Bard Conservatory of Music News Archive

Tan Dun, dean of the Bard College Conservatory of Music, conducts the Conservatory Orchestra in a film with live orchestra performance featuring excerpts from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; Hero; and The Banquet. See a video preview here. Conservatory faculty members Daniel Phillips, violin; Peter Wiley, cello; Blair McMillen, piano; and Benjamin Hochman, piano, will perform. This special program takes place on September 28 at 8 p.m., at the Fisher Center Center for the Performing Arts’ Sosnoff Theater. Tickets sales benefit the Conservatory Scholarship Fund. Tickets are $25–$150; the $150 ticket level includes a reception and meet and greet with the artists. To reserve tickets, go to fishercenter.bard.edu or call the box office at 845-758-7900.

The U.S. Department of State and the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board are pleased to announce that Yezu Woo has received a Fulbright U.S. Student Program award to Germany in Performing Arts/Violin. A graduate of the State University of New York Stony Brook and the Bard College Conservatory of Music's Advanced Performance Studies Program, Yezu will conduct research at Hochschule für Musik und Darstel-lende Kunst Frankfurt am Main and the Isang Yun Foundation Berlin as part of her project "Discovering Isang Yun and His World." She will spend a year in Frankfurt, as an academy member of Ensemble Modern and in Berlin, working at the foundation dedicated to the Korean-German composer Isang Yun.

Yezu is one of over 2,100 U.S. citizens who will conduct research, teach English, and provide expertise abroad for the 2019–20 academic year through the Fulbright U.S. Student Program. Recipients of Fulbright awards are selected on the basis of academic and professional achievement, as well as their record of service and leadership potential in their respective fields.

The Fulbright Program is the U.S. government’s flagship international educational exchange program and is designed to build lasting connections between the people of the United States and the people of other countries. The Fulbright Program is funded through an annual appropriation made by the U.S. Congress to the U.S. Department of State. Participating governments and host institutions, corporations, and foundations around the world also provide direct and indirect support to the Program, which operates in over 160 countries worldwide.

Since its establishment in 1946 under legislation introduced by the late U.S. Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, the Fulbright Program has given more than 390,000 students, scholars, teachers, artists, and professionals of all backgrounds and fields the opportunity to study, teach and conduct research, exchange ideas, and contribute to finding solutions to shared international concerns.

Fulbrighters address critical global challenges in all disciplines while building relationships, knowledge, and leadership in support of the long-term interests of the United States. Fulbright alumni have achieved distinction in many fields, including 59 who have been awarded the Nobel Prize, 84 who have received Pulitzer Prizes, and 37 who have served as a head of state or government.

The Resonant Bodies Festival, founded by Bard Conservatory of Music alumna and faculty member Lucy Dhegrae MM ’12, is an annual highlight because it gives some of the world’s most adventurous vocal artists full freedom to program their sets. This year’s lineup includes powerhouse mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe, artistic director of the Graduate Vocal Arts Program at the Bard Conservatory, who likes to wield her punch of a voice in mustachioed drag as the tenor divo Blythely Oratonio—“a dramatic tenor who dreams of being a rock star,” says Blythe. “It’s a cabaret-opera-rock ’n’ roll-disco mash-up, and basically gives me an opportunity to sing all the music I have dreamed of singing my whole life.” September 3–5.

“Odyssey: The Chamber Music Society” in Greece will air on PBS on September 6, the first program of Live from Lincoln Center made outside the United States. The two-hour episode follows musicians of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center as they journey across Greece, performing works embodying the essence of classical music in iconic settings. The production features a performance of Professor Tsontakis’s music as well as interviews with the composer.