient of prizes from the Naumburg, London’s Wigmore Hall, and Munich’s ARD competitions, and has won the Joy in Singing competition, the New York Oratorio Society’s Lyndon Woodside Oratorio-Solo Competition, the Prix International Pro Musicis Award, and the Bernard Diamant Prize from the Canada Council for the Arts. 

A New Day, a cello concerto released in 2021 by Joan Tower, Asher B. Edelman Professor in the Arts at Bard College, was featured in Times Union. The work, which began as a commission by the Colorado Music Festival, Cleveland Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and National Symphony Orchestra, was written while Jeff Litfin, her late husband of 50 years, was dying. “I was in real bad shape,” Tower said. “So I decided to write. In fact, all the music I've been writing since then is about him.” The concerto, which will be performed by Albany Symphony in Troy on November 16 and 17, contains four movements: “Daybreak,” “Working Out,” “Mostly Alone” and “Into the Night.” The titles are intentionally simple, allowing for many interpretations of a single day, she told Times Union.

The Bard College Conservatory of Music is pleased to present a celebration of the new album release by renowned pianist and conductor Benjamin Hochman, a lecturer at Bard College Berlin. The event, which takes place on November 8, 2024 at 7 pm in the Bitó Conservatory Building on Bard’s campus, will begin with a reception followed by a piano concert of Hochman’s album Resonance. The event is free and open to the public. For more information, please visit here.

Resonance will be released by Avie Records on November 1, 2024. It features Beethoven Piano Sonatas Op. 109 and 110, George Benjamin’s Shadowlines, and works by Josquin de Prez and John Dowland. “This program is a journey from darkness to light, a study in contrasts that nevertheless finds resonance across the centuries, ultimately finding transcendence and even triumph,” Hochman writes.

Born in Jerusalem in 1980, Hochman’s chamber music collaborations have taken him to Berlin, Budapest, Vancouver, Boston, Seattle, Dallas, Charlottesville, the Clark Art Institute in Massachusetts, and Brown University. He currently curates the Kurtág Festival, a three-day event inspired by the musical explorations of György Kurtág, at Bard College in Annandale.

The China Now Music Festival, a collaboration between the US-China Music Institute of the Bard College Conservatory of Music and the Central Conservatory of Music, China, was reviewed in China Daily. The festival, now in its seventh season and with the theme Composing the Future, performed on Saturday at Carnegie Hall in New York City, where Sun Yuming, a composer and lecturer on electronic music composition at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, introduced his piece “Starry Night.” The composition featured AI-driven visuals which were rendered in real time to blend physical and virtual instruments. “This approach combines the unique characteristics of traditional instruments with the innovations of electronic music, integrating AI throughout the entire performance—not only in sound but also in the visual effects on stage.” Sun told China Daily.

The US-China Music Institute of the Bard College Conservatory of Music and the Central Conservatory of Music, China, announce the seventh season of the China Now Music Festival, titled Composing the Future, from October 12 to 19. The festival’s major concerts will take place at Carnegie Hall in New York City and at Bard College.

The China Now Music Festival is dedicated to promoting an understanding and appreciation of music from contemporary China through an annual series of concerts and academic activities. In the previous six seasons, China Now has attracted more than 10,000 live audience members, and nearly 100,000 viewers have participated in online programs. The seventh season features contemporary works on the cutting edge of music with two concerts at Carnegie Hall, in Stern Auditorium on October 12 and Zankel Hall on October 19, to look at the intersection of technology and music.

Artistic Director Jindong Cai says: “Generations of composers in China have been paving the way for the future of classical music. Some are now experimenting with rapidly developing technologies, like AI, that can provide us with new ways to enhance musical expression. This year, China Now explores these new frontiers in music with some of the greatest living composers from China. But even as we venture into this brave new world, we remain certain that, at its core, music-making must always come from the creative heart and imaginative mind of a human being.”

On October 12, Conductor Jindong Cai leads The Orchestra Now in a future-focused program of new symphonic works by contemporary Chinese composers in the opening concert of China Now in Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall. The richly varied program features Juilliard-trained composer and pianist Peng-Peng Gong’s Of Peking and Opera, an abridged version of his magnificent Tenth Symphony. The Tenth Symphony was originally co-commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra and was praised as “a sweet, sentimental, and direct work with highly original sounds presented in a series of vivid episodes” by the Philadelphia Inquirer.

From the inspiration of Peking Opera to a tribute to American jazz master Ray Charles, the program also presents New York–based Pulitzer Prize winner Du Yun’s Hundred Heads (In Tribute to Ray Charles). The musical theme hints at Charles’s best-known tune, “Georgia on My Mind,” and his trademark brass rhythms, while drawing on Buddhist mythology to represent the essence of Charles’ musical gifts.

In keeping with the future-focused theme of this year’s festival events, China Now asked the Department of Music Artificial Intelligence of the Central Conservatory of Music (CCOM) to contribute orchestral pieces composed in part by AI, as well as works that experimentally incorporate AI technology in live performances. Highlights of this segment of the program include Li Xiaobing’s use of a ‘Cloud Chorus’ of 1,000 voices gathered from around the world, and a piece by Sun Yuming where a traditional ‘guzheng’ zither is played on stage without the performer touching the instrument.

Rounding out the dynamic program are two captivating symphonic pieces by Qin Wenchen and Yao Chen from the composition faculty of CCOM, locus of some of the most forward-thinking and innovative composers of our time.

A pre-concert event at the Rohatyn Room at Carnegie Hall from 5:30 pm to 7:00 pm brings together an illustrious panel of composers and music researchers convene for the 2nd annual US-China Music Forum to explore how technology and music can intersect in new music composition. Note that seating is limited for the forum and advance reservations are required.

The China Now Music Festival concludes with a second concert on October 19 at Carnegie’s intimate Zankel Hall with a chamber opera by visionary composer Hao Weiya, performed by the China Now Chamber Orchestra and conductor Jindong Cai. Unlike the October 12 concert program, which highlights the fusion of music and technology, Hao Weiya’s AI’s Variation: Opera of the Future confronts us with a series of chilling questions relating to the ethics of science and technology merging with human creativity. A science fiction-themed drama for three voices and a chamber orchestra, AI’s Variation tells the story of a troubled artist who allows his identity to be ‘enhanced’ by AI but then struggles with the consequences in his personal life.

The program at Zankel Hall also features a performance by the dynamic young musicians of the Bard East/West Ensemble, whose unique combination of Chinese and Western instruments has been widely enjoyed by the audience of the China Now Music Festival in past years. They will be joined by Duo Chinoiserie, a unique pairing that combines the Chinese guzheng and the European classical guitar, to perform French composer Mathias Duplessy’s Zhong Kui’s Regrets and Zhong Kui’s Journey in a new arrangement for the Duo and the Bard East/West Ensemble.

The Ensemble further advances into imaginative spaces with Chinese composer Jia Guoping’s Ripples in Spacetime, inspired by pulsar signals in deep space, and Shi Fuhong’s Vital Momentum. Commissioned by the China Now Music Festival and inspired by the cicada, Shi’s hope-filled piece delves into profound themes of life, vitality, humanity, nature, heaven, earth, and time. Another commission for the Bard East/West Ensemble by young composer Yan Yan, from China Now’s Emerging Composers Discovery Project, presents a new re-imagining of the classic ghost story Painted Skin, composed especially for the Bard East/West Ensemble.

Note: This program will also be performed in a free concert at Bard’s Fisher Center for the Performing arts on Friday, October 18 at 7 pm.

EVENT DETAILS AND TICKETING

CONCERT 1:
COMPOSING THE FUTURE: THE ORCHESTRA NOW (TŌN) CONDUCTED BY JINDONG CAI

Saturday, October 12 at 7:30 pm
Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage at Carnegie Hall
Tickets: $25/$40/$60
Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage at Carnegie Hall
57th Street and Seventh Ave, New York, NY, 10019
For tickets, visit: https://www.carnegiehall.org/Calendar/2024/10/12/Composing-the-Future-A-Concert-with-The-Orchestra-Now-Jindong-Cai-Conductor-0730PM


CONCERT 2:
COMPOSING THE FUTURE: THE CHINA NOW CHAMBER ORCHESTRA AND THE BARD EAST/WEST ENSEMBLE
Featuring AI’S VARIATION: OPERA OF THE FUTURE
Jindong Cai, conductor

Friday, October 18 at 7 pm
Sosnoff Theater, Fisher Center at Bard College
FREE and open to the public.
For more information, visit: https://fishercenter.bard.edu/events/composing-the-future/

Saturday, October 19 at 7:30 pm
Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall
Tickets: $25/$35/$45/$60
Seventh Avenue between 56th and 57th Streets, New York, NY, 10019
For tickets, visit: https://www.carnegiehall.org/Calendar/2024/10/19/Composing-the-Future-A-Concert-with-the-China-Now-Chamber-Orchestra-and-the-Ba-0730PM

US-CHINA MUSIC FORUM: COMPOSING THE FUTURE
Saturday, October 12 from 5:30 pm to 7 pm
Rohatyn Room at Carnegie Hall
57th Street and Seventh Ave, New York, NY, 10019
The US-China Music Forum is free and requires reservations via Eventbrite. Seating is limited.
For more information about the China Now Music Festival and for full programming details, please visit: barduschinamusic.org/composing-the-future

Mezzo-soprano Sun-Ly Pierce VAP ’19, alumna of the Bard Conservatory Vocal Arts Program, has won third prize in Operalia 2024, the world opera competition founded by Plácido Domingo in 1993 to discover and help launch the careers of the most promising young opera singers of today. Operalia’s goal is to attract singers between the ages of 20 and 32, of all voice types from and all over the world, to have them audition and be heard by a panel of distinguished international personalities, in the most prestigious and competitive showcase in the world. 

The international jury, presided by Plácido Domingo, listens to each of the chosen participants during two days of quarterfinals. Twenty participants are then selected to continue on to the semifinals, and ten singers are chosen for the finals. The quarterfinals and semifinals are carried out in audition form, but the final round is presented in the form of a gala concert accompanied by a full orchestra. This year, Operalia was held at The National Centre for the Performing Arts in Mumbai, India, September 15–21.

The Bard College Conservatory of Music announces the appointment of Satoshi Okamoto to the faculty in double bass. Okamoto has been a member of the New York Philharmonic since 2003. He served as an acting principal and assistant principal in 2013–16. Prior to the Philharmonic, he was an assistant principal double bassist in the San Antonio Symphony for eight years and a member of the New York City Ballet Orchestra for a year. As a soloist, he was a finalist of the International Society of Bassist Solo Competition and the Izuminomori International Double Bass Competition, also a twice winner of the Aspen bass competition. He was a faculty member at Stonybrook University from 2023–24. He has given master classes at institutions such as The Juilliard School Pre-College, Toho school of music, LSU at Baton Rouge, TCU, Aichi University of fine arts, and Pyongyang Conservatory. He received his master’s degree from The Juilliard School, and a bachelor’s degree from Tokyo University of Fine Arts.

Despite China’s status as a major world leader, few American students are returning to study abroad in China. Last semester, only about 700 US students were in China, compared to more than 11,000 prior to the pandemic. In opposition to this trend, Bard is expanding its engagement in China. 

Malia Du Mont ’95, Bard’s Vice President for Strategy and Policy and the first person to earn a BA in Chinese from Bard, stated, “The US and China will play a major role in determining the future of the planet we share, so it is our responsibility as educators to create opportunities for young people from both countries to learn from each other. In the context of challenging political relations and the rise of artificial intelligence, we must strengthen our commitment to the humanities and nurture many forms of communication, including through music and the arts.”

Underscoring the College’s commitment, President Leon Botstein returned to China in June to spend two weeks in the cities of Xiamen and Ningbo, where he conducted concerts and met with high school and university students and administrators. President Botstein also attended a concert in Ningbo conducted by Oscar-winning composer and Dean of the Bard College Conservatory of Music Tan Dun.

In July, Bard College Conservatory of Music Director Frank Corliss taught for a week at the Shandong University of the Arts (SUA) in Jinan, concluding with a performance by the students and Corliss with members of the faculty and the director of SUA. The director of SUA, GQ Wang, is eager for continued visits by Bard Conservatory faculty and a trip by Graduate Vocal Arts Program Associate Director Kayo Iwama is planned for the coming academic year.

Following the week in Jinan, Frank Corliss traveled to Changsha where he joined Bard Conservatory Dean Tan Dun and four percussion students of the Conservatory (Maddy Dethof, Jonathan Collazo BM/BA ’19, APS ’24, Estaban Ganem MM ’24; Arnav Shirodkar BM/BA ’24) for concerts with Tan Dun and the Changsha Symphony Orchestra. Tan Dun led the students and Frank Corliss in two of his pieces for voice, piano, and percussion ensemble, and in his recent arrangement of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring for two pianos and percussion. The students, with the Changsha Symphony, also gave the premiere of a piece by Tan Dun “Noa Concerto” for four percussionists and orchestra. The students played on specially made replicas of ancient bronze bells recently discovered in Changsha. The week of concerts also included a performance featuring the Bard String Quartet: Bard Director of Asian Recruitment and Institutional Relations Shawn Moore BM/BA ’11, Fangxi Liu BM/BA ’16, Lin Wang BM/BA ’12, and Zhang Hui APS ’17.  There was also a panel discussion at the Changsha Symphony on Education and Music with Tan Dun, Frank Corliss, and Changsha Symphony President Wang Zhi.
 At a time when language instruction is being cut in many American high schools and institutions of higher education, Chinese language is offered throughout the Bard Early College network. This summer, student cohorts from both Bard High School Early College Baltimore (Bard Baltimore) and Bard High School Early College DC (Bard DC) traveled separately to China. From July 21 to August 5, Bard Baltimore students visited Baltimore's sister city of Xiamen, Maryland’s sister province of Anhui, and China’s capital Beijing as part of the Baltimore-Xiamen Sister City Committee 2024 Youth Ambassadors Program. Their two-week study tour included living and interacting with Chinese peers from local schools in Xiamen, cultural immersion experiences, and meetings with local leaders. They had the opportunity to visit cultural sites including Gulangyu Island (a UNESCO World Heritage site), Lingling Zoo (a local zoo where they saw two twin brother pandas), and Xiamen’s first mangrove-themed ecological coastal wetland park Xiatanwei. Their trip also included travel to the famous Yellow Mountains of Anhui Province and China’s capital Beijing, where they visited the Great Wall, Summer Palace, Temple of Heaven, as well as the US Embassy to attend a panel discussion on the career path of a diplomat.
Bard DC Chinese language students had the opportunity to visit China this summer too. They spent two weeks at Yunnan Normal University in the city of Kunming, taking language classes and enjoying local food, tea, traditional dance, and other cultural experiences such as a visit to the hot springs. Interacting with local Chinese students was a key part of the program for both the Bard Baltimore and Bard DC student groups.

As part of the Chinese language program at the Bard College main campus, Bard undergraduate students from Annandale also went to China this summer, for an eight-week intensive at Qingdao University, which has hosted Bard’s summer immersion courses for over a decade. In addition to taking language classes, participants studied Kung Fu and painting, lived with a host family for one week, and conducted cultural tours in Beijing, Tai’an, and Qingdao.

Jacquelyn Stucker ’13, an alumna of Bard’s Graduate Vocal Arts Program, was reviewed in the New York Times for her role as Delilah in the opera Samson at the Aix-en-Provence festival. Samson, a never-performed opera by Voltaire and Rameau, two of Enlightenment France’s most important cultural figures, was performed as an updated production with pieces drawn from other Rameau works to replace the original score, which was lost some 250 years ago. The Aix production “retains the hypnotic continuity of Rameau’s complete operas, their steadiness and also their variety, veering from festive to soulful, from raucous dances to hushed, hovering arias and radiant choruses,” writes Zachary Woolfe for the New York Times.  “The mezzo-soprano Lea Desandre (Timna) and the soprano Jacquelyn Stucker (Dalila) are both exquisitely sensitive in their floating music.”

Bard College will receive a $50,006 grant as part of New York State’s Higher Education Capital Matching Grant Program, which supports projects at colleges and universities across the state by providing construction and renovation of laboratory and research spaces, the purchase of instructional technologies and equipment, and other significant investments. The grant will support the purchase of pianos and equipment for Bard’s László Z. Bitó Conservatory building. The equipment will be available to Bard’s community of students, faculty, and staff, as well as to the greater Hudson Valley community that participates in the opportunities Bard provides for learning, enrichment, and enjoyment. “New York’s colleges and universities are second to none, offering students unparalleled opportunities to learn, explore, and prepare to launch their careers,” Governor Hochul said. “With this funding, my administration is reaffirming our commitment to providing our students—including those at our private, not-for-profit institutions—with a top-tier, New York education with the best possible resources and facilities that will help them succeed inside and outside of the classroom.”

Soprano Lucy Fitz Gibbon, visiting faculty in vocal arts at the Bard College Conservatory of Music, has been awarded a 2024 fellowship from the Borletti-Buitoni Trust (BBT) in support of her professional projects. The BBT Fellowship Program rewards musical excellence demonstrated by outstanding young musicians—for individuals and ensembles that have been selected from over 32 countries—with fellowships in 2024 being given to seven artists, including Fitz Gibbon. BBT winners are awarded between £20,000 and £30,000. There are no set criteria for how artists spend their budget. Winners are encouraged to be creative and to use their awards in a way that will help to establish and build their careers. Over the next three years, BBT’s fellowship funding will support Fitz Gibbon in the commissioning of new works, performances, and recordings. BBT also will provide advice, guidance, contacts, and public relations exposure. BBT artists join a supportive family that helps to advance their careers.

“I am overwhelmed with gratitude to have received one of the Borletti-Buitoni Trust’s 2024 Artist Fellowships. The nomination process asked me to dream about what I could accomplish with the kind of latitude that this funding and administrative support would represent, but I found the range of possibilities almost too tantalizing to imagine, as if I could permit myself only an oblique gaze at what might be,” wrote Fitz Gibbon upon receiving the fellowship.

Lucy Fitz Gibbon is noted for her “dazzling virtuoso singing” (Boston Globe) and believes that creating new works and recreating those lost in centuries past makes room for the diversity of voices integral to classical music’s future. Spotlighted as a Rising Star of Classical Music for 2024 in the February 20, 2024, edition of the British Broadcasting Corporation's (BBC) Music Magazine, Fitz Gibbon is one of 15 young classical musicians that the BBC has identified worldwide who are making a prominent stamp on the industry, whether with concert performances, opera roles, or dazzling new recordings.

In a profile of the US-China Music Institute of the Bard College Conservatory of Music for China Daily, Minlu Zhang spoke with Director Jindong Cai and several current Bard Conservatory students. “Our faculty comprises top experts in their fields, which naturally fosters interaction and collaboration,” Cai told China Daily. “At Bard, students studying Chinese music and Western music work closely together, becoming friends and often forming duets, trios, or learning each other’s instruments. This integration creates a vibrant musical community.” Zhang also spoke with Bard students Andrew Chan ’24 MA ’25, Kendall Griffith ’26, Beitong Liu ’24 MA ’25, and Yixing Wang ’25 about their artistic practices and love of traditional Chinese music. Griffith, who was able to study at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, China, last semester, said she learned more about her passion and was able to move beyond her comfort zone. “There was an interesting lecture that talked about how most Chinese music emulates things in calligraphy,” Griffith said. “There’s a lot of empty space, and I can now incorporate that feeling into a lot of the music I play.” One of the goals of the US-China Music Institute is to create opportunities for these kinds of cross-cultural exchanges. “Globally, music is the most effective way to connect people,” Cai said. “When you look at various cultures or regions, you often see conflicts. However, when you consider music, it has a way of connecting everyone.”

Hannah Park-Kaufmann ’24, who is graduating with dual degrees in piano performance and mathematics, has won a Knight-Hennessy Scholarship for graduate-level study at Stanford University. Park-Kaufmann will pursue a master's degree in computational and mathematical engineering at Stanford University School of Engineering. After completing her master’s degree at Stanford through Knight-Hennessy, she will matriculate into the PhD program in applied mathematics at Harvard University, a program to which she has already been accepted. As a pianist, Hannah became fascinated by human fine-motor movement. She aspires to help more people reach mastery in physiologically complex professions by using experiment, theory, and computation to explore what simpler patterns might underlie our movements, and turning this understanding into new educational paradigms. 

At Bard, Hannah was president of the Association for Women in Mathematics Chapter, tutored mathematics in New York state prisons through the Bard Prison Initiative, and gave a TEDx talk on a research study she designed and led at MIT on the physiological correlates of healthy versus injury-prone piano playing. She participated in the Polymath Jr., Emory and CMU mathematics REUs, and has coauthored multiple papers published in peer reviewed journals. Her teams’ projects won first place at the international hackathon HackMIT in the tracks Sustainability (2022) and Education (2023, with Elliot Harris ’24). She is the recipient of the Bard Distinguished Scientist Scholar Award, the Community Action Award, the Mind, Brain and Behavior Award, the Seniors to Seniors Award, and the Conservatory Scholarship.

Established in 2016, the Knight-Hennessy Scholarship program seeks to prepare students to take leadership roles in finding creative solutions to complex global issues. Scholars receive full funding to pursue any graduate degree at Stanford and have additional opportunities for leadership training, mentorship, and experiential learning across multiple disciplines.

Missy Mazzoli, composer in residence at Bard College, performed together with violinist Jennifer Koh for Tiny Desk Concerts at NPR’s headquarters. The two artists, who have collaborated on projects for 15 years, performed a set of pieces composed by Mazzoli and brought to life by Koh’s violin. “Dissolve, O my Heart, the first piece Mazzoli wrote for Koh, spirals out into an emotional journey touched with spasms of joy and grief,” writes Tom Huizenga for NPR. He continues: “Hearing this set, in all its rugged delight, feels like we're eavesdropping on something personal—a fruitful, collaborative friendship between composer and performer that has yielded amazing music.”

Two groups of Bard College students have been awarded 2024 Projects for Peace Summer Grants, which provide student leaders awards of $10,000 to implement a Project for Peace, typically over the summer. Bard students Ifigeneia Gianne ’25, Noa Doucette ’24, Leonard Gurevich ’24, Mujtaba Naqib ’24, and Antonios Petras won for their project “Creative Play in Malaysia,” an initiative to create immersive workshops and performances around the mediums of music, theater, and storytelling with the goals of helping refugee children in Malaysia to articulate their emotions, encourage their self-expression and build community. Bard Conservatory students Blanche Darr ’25, Aleksandar Vitanov ’25, Lexi Lanni ’26, and Fredrick Otieno ’28 won for their project, “Musical Mentorship Initiative Kenya,” to establish a music mentorship program in Nairobi, Kenya, in which Bard students will teach music lessons and establish a creative partnership between Bard and the Ghetto Classics Program in Korogocho, an area of dense poverty in Nairobi.

Bard students Gianne and Doucette witnessed firsthand the challenges faced by displaced children during a study abroad experience in Malaysia. As of January 2024, Malaysia has some 186,490 refugees and asylum-seekers registered with UNHCR. Inspired by the fieldwork and relationships they started while abroad, Gianne and Doucette, along with Gurevich, Naqib, and Petras, initiated their Projects for Peace proposal, “Creative Play in Malaysia.” The first phase of their project will offer in-person collaborative creative workshops, aimed at fostering direct engagement and interactive learning, at three schools in Kuala Lumpur—Agape Mission School, Elom Community Center, and Fugee School—and will reach about 300 school children. The workshops they’ve designed will engage children in the exploration of music and sound, theater techniques and bodily experience of movement, and storytelling, recording, and sound editing for podcasts. “These facets of art underscore its transformative power, making them vital tools for personal growth, advocacy, effective self-expression, community building, and empathetic communication. We believe in the transformative power of art and performance as a medium of expression and communication beyond words,” write the project leaders. The second phase of their project is the creation of a set of activities, a kind of curriculum, which include a detailed list of ‘games’ aimed at integrating the arts into daily academic routines and introducing some new teaching techniques. While in Malaysia, they will collaborate with teachers on this curriculum, respecting the existing cultural and academic frameworks, discuss how it might be incorporated into the students’ learning, and adjust it based on feedback. Committed to an ongoing dialogue with the children, teachers, and school administration, the group plans to launch an online forum with the schools and children for continual communication.

Initiated by Bard Conservatory students Darr, Vitanov, Lanni, and Otieno, the Projects for Peace proposal, “Musical Mentorship Initiative Kenya,” builds upon two student-run Trustee Leader Scholar projects at Bard—the Musical Mentorship Initiative (MMI) founded in 2020 by Vitanov and co-led by Darr and Lanni, and Musical Mentorship Initiative Kenya (MMIK) founded in 2023 by Otieno, a viola student from Kenya. Their project will establish a musical mentorship program as a collaborative partnership between MMI, MMIK, and the Ghetto Classics Program (GCP), which serves more than 1,500 children in Korogocho, one of Nairobi’s largest slums and home to approximately 300,000 urban poor. Bard student mentors will teach individual private music lessons, offer personalized high-level music instruction in strings, winds, voice, percussion, and other instruments, and organize masterclasses, presentations, and music performances for the children in the program. Mentors will also donate much needed musical instruments including oboes, French horns, violins, recorders, and bassoons to the children in Korogocho. At GCP, children share a limited number of instruments, many in poor condition and in need of repair, which hinders progress for the young students who cannot practice at home. An even bigger problem is GCP’s teacher to student ratio, which cannot facilitate individual learning. MMIK plans to provide pedagogical workshops to the teachers in GCP, in order to improve the teaching methodology and potential of the program. MMIK will also organize an online mentorship program to help facilitate ongoing individualized music instruction and access to world-class professional musical education for young children, which is an extremely rare opportunity in Korogocho. The goal is to keep this program running for many years to come. “Music, with its ability to transcend linguistic and cultural barriers, can be used as a powerful peacemaker by fostering unity across diverse individuals,” write the project leaders. “While our project focuses on Korogocho, it also serves as a blueprint for unifying people from varied backgrounds in different locations. The purpose and community that music provides is also an incentive for the children in GCP to not turn to a life of crime, drugs, or violence on the streets of Korogocho. Our initiatives stand as a beacon of hope—instilling discipline, perseverance, patience, and empathy in the youth, as well as forging the next generation of aspiring artists.”

Otieno, an alumnus of GCP and one of the project leaders, adds: “Growing up in the third largest slum in Kenya, Korogocho, means that you are exposed to the darkest side of the world. Joining Ghetto Classics gave me a choice to live a different life. The exposure and the people I met through Ghetto Classics supported me and made sure that the dream of becoming an architecture student and viola player in a school like Bard College was no longer an impossible dream to reach. I managed to change my life through music and I know that someone else in Korogocho can also change their life as long as they have a skill at hand. With these children getting these opportunities, they are pulled away from their normal life and shown a different dimension of being in a slum. They are helped to shape purpose and build dreams for themselves.”

Projects for Peace was created in 2007 through the generosity of Kathryn W. Davis, a lifelong internationalist and philanthropist who believed that today’s youth—tomorrow’s leaders—ought to be challenged to formulate and test their own ideas. The Summer Grants program encourages young adults to develop innovative, community-centered, and scalable responses to the world’s most pressing issues. Since its founding, Projects for Peace has funded more than 2000 projects in more than 150 countries. Learn more here.

The Bard College Conservatory of Music and Graduate Vocal Arts Program present Jacques Offenbach’s Orphée aux enfers (Orpheus in the Underworld). In a production by stage director Katherine M. Carter, the opera will be performed by Bard Conservatory of Music’s Vocal Arts Program singers with the Bard Conservatory Orchestra, conducted by James Bagwell, director of music performance studies and professor of music at Bard. The opera will be sung in French with English supertitles, and dialog will be in English. The performances will be held on Friday, March 8 at 8pm and on Sunday, March 10 at 2pm in the Fisher Center’s Sosnoff Theater. Tickets start at $25, with $5 tickets for Bard students made possible by the Passloff Pass. The first performance (March 8) will be livestreamed. 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].

Orphée aux enfers (Orpheus in the Underworld) welcomes the audience to a world of humans, gods, and goddesses that seems all too familiar. This is Olympus High, a place where the tipping scales of popularity and power provide the perfect backdrop for a tale of love, jealousy, and intrigue. This is prom and circumstance for the ages, a lively, witty operetta springing from the genius of a young, aspiring Jacques Offenbach in 1858, playing out here in the year 1986, where relationships and hierarchy haven’t changed a bit.

“It has been exciting to see the opera evolve under the artistic guidance of director Katherine Carter, who, along with the cast, is creating new dialogue to set the story in a 1980’s American high school,” says Associate Director of the Graduate Vocal Arts Program Kayo Iwama. “If you ever thought high school was ‘hell’, you will relate to this ironic twist on the classic love story of Orpheus and Eurydice!”

At the 66th annual GRAMMY Awards ceremony, the Recording Academy honored the 2024 GRAMMY winners. Among them, Bard Composer in Residence Jessie Montgomery won Best Contemporary Classical Composition, her first GRAMMY award, for her composition “Rounds.” Bard Conservatory of Music’s Graduate Vocal Arts Program alumna Julia Bullock MM ’11 also won her first GRAMMY award, winning Best Classical Solo Vocal Album for her album Walking in the Dark. Artistic Director of the Graduate Vocal Arts Program Stephanie Blythe is featured on the album Blanchard: Champion, which won for Best Opera Recording. 

Jessie Montgomery’s “Rounds” is a composition for piano and string orchestra inspired by the imagery and themes from T.S. Eliot’s epic poem Four Quartets, fractals (infinite patterns found in nature that are self-similar across different scales), and the interdependency of all beings. 

Julia Bullock’s Walking in the Dark was recorded with her husband, conductor and pianist Christian Reif, and London’s Philharmonia Orchestra. The album combines orchestral works by American composers John Adams and Samuel Barber with a traditional spiritual and songs by jazz legend Billy Taylor and singer-songwriters Oscar Brown, Jr., Connie Converse, and Sandy Denny.

The Metropolitan Opera’s recording of Terence Blanchard’s Champion, an opera about young boxer Emile Griffith who rises from obscurity to become a world champion, was conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin and featured a cast including mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe as Kathy Hagen. 
The GRAMMYs are voted on by more than 11,000 music professionals—performers, songwriters, producers, and others with credits on recordings—who are members of the Recording Academy. 

Further Reading:
Jessie Montgomery’s “Rounds” Wins 2024 GRAMMY Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition

Julia Bullock Wins First Grammy Award with Walking in the Dark, Her Solo Album Debut

The Metropolitan Opera wins 2024 Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording for Terence Blanchard’s Champion

Artistic Director of Bard Conservatory of Music’s Graduate Vocal Arts Program and acclaimed mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe spoke to The Daily Catch ahead of her concert performance, Stephanie Blythe Sings Brahms, with The Orchestra Now at the Fisher Center on February 3–4. Renowned for the emotional depth of her performances, Blythe connects the lines of Brahm’s “Alto Rhapsody,” which uses Goethe’s poetry for lyrics, to “a feeling of a place where you can breathe. I understand the notion of breaking through and wanting to breathe. When you understand the universality of this music, you understand its essential nature,” says Blythe, who believes opera, when presented for what it actually is, can appeal to a broader, more popular audience. “Being able to illuminate and elevate opera in a new way is really important,” she said. “I find that far too often people who present opera feel like they need to repackage it. Opera doesn’t need to be excused. You don’t need to make it something else for people to appreciate it.”

The US-China Music Institute of the Bard College Conservatory of Music, in collaboration with the Central Conservatory of Music, China, present the fifth annual “The Sound of Spring”: A Chinese New Year Concert with The Orchestra Now, conducted by Director of the US-China Music Institute Jindong Cai. Performances will take place on Saturday, February 10, 2024 at 3 pm in The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College and on Sunday, February 11, 2024 at 3 pm in the Rose Theater of Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall in New York City. To purchase tickets for the February 10 Fisher Center concert, visit fishercenter.bard.edu, call 845-758-7900 (Mon–Fri 10 am – 5 pm), or email [email protected]. For tickets to the February 11 Jazz at Lincoln Center concert, please visit ticketing.jazz.org, or call 212-721-6500.

“The Sound of Spring” offers an authentic Chinese New Year concert of festive contemporary symphonic music from China. This year's program features erhu virtuoso Zhang Haiyue and dizi (bamboo flute) virtuoso Feng Tianshi from the Central Conservatory of Music, plus renowned Chinese wind virtuoso Guo Yazhi premiering composer Li Xinyan's new Suona Concerto.

In keeping with the long history and cultural diversity of Chinese society, the concert program includes a number of new works by contemporary Chinese composers inspired by musical traditions and folk customs from different regions. More than half of the repertoire has never been performed in the United States. Music Director and conductor Jindong Cai said: “Every one of us has familiar melodies that have been imprinted in our memories since we were children, and no matter where you come from or where you go, we can all enjoy listening to them. At the same time, to hear music from unfamiliar cultural traditions in distant places stirs the imagination with completely different pleasures and longings.”

The program starts off with Li Huanzhi's Spring Festival Overture, inspired by northern Shaanxi folk songs. Composer Ye Xiaogang, steeped in the folk music of his native Guangdong Province since childhood, presents familiar melodies reconstructed with Western orchestration for his Cantonese Suite. The young Taiwanese composer Chang Shiuan's Diu Diu Diu Diu Dang is a rhapsodic variation based on a Taiwanese nursery rhyme describing the sound of water dripping from the ceiling as a train passes through a tunnel. At the end of the first half, the US premiere of Hao Weiya's 2023 dizi (bamboo flute) concerto Blooming in the Spring evokes the beauty of nature in the countryside.

The second half of the concert begins with “Erhu Rhapsody No. 6,” the latest masterpiece of composer Wang Jianmin with Tibetan folk music at its core. This stirring work is a milestone in the development of modern erhu as a solo instrument, combining the structure of a Western rhapsody with Chinese folk style. The suona concerto The Magic Land was commissioned by “The Sound of Spring” and composed by Li Xinyan for wind instrument master Guo Yazhi. Both are on the faculty of the Bard Conservatory of Music. The concert concludes with Joyful Songs of Mountains and Waters, composed by up-and-coming composer Wang Danhong in 2023. Wang says she was inspired to write this piece after a visit to the Eighteen Caves Village in southern China, where she heard joyful folk singing in the Miao ethnic style.

The two performances of this year’s “The Sound of Spring” coincide with the first Lunar New Year weekend since New York State declared the Spring Festival an official holiday, demonstrating the importance of this time in the local community. The concerts are family friendly events which will include Chinese instrument demonstrations and new year celebrations in the theater lobby prior to each the performance. Pre-concert events start at 2 pm.

“The Sound of Spring” is generously sponsored by the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute. For more information about the concerts visit barduschinamusic.org/events.

Concerto for Piano (Homage to Beethoven) by Joan Tower, Asher B. Edelman Professor in the Arts and composition faculty of the Conservatory of Music at Bard, and Dark with Excessive Bright by Missy Mazzoli, Bard composer in residence, were both included in NPR's roundup of top ten classical albums of 2023. NPR music producer and classical music reviewer Tom Huizenga writes, "Now 85, Tower could rest on her achievements, but she's still fulfilling commissions with her singular, sturdy music," noting the many leading contemporary composers revere her, including Missy Mazzoli, whose album was also selected in this year's top ten. "[T]he album is tonal — in a Bartók or Joan Tower kind of way — with notes stacked to produce fresh, often unusual sounds," writes Huizenga, who says this album proves Mazzoli "can create shimmering instrumental music with large forces." 

Bard President Leon Botstein spoke with David Krauss for the podcast Speaking Soundly, where he discussed the current state of the arts and classical music, the perspectives that informed his journey as a musician, and his approach to leading Bard for nearly 50 years. “Music is part of life, it’s not a segregated technical enterprise,” Botstein told Krauss. “So I thought, if I’m going to contribute something as a musician, I have to bring something different to the table.” He continues, “I focused early on the reclaiming effort of the history of music, to rewrite the history of music on the concert stage.” In conversation with Krauss, Botstein goes on to examine the practical and emotional challenges faced by a conductor while leading an orchestra, the role of broader education in becoming an instrumentalist and composer, and the importance of having an inquiring mind as a musician.

Five Bard Conservatory of Music and Music Program faculty members and alumni/ae have been nominated for the 2024 GRAMMY Awards. Artistic Director of the Graduate Vocal Arts Program Stephanie Blythe is featured on the album Champion, nominated for Best Opera Recording. Bard Composers in Residence Jessie Montgomery and Missy Mazzoli are both nominees for Best Contemporary Classical Composition. Mazzoli’s concerto Dark With Excessive Bright and Montgomery’s “Rounds” for piano and string orchestra (featured in pianist Awadagin Pratt’s Stillpoint) have been nominated for the GRAMMY. Julia Bullock MM ’11 has been nominated for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album for her album Walking In The Dark. In the category of Best Contemporary Instrumental Album, music program alumnus Max Zbiral-Teller ’06, along with his House of Waters bandmates, has been nominated for On Becoming. The 2024 GRAMMYs, officially known as the 66th GRAMMY Awards, will take place Sunday, February 4 at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles.

This fall, Bard College is launching the Bard Community Arts Collective, a collaboration between the Fisher Center at Bard, Bard Center for Civic Engagement (CCE), Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS Bard), the Bard Conservatory, and The Orchestra Now (TŌN). The aim of the collective is to inspire connection and community through arts-based educational programming, coordinated in partnership with local organizations and schools.

Bard has long partnered with Hudson Valley artists, organizations, and schools, including the school systems of Kingston, Rhinebeck and Red Hook, as well as organizations such as Kite’s Nest, and the Boys & Girls Club of Ulster County. The Community Arts Collective will make Bard’s resources more accessible to these and other community partners, assisting with the development of new programs and connections within the region. It will partner with schools and community organizations to link the College’s educational resources with community interests.

The Arts Collective’s programs include a wide variety of arts events that are open to the public. Weekly rehearsals by the Bard College Conservatory Orchestra, including community engagement activities with the musicians and conductor, will be open to local school groups, and the Conservatory will perform at local events, such as its recent concert at the Dutch Reformed Church in Kingston as part of the “Burning of Kingston” festival, a historical reenactment that commemorates the events that occurred in the city during the Revolutionary War.

The Orchestra Now has opened several dress rehearsals to children from local daycare and school programs, while CCS Bard will host tours for young visitors at its current exhibition, Indian Theater: Native Performance, Art, and Self-Determination since 1969, the first large-scale exhibition of its kind to center performance and theater as an origin point for the development of contemporary art by Native American, First Nations, Métis, Inuit, and Alaska Native artists.

The College sponsors a variety of student-led initiatives through its CCE Trustee Leader Scholars (TLS) program, run by Paul Marienthal. Sister2Sister, a student-led mentorship program run by Bard alumni Skylar Walker, provides guidance and opportunities for young women of color in Kingston with an arts focus, and will start its 6th consecutive year providing regular after school activities and annual conferences.

“It's been an honor watching our program grow from what was once a student-led TLS project to an institutionally supported entity,” said Walker. “The most touching part about this experience has been being able to genuinely connect, empower, and inspire young women who look like me. I am incredibly grateful that Bard has provided a platform and a space for programs like ours, it is truly what our youth need.”

Another TLS program, the Musical Mentorship Initiative, which is led by Bard Conservatory students, has offered free music lessons to children of all ages since the pandemic began in 2020. “The students constantly create and run new projects. The key is student ownership. We are good cheerleaders, but students with their imaginations blazing do the heavy lifting,” explains Marienthal.

The Collective will make coordination and innovation easier for community partners, acting as a transparent entity for interested organizations and schools to approach with ideas for collaboration. “The concept of a collective is powerful—we already see a shift in how we collaborate with communities making the College’s resources easier to access and better reflect shared interests. Here, interdisciplinary approaches to learning can evolve to respond to the community’s needs and desires for arts programming,” observed CCE’s Vice President for Civic Engagement Erin Cannan. “The Hudson Valley has always been an incubator for art and art making, and Bard has played a key role. This approach allows us to reach new organizations, schools, communities, and helps our students learn the power of community art building.”

For more information, contact [email protected].

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

To reserve tickets, please visit here. 

Brian Hong, a Bard College Conservatory of Music faculty member who teaches viola and chamber music, has recently joined the Aizuri String Quartet. The Aizuri Quartet, managed by Gregory Brown at Pink Noise Agency, “views the string quartet as a living art and springboard for community, collaboration, curiosity and experimentation.” Praised by The Washington Post for “astounding” and “captivating” performances that draw from its notable “meld of intellect, technique and emotions,” Aizuri sets itself apart with its vigorous and passionate commitment to contemporary music and commissions. Their upcoming season will see world premieres of works by composers such as Jennifer Higdon, and collaborations with great composers and performers such as the Kronos Quartet and Kinan Azmeh. In their recent announcement, Aizuri welcomed its two new members, violist Brian Hong and cellist Caleb van der Swaagh, writing: “We’re over the moon to have these two incredible musicians join our quartet. Brian and Caleb are dynamic performers, passionate teachers, and creative thinkers. We are honored to welcome such thoughtful artists and beautiful humans into the Aizuri family.”

Brian Hong is a viola faculty member at Bard College Conservatory of Music. For the past five years, he has served as co-Artistic Director of NEXUS Chamber Music Chicago, an artist-driven collective of musicians with a mission to make classical music culturally relevant through live concerts and multimedia content. A Carnegie Hall Ensemble Connect alum and a Kovner Fellowship recipient, Hong studied violin with Laurie Smukler and Catherine Cho at Juilliard. He is the Programming Director of Project: Music Heals Us, a nonprofit providing musical education, access, and healing to isolated and marginalized communities.

Asher B. Edelman Professor in the Arts Joan Tower discusses more than 60 years of composing music, her inspirations (including visitations from dead composers), the changing landscape for women in composition, and her long tenure of teaching music at Bard with NPR’s music producer Tom Huizenga. When asked to describe her music, Tower confesses that it is hard to know one’s music but she can describe what she cares about. “My music is about rhythm, predominantly, the rhythm of ideas. And it's also organic, and it has a large-scale narrative. Usually, I only write in one movement, so I try to create an overall architecture for that one moment. It's also very important for me to be clear: I don't think my music ever gets complicated enough that you don't hear everything,” she says.

Tan Dun, Leon Botstein, Frank Corliss, Kayo Iwama, and Other Bard Conservatory Faculty and Alumni/ae Participate

From May 30 to June 16, faculty and alumni/ae of the Bard College Conservatory of Music toured China with programs in Shanghai and Qingdao that highlight Bard’s commitment to cross-cultural engagement in the arts. Leon Botstein, codirector of the Graduate Conducting Program, music director of the Bard Conservatory, and president of the College, is the first major international conductor to return to China post-pandemic. 

In Shanghai, Botstein conducted the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra at Jaguar Shanghai Symphony Hall in a sold-out concert featuring works by composers Tan Dun, dean of Bard Conservatory, and Aaron Copland, and was applauded by the audience with four curtain calls. Three performances of Tan Dun’s opera Tea: A Mirror of Soul at the Shangyim Opera House were held as part of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music Opera Festival. Coached by Associate Director of the Graduate Vocal Arts Program Kayo Iwama, soprano and Bard Conservatory voice faculty member Lucy Fitz Gibbon VAP ’15 performed with an international cast for two nights. A youth cast of current students and recent graduates of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music sung in a third performance of the opera. During the week, Iwama led a series of master classes for the undergraduate and graduate vocal departments of the Shanghai Conservatory. 

“Tea: A Mirror of Soul tells of a Japanese prince who travels to China in pursuit of truth and enlightenment, and along the way falls in love with a Chinese princess. The libretto is in English,” said Iwama. “These cross-cultural elements were reflected in the international team that made up the cast and production team, and it was a privilege and joy to be a part of it. Tan Dun's hauntingly gorgeous music was truly a bridge between peoples.”  

The visiting scholars and musicians and their Chinese colleagues held a series of events to celebrate and promote continued collaboration. The Friends of Bard US–China Music Institute in Shanghai and US–China Music Institute Director Jindong Cai gave a dinner, featuring solo performances by a recent graduate in guzheng performance Betty Sibei Wang '23 and Bryan Zhe Wang CMC '24, who is studying guqin in the MA program. and current student, to welcome President Botstein and kick off the US–China Music Institute’s new development campaign. President Botstein, Vice President for Strategy and Policy Malia Du Mont ’95, and Director of Asian Recruitment and Institutional Relations Shawn Moore ’11 hosted a Bardians in China alumni/ae tea event preceding one of Tan Dun’s opera performances. While in Shanghai, Botstein had dinner with Yang Dan, president of the prestigious Jiaotong University, and the two college presidents talked about possible areas of cooperation. 

In Qingdao, a gala concert was held in joint celebration of the Qingdao Menuhin School of Music (QMSM) and Bard Conservatory. The concert featured performances by Moore of the Bard String Quartet performing “Wild Summer” by Asher B. Edelman Professor in the Arts Joan Tower; faculty and students of the QMSM; and pianist and Director of Bard Conservatory Frank Corliss, violinist and Artistic Director of QMSM Lu Siqing, and Tan Dun in a performance of his Double Concerto for violin and piano. Opened in fall 2022, QMSM is a new K–12 school of music slated to be one of the largest private schools of music in the world with a full enrollment of 1000 students. Bard and QMSM are developing a partnership.

As part of the Music and Medicine Festival, a week of concerts in Qingdao organized by Tan Dun, Moore and the Bard String Quartet performed “Strum” by Bard Conservatory Composer in Residence Jessie Montgomery. This concert, as well as a preconcert banquet in honor of Botstein and Tan Dun, were hosted by the CEO of the Chinese pharmaceutical company which supported the Music and Medicine Festival.

As the China tour’s finale, Botstein conducted the Qingdao Symphony in an All-American program with the Qingdao Symphony Orchestra. The program included Leonard Bernstein’s Overture to Candide; Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto with violin soloist Lu Siqing; and Aaron Copland’s Symphony No. 3. It was a triumphant performance with the audience calling Botstein back to bow onstage multiple times.

Bard Conservatory alumna Avery Morris ’18, who graduated with a BA in Mathematics and a BM in Violin Performance, has been selected for a prestigious Fulbright Study Research Award for 2023–24. Her project, “Gideon Klein’s Lost Works and the Legacy of Czech Musical Modernism,” aims to bring to light the early works of Czech composer and Holocaust victim Gideon Klein (1919–1945), which were lost until they were discovered in a suitcase in the attic of a house in Prague in the 1990s. She will live in Prague for the upcoming academic year and continue her research on Klein, which has been a focus of her studies at Stony Brook University, where she is pursuing a Doctorate of Musical Arts in Violin Performance.

Nathaniel Sullivan MM ’17 has been named a winner of the 2023 Astral Artists National Competition. Once awarded a place in Astral’s career development program for classical musicians, National Competition winners receive customized mentorship, a robust portfolio of promotion assets, opportunities for innovative performance and community engagement, artistic exploration, and networking with top professionals in the field. Sullivan is one of seven exceptional artists invited to join Astral’s program for 2023–24, after being selected from an initial pool of candidates from across the United States, and following a competitive audition and interview process. Sullivan, an “alert and highly musical baritone” (Opera News), is an alumnus of the Graduate Vocal Arts Program of the Bard College Conservatory of Music. He has been awarded the Grace B. Jackson Prize for exceptional service at Tanglewood, and earlier this year he received Third Prize at the 2023 Washington International Competition

Juliana Maitenaz ’22, who graduated with a BA in Global and International Studies and a BM in Classical Percussion Performance, has been selected for an independent study–research Fulbright scholarship to Brazil for the 2023–24 academic year. Her project, “Rhythm and Statecraft,” seeks to identify Brazilian percussion and rhythms as a method of cultural communication. Maitenaz aims to conduct her research in São Paulo and will focus on how percussional elements in the Brazilian traditions of Carnival and Samba School performances are instrumental to the country’s statecraft and national identity. The goal of her research is to examine international communication and collaboration through cultural and musical diplomacy. “I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to learn more about the role Brazilian percussion plays as an inspiring means of cultural communication,” Maitenaz said. 
 
Evan Tims ’19, who was a joint major in Written Arts and Human Rights with a focus on anthropology at Bard, has been selected for a Fulbright-Nehru independent study–research scholarship to India for the 2023–24 academic year. His project, “From the River to Tomorrow: Perceptions of Kolkata’s Water Future,” studies the perceptions of Kolkata’s water future among urban planners, infrastructure experts, and communities—such as those who work in river transport, fishing, and who live in housing along the banks—most vulnerable to water changes along the Hooghly River. He will analyze the dominant narratives of the city and river’s future and reference scientific and planning literature in understanding the points of confluence and divergence between scientific and colloquial understandings of the river, particularly as different stakeholder communities approach an uncertain water future. “In light of urban development and climate change, Kolkata’s water is facing significant change over the coming decades,” said Tims. “It is crucial to understand the complex, layered relationships between stakeholder communities as they seek to negotiate an increasingly uncertain water future.” While in India, Tims also plans to teach a climate fiction writing workshop. In 2021-2022, he was Bard’s first recipient of the yearlong Henry J. Luce Scholarship, which enabled him to conduct ethnographic research on Himalayan water futures and lead a climate writing workshop in Nepal and, later, in Bangladesh. Earlier this academic year, Tims won the prestigious Schwarzman Scholarship to China. As an undergraduate at Bard, Tims also won two Critical Language Scholarships to study Bangla in Kolkata during the summers of 2018 and 2019. Read an interview with Tims about Southeast Asia's place in contemporary climate fiction here.
 
Elias Ephron ’23, a joint major in Political Studies and Spanish Studies, has been selected as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant (ETA) to Spain for the 2023–24 academic year. While in Spain, Ephron hopes to engage with his host community through food, sharing recipes, hosting dinner parties, and cooking together; take part in Spain’s unique and visually stunning cultural events, like flamenco performances, and Semana Santa processions; visit the hometown of the great poet and playwright Federico García Lorca; and, as a queer individual, meet other queer people. “Having learned Spanish, French, and German to fluency or near-fluency, I understand that language learning requires many approaches. Some are more commonly thought of as ‘fun’ or ‘nascent’ modes of learning, while others more clearly resemble work. I hope to marry this divide, showing students that language learning is both labor and recreation; they may have to work hard, but it can be a great deal of fun, too,” said Ephron. In addition to his work as a writing tutor in the Bard Learning Commons, Ephron has received multiple awards, including the PEN America Fellowship and the Bard Center for the Study of Hate Internship Scholarship.  
 
Eleanor Tappen ’23, a Spanish Studies major, has been selected as a Fulbright ETA to Mexico for the 2023–24 academic year. Tappen has studied abroad in Granada, Spain, received her TESOL certification (which involved 40 hours of training), volunteered in a local elementary school in the fall of 2022, and works as an ESL tutor at the Learning Commons. For Tappen, a Fulbright teaching assistantship in Mexico is an intersection of her academic interest in Mexican literature and her passion for accessible and equitable language learning. During her Fulbright year, Tappen intends to volunteer at a local community garden, a setting she found ideal for cross-cultural exchange and friendship during her time at the Bard Farm. She also hopes to learn about pre-Colombian farming practices, whose revival is currently being led by indigenous movements in Mexico seeking to confront issues presented by unsustainable industrial agricultural practices. “I’m thrilled by the opportunity to live in the country whose literature and culture have served as such positive and significant points in both my academic and personal life. During my time as an ETA in Mexico, I hope to inspire in my students the same love of language-learning I found at Bard.”
 
Biology major Macy Jenks ’23 has been selected as an ETA to Taiwan for the 2023–24 academic year. Jenks is an advanced Mandarin language speaker having attended a Chinese immersion elementary school and continuing her Mandarin language studies through high school and college, including three weeks spent in China living with host family in 2015. She has tutored students in English at Bard’s Annandale campus, as well as through the Bard Prison Initiative at both Woodbourne Correctional Facility and Eastern New York Correctional Facility. She also has worked with the Bard Center for Civic Engagement to develop curricula and provide STEM programming to local middle and high school students. “As a Fulbright ETA, I hope to equip students with the tools necessary to hone their English language and cultural skills while encouraging them to develop their own voices,” says Jenks. While in Taiwain, she plans to volunteer with the Taiwan Root Medical Peace Corps, which offers medical care to rural communities, or with the Taipei Medical University in a more urban setting to further engage with the community and learn more about Taiwan’s healthcare systems and settings. With her love of hiking, Jenks also hopes to explore various cultural sites including the cave temples of Lion’s Head Mountain and Fo Guang Shan monastery and enjoy the natural beauty of Taiwan.

Bard Conservatory alumna Avery Morris ’18, who graduated with a BA in Mathematics and a BM in Violin Performance, has been selected for a prestigious Fulbright Study Research Award for 2023–24. Her project, “Gideon Klein’s Lost Works and the Legacy of Czech Musical Modernism,” aims to bring to light the early works of Czech composer and Holocaust victim Gideon Klein (1919–1945), which were lost until they were discovered in a suitcase in the attic of a house in Prague in the 1990s. She will live in Prague for the upcoming academic year and continue her research on Klein, which has been a focus of her studies at Stony Brook University, where she is pursuing a Doctorate of Musical Arts in Violin Performance.

Getzamany "Many" Correa ’21, a Global and International Studies major, has been selected as an ETA to Spain for the 2023–24 academic year. Correa was an international student in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Hungary. As an international student in high school, she started an initiative called English Conversation Buddies with the State Department-sponsored American Corner in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina. She has received her TESOL certification (which involved 40 hours of training) and worked as an ESL tutor at the Learning Commons. In Spain, Correa hopes to create a book club that introduces students to diverse authors writing in English, study Spanish literature, and host dinners with the locals she meets. She also plans to volunteer with EducationUSA and support students applying to colleges and universities in the U.S. “A year-long ETA in Spain will allow me to experience a culture and language central to my academic and personal interests, leverage my background in education while furthering my teaching experience, and make meaningful connections through cross-cultural engagement,” says Correa.
 
The Fulbright US Student Program expands perspectives through academic and professional advancement and cross-cultural dialogue. Fulbright creates connections in a complex and changing world. In partnership with more than 140 countries worldwide, the Fulbright US Student Program offers unparalleled opportunities in all academic disciplines to passionate and accomplished graduating college seniors, graduate students, and young professionals from all backgrounds. Program participants pursue graduate study, conduct research, or teach English abroad. us.fulbrightonline.org.

      

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.”