All Bard News by Date
listings 1-25 of 25
December 2020
12-15-2020
“Beethoven is the most well-known western composer in China,” says Jindong Cai, director of the US-China Music Institute of the Bard College Conservatory of Music and coauthor of Beethoven in China. “People relate not only to his music, but to his life's story. . . . In Chinese society, your family tells you that you have to work hard to be successful; you have to go through difficulties and obstacles. Beethoven's life story enhances that kind of thinking in China.”
November 2020
11-29-2020
Award-winning opera diva and Bard Conservatory Vocal Arts Program alumna Julia Bullock MM ’11 talks with host Lara Downes on Amplify, a series highlighting visionary Black musicians who are shaping the art form. In this intimate conversation, Bullock and Downes share common ground. “Our search for self has informed our navigation of the classical music landscape,” says Downes, “driven by a desire to reveal the voices of artists of color who came before us, and to build a more diverse and equitable future for those who will come after. Julia's choices—the music she sings, the places where she sings it and the people she sings it for—are deliberate and courageous.”
11-09-2020
Wosner will begin his residency by taking part in the 121st season of the revered Peoples’ Symphony Concerts, which offers performances by some of the best artists in the world for as little as $8.33 a concert. Following an opening night performance with the Dover String Quartet on November 15, Wosner will curate and perform in a two-concert Schubertiade on the weekend of the composer's birthday (January 31). Described as a “Schubertian of unfaltering authority and character” by Gramophone, Wosner conceived these programs as part of a four-recital Schubert series that he is curating for the Bard College Conservatory of Music, where he is on the faculty. Learn more at pscny.org.
October 2020
10-27-2020
Stephanie Blythe is the featured artist on the cover of the November 2020 Diva Issue of Opera News. Blythe is a renowned mezzo-soprano and artistic director of the Graduate Vocal Arts Program in the Bard College Conservatory of Music. “For more than 20 years, Stephanie Blythe’s career has been shaped by her ability to sustain her own definition of herself—as a singer, as an educator and as a woman,” writes F. Paul Driscoll.
10-19-2020
The Fisher Center at Bard, long known for its memorable productions of rarely performed operatic works programmed and conducted by Maestro Leon Botstein, commemorates World Opera Day on October 25 with two special releases, adding to an already robust selection of archival HD opera recordings and contextual materials available free of charge on UPSTREAMING, the Fisher Center’s virtual stage.
World Opera Day is an international campaign to raise awareness of the positive impact and value of opera for society. As part of World Opera Day, the Fisher Center will present a lively and wide-ranging virtual conversation about opera today between Maestro Botstein and the acclaimed mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe, who recently assumed the directorship of the Vocal Arts Program at Bard College. Their conversation will be available for streaming here, beginning October 25. Bard Music Festival members will receive early access to the conversation on October 20.
“Opera is immune to technological reproduction and is a unique amalgam of the visual language and sound,” says Botstein. “It is perhaps the most resilient, alluring, and enduring genre of the human imagination.”
Offering one of the most unique opera programs in the country, Bard presents a new, fully staged production of a rarely performed opera each year as part of the renowned SummerScape Festival. The operas are programmed in conjunction with Bard Music Festival, a summer series led by Botstein, which focuses on one composer each summer for an intensive series of concerts, lectures, and panel discussions. “Some of the most important summer opera experiences in the U.S. are … at Bard SummerScape.” —Financial Times
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Fisher Center has been streaming selections from its rich archive of HD video recordings over UPSTREAMING, the Fisher Center’s Virtual Stage. On October 19, Bard SummerScape’s 2016 production of Pietro Mascagni’s Iris joins a robust selection of Bard SummerScape productions of rarely-performed operatic treasures available for viewing. Operas produced in recent years at Bard SummerScape (all currently streaming on UPSTREAMING) include the U.S. premieres of such neglected treasures as Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Das Wunder der Heliane (2019); Richard Strauss’s Die Liebe der Danae (2012); Carl Maria von Weber’s Euryanthe (2014) and Dame Ethel Smyth’s The Wreckers (2015). These perfromances have been made available at no charge to ensure wider access to these rarely seen works. All of these programs can be viewed here.
About UPSTREAMING, the Fisher Center’s virtual stage. Archival Discoveries and New Commissions for the Digital Sphere.
UPSTREAMING broadens the Fisher Center’s commitment to reaching audiences far beyond the physical walls of our building, and offers new ways for us to engage with artists. Launched in April 2020, UPSTREAMING has released new content, including digital commissions, virtual events, and beloved performances and rich contextual materials from the archives of the SummerScape Opera and Bard Music Festival’s 30-year history. UPSTREAMING highlights different aspects of the breadth of programming the Fisher Center offers. New releases are announced via the Fisher Center’s weekly newsletter. To receive those updates and stay connected to UPSTREAMING, join the mailing list here.
#UPSTREAMINGFC
ABOUT THE FISHER CENTER
The Fisher Center develops, produces, and presents performing arts across disciplines through new productions and context-rich programs that challenge and inspire. As a premier professional performing arts center and a hub for research and education, the Fisher Center supports artists, students, and audiences in the development and examination of artistic ideas, offering perspectives from the past and present, as well as visions of the future. The Fisher Center demonstrates Bard’s commitment to the performing arts as a cultural and educational necessity. Home is the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, designed by Frank Gehry and located on the campus of Bard College in New York’s Hudson Valley. The Fisher Center offers outstanding programs to many communities, including the students and faculty of Bard College, and audiences in the Hudson Valley, New York City, across the country, and around the world. Building on a 159-year history as a competitive and innovative undergraduate institution, Bard is committed to enriching culture, public life, and democratic discourse by training tomorrow’s thought leaders.
World Opera Day is an international campaign to raise awareness of the positive impact and value of opera for society. As part of World Opera Day, the Fisher Center will present a lively and wide-ranging virtual conversation about opera today between Maestro Botstein and the acclaimed mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe, who recently assumed the directorship of the Vocal Arts Program at Bard College. Their conversation will be available for streaming here, beginning October 25. Bard Music Festival members will receive early access to the conversation on October 20.
“Opera is immune to technological reproduction and is a unique amalgam of the visual language and sound,” says Botstein. “It is perhaps the most resilient, alluring, and enduring genre of the human imagination.”
Offering one of the most unique opera programs in the country, Bard presents a new, fully staged production of a rarely performed opera each year as part of the renowned SummerScape Festival. The operas are programmed in conjunction with Bard Music Festival, a summer series led by Botstein, which focuses on one composer each summer for an intensive series of concerts, lectures, and panel discussions. “Some of the most important summer opera experiences in the U.S. are … at Bard SummerScape.” —Financial Times
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Fisher Center has been streaming selections from its rich archive of HD video recordings over UPSTREAMING, the Fisher Center’s Virtual Stage. On October 19, Bard SummerScape’s 2016 production of Pietro Mascagni’s Iris joins a robust selection of Bard SummerScape productions of rarely-performed operatic treasures available for viewing. Operas produced in recent years at Bard SummerScape (all currently streaming on UPSTREAMING) include the U.S. premieres of such neglected treasures as Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Das Wunder der Heliane (2019); Richard Strauss’s Die Liebe der Danae (2012); Carl Maria von Weber’s Euryanthe (2014) and Dame Ethel Smyth’s The Wreckers (2015). These perfromances have been made available at no charge to ensure wider access to these rarely seen works. All of these programs can be viewed here.
About UPSTREAMING, the Fisher Center’s virtual stage. Archival Discoveries and New Commissions for the Digital Sphere.
UPSTREAMING broadens the Fisher Center’s commitment to reaching audiences far beyond the physical walls of our building, and offers new ways for us to engage with artists. Launched in April 2020, UPSTREAMING has released new content, including digital commissions, virtual events, and beloved performances and rich contextual materials from the archives of the SummerScape Opera and Bard Music Festival’s 30-year history. UPSTREAMING highlights different aspects of the breadth of programming the Fisher Center offers. New releases are announced via the Fisher Center’s weekly newsletter. To receive those updates and stay connected to UPSTREAMING, join the mailing list here.
#UPSTREAMINGFC
ABOUT THE FISHER CENTER
The Fisher Center develops, produces, and presents performing arts across disciplines through new productions and context-rich programs that challenge and inspire. As a premier professional performing arts center and a hub for research and education, the Fisher Center supports artists, students, and audiences in the development and examination of artistic ideas, offering perspectives from the past and present, as well as visions of the future. The Fisher Center demonstrates Bard’s commitment to the performing arts as a cultural and educational necessity. Home is the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, designed by Frank Gehry and located on the campus of Bard College in New York’s Hudson Valley. The Fisher Center offers outstanding programs to many communities, including the students and faculty of Bard College, and audiences in the Hudson Valley, New York City, across the country, and around the world. Building on a 159-year history as a competitive and innovative undergraduate institution, Bard is committed to enriching culture, public life, and democratic discourse by training tomorrow’s thought leaders.
# # #
(10.19.20)10-08-2020
Concerts will Feature the World Premiere of Artist in Residence Erica Lindsay’s Adagio for String Orchestra (2020) and Works by Casals, Vivaldi, Mozart, Mahler, and Elgar
October 24 Event Will Honor Cellist and Faculty Member Luis Garcia-Renart (1936–2020)The Bard College Conservatory of Music presents a student and faculty showcase weekend, October 24–25, two free, live-streamed concerts featuring the Bard College Conservatory Orchestra, Leon Botstein, conductor, showcasing performances by celebrated violinists and new Conservatory faculty Gil Shaham and Adele Anthony, as well as students and other faculty from the Bard Music Program, Conservatory, and The Orchestra Now. The October 24 concert, at 7:30 p.m., is in honor of cellist and faculty member Luis Garcia-Renart (1936–2020), and features the world premiere of Artist in Residence Erica Lindsay’s Adagio for String Orchestra (2020), as well as works by Casals and Vivaldi. Garcia-Renart, who taught at Bard from 1962 until his death earlier this year, was a former student of Casals. The October 25 concert, at 3 p.m., includes performances of works by Mozart, Mahler, and Elgar. Both concerts are free and will be live streamed from the Fisher Center at Bard’s Sosnoff Theater. Reservations are required. Proceeds support the Conservatory Scholarship Fund. For more information, visit fishercenter.bard.edu.
October 24 at 7:30 p.m.
Bard College Conservatory Orchestra Leon Botstein, Music Director
Concert in honor of cellist and faculty member Luis Garcia-Renart (1936–2020)
Pablo Casals
“The Song of the Birds” (El cant dels Ocells)
La Sardana, Cello choir with faculty members Peter Wiley and Raman Ramakrishnan and cellists from the Conservatory, The Orchestra Now, and the Music Program
Erica Lindsay
Adagio World Premiere
Conservatory Orchestra with Erica Kiesewetter, conductor
Antonio Vivaldi
The Four Seasons
Conservatory Orchestra
with faculty soloists Gil Shaham and Adele Anthony, violins
Bard College Conservatory Orchestra Leon Botstein, Music Director
W. A. Mozart
Serenade No. 6 in D Major, KV 239 “Serenata notturna”
Gustav Mahler
Adagietto from Symphony No. 5
Edward Elgar (1857–1934)
Introduction and Allegro, for string quartet and string orchestra in G Major, Op.47
BARD COLLEGE CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC
Tan Dun, Dean
Frank Corliss, Director
Marka Gustavsson, Associate Director
The Bard College Conservatory of Music expands Bard’s spirit of innovation in arts and education. The Conservatory, which opened in 2005, offers a five-year, double-degree program at the undergraduate level and, at the graduate level, programs in vocal arts and conducting. At the graduate level the Conservatory also offers an Advanced Performance Studies program and a two-year Postgraduate Collaborative Piano Fellowship. The US-China Music Institute of the Bard College Conservatory of Music, established in 2017, offers a unique degree program in Chinese instruments.
For more information, see bard.edu/conservatory.
# # #
(10.08.20)
10-06-2020
“Teaching is how I learn,” pianist Ryan McCullough tells host Scott Yoo. “I've studied with wonderful teachers in the past, but no one is ever done learning. And by teaching someone else what you love doing, you are teaching yourself what you care about.” Watch McCullough—a postgraduate collaborative piano fellow in the Conservatory—and Yoo discuss the importance of teaching to Scubert’s development as an artist. Then listen to McCullough play the fourth movement of Franz Schubert’s piano sonata No. 19 before being joined by soprano Lucy Fitz Gibbon MM ’15—alumna and faculty member of the Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Program—for the song “Suleika.” (Segment begins at 17:30)
September 2020
09-25-2020
A native of Port Arthur, Texas, Alexander holds a bachelor of music degree in piano from Prairie View A&M University and a master of music degree in orchestral conducting from the Bard Conservatory of Music. He is currently pursuing a professional studies certificate in orchestral conduction from the Manhattan School of Music. The Project Inclusion Conducting Freeman Fellowship fosters the development of four to six conductors of diverse backgrounds who are on the verge of professional careers.
09-20-2020
First-year instrumentalists Sophia Jackson, cello, and Aleksandar Vitanov, trumpet, have launched a new program called the Music Mentorship Initiative (MMI). The program offers tutoring and free private lessons to music students who otherwise cannot afford them, while allowing mentors—current Conservatory students who have completed a pedagogical training seminar—to gain teaching experience.
Become a Mentee
Become a Mentee
09-16-2020
On Sunday, September 13, Live From Music Mountain, in partnership with Carnegie Hall, presented a special tribute to renowned pianist Peter Serkin, who taught at the Bard College Conservatory of Music from the time the program was established in 2005 until his death in February 2020. The special two-hour program, which was streamed on multiple platforms, included highlights of performances by Serkin and conversations with artists who were close to him, including Emanuel Ax, Jaime Laredo, Jeremy Denk, and Benjamin Hochman; Fred Sherry, Ida Kavafian, and Richard Stoltzman, cofounders with Serkin of the Tashi Quartet; producer Marty Krystall; Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt of the Dover Quartet; composers Derek Bermel and Andreia Pinto-Correia; and former student Tomoki Park.
August 2020
08-24-2020
Next month, the Bard Music Festival joins forces with The Orchestra Now (TŌN) and the Bard College Conservatory to present “Out of the Silence: A Celebration of Music,” a series of four free livestreamed concerts for string orchestra, piano and percussion (Sept. 5–26), coming to UPSTREAMING, the Fisher Center’s virtual stage. All programs are free, reservations requested. Pairing works by Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky, Dvořák, and Bartók—all past subjects of the Bard Music Festival—with music by 10 prominent Black composers, ranging from classical pioneer Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, to contemporary Americans Alvin Singleton, Adolphus Hailstork, and Jessie Montgomery, the series celebrates Bard’s commitment to neglected rarities and the unquenchable joy of music making. All four programs will be performed without an audience and with appropriate safety measures on Bard College’s idyllic Hudson Valley campus by its unique graduate training orchestra, TŌN, under the leadership of Music Director Leon Botstein and other members of the TŌN artistic team. Hailed as “a highlight of the musical year” (Wall Street Journal), the Bard Music Festival is the inspiration for Bard’s annual seven-week SummerScape festival, whose devoted fans will no doubt enjoy the chance to experience virtually some of the adventurous Bard music-making they have been missing. Click here to hear Botstein and TŌN perform William Grant Still's Symphony No. 1, “Afro-American.”
Since its founding in 1990, the Bard Music Festival has succeeded in enriching the standard concert repertory with a wealth of important rediscoveries; as the New York Times points out, “wherever there is an overlooked potential masterpiece, Leon Botstein is not too far behind.” True to this mission, “Out of the Silence” shines a light on some of the important Black composers so rarely admitted to the canon. Examples of their work will be heard in September alongside music by four composers featured in early seasons of the festival. By celebrating more than three decades of musical exploration at Bard while amplifying some of society’s most unjustly neglected artistic voices, the series looks ahead to a more equitable future.
The Founder and Co-Artistic Director of the Bard Music Festival, the President of Bard College, and “one of the most remarkable figures in the worlds of arts and culture” (THIRTEEN/WNET), Botstein explains:
“These concerts are an affirmation of Bard’s commitment to the centrality of music in our public culture. The series takes its title from the opening work on this series, by William Grant Still. Out of the Silence therefore carries two meanings: the return of music to the public stage after months of silence, and the foregrounding of music too long kept in the shadows, music by Black composers who have never gotten their proper due on the concert stages of the world. As the performance of music begins anew, Bard will pioneer, as it has in the past, on behalf of those composers and works of music left, unjustly, in obscurity.”
It was Botstein who founded TŌN five years ago, to help make orchestral music relevant to 21st-century audiences. He leads the orchestra in all four programs of “Out of the Silence,” which also features appearances by TŌN’s Academic Director and Associate Conductor James Bagwell, Resident Conductor Zachary Schwartzman and Assistant Conductor Andrés Rivas. Keyboard faculty from the Bard Conservatory of Music will join TŌN for several performances.
“Out of the Silence”
“Out of the Silence” opens with two works by the great William Grant Still. The first African-American to have a symphony performed by a major U.S. orchestra, and the subject of a 2009 retrospective curated and conducted by Botstein at Lincoln Center, Still is represented by his meditative miniature Out of the Silence from Seven Traceries, and the evocative tone poem Serenade. Had Bard not been forced to postpone its regular summer season, this year’s attendees would have enjoyed a festival devoted to “Nadia Boulanger and Her World” (now scheduled for summer 2021). It is fitting, then, that Program One (September 5) features a piece by one of the French composer’s many distinguished students: the elegiac Lyric for Strings by George Walker, the first African-American winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Music and “one of the greatest composers of our time” (Fanfare magazine). The concert concludes with TŌN’s account of the exuberant String Symphony No. 8 by Felix Mendelssohn, subject of the Bard Music Festival’s second season in 1991.
Program Two (September 12) offers a snapshot of contemporary music with works by three of today’s most compelling Black composers. A former composer-in-residence of both the Atlanta and Detroit Symphonies, Alvin Singleton is blessed with a “unique musical vision” (ArtsATL), while Adolphus Hailstork, another Boulanger student, has accrued a string of honors including Cultural Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia and Distinguished Alumni Award from Manhattan School of Music. Both men were born in the early 1940s, four decades before Jessie Montgomery. “Turbulent, wildly colorful and exploding with life” (Washington Post), Montgomery’s music has been recognized with the ASCAP Foundation’s Leonard Bernstein Award, and her current commissions include works for the New York Philharmonic and Carnegie Hall. Their compositions share the program with the Serenade for Strings by Antonín Dvořák, subject of the 1993 Bard Music Festival, who championed African-American and Native American music as the foundation for a homegrown U.S. musical style.
After opening with the Adagio trágico by Roque Cordero, who infused twelve-tone writing with the folk rhythms of his native Panama, Program Three (September 19) presents a pair of longer works. In his Four Novelettes, Anglo-African late-Romantic composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor demonstrates graceful lyricism with a light, balletic touch that is almost reminiscent of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, subject of the festival’s 1998 season, whose soulful Serenade for Strings concludes the concert.
The centerpiece of Program Four (September 26) is the Violin Concerto in G by Joseph Bologne, the Chevalier de Saint-Georges. Violin soloist Ashley Horne, a member of both the American Symphony Orchestra and the Harlem Chamber Players, can also be seen in Le Mozart noir, a PBS documentary about the composer’s life. The son of a slave and a planter in French Guadeloupe, Chevalier de Saint-Georges was not only the first known classical composer of African ancestry, but also an accomplished violinist, champion fencer and colonel of the first all-Black military regiment in Europe. Bookending his concerto are orchestral arrangements of Solitude and Sophisticated Lady, two mid-century masterpieces by the inimitable Duke Ellington, and the Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta by Béla Bartók, subject of the 1995 festival.
The Orchestra Now (TŌN)
The Orchestra Now (TŌN) is a unique graduate training ensemble designed to help make orchestral music relevant to 21st-century audiences. Hand-picked from the world’s leading conservatories, including the Curtis Institute of Music, Juilliard School, Royal Conservatory of Brussels and Shanghai Conservatory of Music, its young members share their insights through on-stage introductions and demonstrations, program notes written from a musician’s perspective, and one-on-one intermission chats with patrons. In regular seasons, as well as giving a concert series at Bard’s Frank Gehry-designed Fisher Center, TŌN performs at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and other key venues in New York City and beyond.
Fishercenter.bard.edu
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Instagram.com/fishercenterbard/
Twitter.com/fisherctrbard
Youtube.com/fishercenterbard
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Bard Music Festival presents “Out of the Silence: A Celebration of Music”
Streaming live from Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY,
at UPSTREAMING, the Fisher Center’s virtual stage
PROGRAM ONE
Sat, Sep 5 at 5:30pm
The Orchestra Now, conducted by Leon Botstein and James Bagwell
William Grant Still (1895–1978): Out of the Silence, from Seven Traceries (1939)
William Grant Still (1895–1978): Serenade (1957)
George Walker (1922–2018): Lyric for Strings (1946)
Felix Mendelssohn (1809–47): String Symphony No. 8 in D (1822)
PROGRAM TWO
Sat, Sep 12 at 5:30pm
The Orchestra Now, conducted by Leon Botstein, James Bagwell, Andrés Rivas & Zachary Schwartzman
Jessie Montgomery (b. 1981): Strum (2018)
Alvin Singleton (b. 1940): After Choice (2009)
Adolphus Hailstork (b. 1941): Sonata da Chiesa (1990)
Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904): Serenade for Strings, Op. 22 (1875)
PROGRAM THREE
Sat, Sep 19 at 5:30pm
The Orchestra Now, conducted by Leon Botstein, Andrés Rivas and Zachary Schwartzman
Roque Cordero (1917–2008): Adagio trágico (1972)
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875–1912): Four Novelettes, Op. 52 (1903)
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–93): Serenade for Strings, Op. 48 (1880)
PROGRAM FOUR
Sat, Sep 26 at 5:30pm
The Orchestra Now, conducted by Leon Botstein
Duke Ellington (1899–1974): Solitude (1941; arr. Gould)
Duke Ellington (1899–1974): Sophisticated Lady (1932; arr. Gould)
Joseph Bologne, the Chevalier de Saint-Georges (1745–99): Violin Concerto in G, Op. 2, No. 1 (1773)
(with Ashley Horne, violin)
Béla Bartók: Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta (1936)
All programs are subject to change.
Since its founding in 1990, the Bard Music Festival has succeeded in enriching the standard concert repertory with a wealth of important rediscoveries; as the New York Times points out, “wherever there is an overlooked potential masterpiece, Leon Botstein is not too far behind.” True to this mission, “Out of the Silence” shines a light on some of the important Black composers so rarely admitted to the canon. Examples of their work will be heard in September alongside music by four composers featured in early seasons of the festival. By celebrating more than three decades of musical exploration at Bard while amplifying some of society’s most unjustly neglected artistic voices, the series looks ahead to a more equitable future.
The Founder and Co-Artistic Director of the Bard Music Festival, the President of Bard College, and “one of the most remarkable figures in the worlds of arts and culture” (THIRTEEN/WNET), Botstein explains:
“These concerts are an affirmation of Bard’s commitment to the centrality of music in our public culture. The series takes its title from the opening work on this series, by William Grant Still. Out of the Silence therefore carries two meanings: the return of music to the public stage after months of silence, and the foregrounding of music too long kept in the shadows, music by Black composers who have never gotten their proper due on the concert stages of the world. As the performance of music begins anew, Bard will pioneer, as it has in the past, on behalf of those composers and works of music left, unjustly, in obscurity.”
It was Botstein who founded TŌN five years ago, to help make orchestral music relevant to 21st-century audiences. He leads the orchestra in all four programs of “Out of the Silence,” which also features appearances by TŌN’s Academic Director and Associate Conductor James Bagwell, Resident Conductor Zachary Schwartzman and Assistant Conductor Andrés Rivas. Keyboard faculty from the Bard Conservatory of Music will join TŌN for several performances.
“Out of the Silence”
“Out of the Silence” opens with two works by the great William Grant Still. The first African-American to have a symphony performed by a major U.S. orchestra, and the subject of a 2009 retrospective curated and conducted by Botstein at Lincoln Center, Still is represented by his meditative miniature Out of the Silence from Seven Traceries, and the evocative tone poem Serenade. Had Bard not been forced to postpone its regular summer season, this year’s attendees would have enjoyed a festival devoted to “Nadia Boulanger and Her World” (now scheduled for summer 2021). It is fitting, then, that Program One (September 5) features a piece by one of the French composer’s many distinguished students: the elegiac Lyric for Strings by George Walker, the first African-American winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Music and “one of the greatest composers of our time” (Fanfare magazine). The concert concludes with TŌN’s account of the exuberant String Symphony No. 8 by Felix Mendelssohn, subject of the Bard Music Festival’s second season in 1991.
Program Two (September 12) offers a snapshot of contemporary music with works by three of today’s most compelling Black composers. A former composer-in-residence of both the Atlanta and Detroit Symphonies, Alvin Singleton is blessed with a “unique musical vision” (ArtsATL), while Adolphus Hailstork, another Boulanger student, has accrued a string of honors including Cultural Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia and Distinguished Alumni Award from Manhattan School of Music. Both men were born in the early 1940s, four decades before Jessie Montgomery. “Turbulent, wildly colorful and exploding with life” (Washington Post), Montgomery’s music has been recognized with the ASCAP Foundation’s Leonard Bernstein Award, and her current commissions include works for the New York Philharmonic and Carnegie Hall. Their compositions share the program with the Serenade for Strings by Antonín Dvořák, subject of the 1993 Bard Music Festival, who championed African-American and Native American music as the foundation for a homegrown U.S. musical style.
After opening with the Adagio trágico by Roque Cordero, who infused twelve-tone writing with the folk rhythms of his native Panama, Program Three (September 19) presents a pair of longer works. In his Four Novelettes, Anglo-African late-Romantic composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor demonstrates graceful lyricism with a light, balletic touch that is almost reminiscent of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, subject of the festival’s 1998 season, whose soulful Serenade for Strings concludes the concert.
The centerpiece of Program Four (September 26) is the Violin Concerto in G by Joseph Bologne, the Chevalier de Saint-Georges. Violin soloist Ashley Horne, a member of both the American Symphony Orchestra and the Harlem Chamber Players, can also be seen in Le Mozart noir, a PBS documentary about the composer’s life. The son of a slave and a planter in French Guadeloupe, Chevalier de Saint-Georges was not only the first known classical composer of African ancestry, but also an accomplished violinist, champion fencer and colonel of the first all-Black military regiment in Europe. Bookending his concerto are orchestral arrangements of Solitude and Sophisticated Lady, two mid-century masterpieces by the inimitable Duke Ellington, and the Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta by Béla Bartók, subject of the 1995 festival.
The Orchestra Now (TŌN)
The Orchestra Now (TŌN) is a unique graduate training ensemble designed to help make orchestral music relevant to 21st-century audiences. Hand-picked from the world’s leading conservatories, including the Curtis Institute of Music, Juilliard School, Royal Conservatory of Brussels and Shanghai Conservatory of Music, its young members share their insights through on-stage introductions and demonstrations, program notes written from a musician’s perspective, and one-on-one intermission chats with patrons. In regular seasons, as well as giving a concert series at Bard’s Frank Gehry-designed Fisher Center, TŌN performs at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and other key venues in New York City and beyond.
Facebook.com/fishercenterbard/
Instagram.com/fishercenterbard/
Twitter.com/fisherctrbard
Youtube.com/fishercenterbard
Open.spotify.com/bardfisher
Bard Music Festival presents “Out of the Silence: A Celebration of Music”
Streaming live from Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY,
at UPSTREAMING, the Fisher Center’s virtual stage
PROGRAM ONE
Sat, Sep 5 at 5:30pm
The Orchestra Now, conducted by Leon Botstein and James Bagwell
William Grant Still (1895–1978): Out of the Silence, from Seven Traceries (1939)
William Grant Still (1895–1978): Serenade (1957)
George Walker (1922–2018): Lyric for Strings (1946)
Felix Mendelssohn (1809–47): String Symphony No. 8 in D (1822)
PROGRAM TWO
Sat, Sep 12 at 5:30pm
The Orchestra Now, conducted by Leon Botstein, James Bagwell, Andrés Rivas & Zachary Schwartzman
Jessie Montgomery (b. 1981): Strum (2018)
Alvin Singleton (b. 1940): After Choice (2009)
Adolphus Hailstork (b. 1941): Sonata da Chiesa (1990)
Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904): Serenade for Strings, Op. 22 (1875)
PROGRAM THREE
Sat, Sep 19 at 5:30pm
The Orchestra Now, conducted by Leon Botstein, Andrés Rivas and Zachary Schwartzman
Roque Cordero (1917–2008): Adagio trágico (1972)
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875–1912): Four Novelettes, Op. 52 (1903)
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–93): Serenade for Strings, Op. 48 (1880)
PROGRAM FOUR
Sat, Sep 26 at 5:30pm
The Orchestra Now, conducted by Leon Botstein
Duke Ellington (1899–1974): Solitude (1941; arr. Gould)
Duke Ellington (1899–1974): Sophisticated Lady (1932; arr. Gould)
Joseph Bologne, the Chevalier de Saint-Georges (1745–99): Violin Concerto in G, Op. 2, No. 1 (1773)
(with Ashley Horne, violin)
Béla Bartók: Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta (1936)
All programs are subject to change.
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08-18-2020
ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.— Beginning in fall 2021, the Bard College Conservatory of Music’s five-year undergraduate double-degree program will offer a bachelor of music in vocal performance. Integrating world-class musical training with rigorous academic pursuit, the program develops students’ artistic skills through a diverse, inclusive range of repertoires and performance opportunities, emphasizing exploration and musical self-actualization. The students’ musical knowledge is enriched and contextualized by complementary coursework across all divisions of the College, underscoring the role of the singing artist as both communicator and innovator.
Vocal performance students will work with faculty in both the Bard College Conservatory of Music and the Bard College Music Program. Opportunities for collaboration include the Chamber Singers, led by Maestro James Bagwell; the annual, fully-staged Opera Workshop at Bard’s Fisher Center; and performance classes led by Rufus Müller. Performance coursework will be matched with body and breath awareness courses in the Feldenkrais Method and/or Alexander Technique.
For information about the Conservatory’s undergraduate program, visit here. For application and audition information, visit here. To open an application, visit here.
Vocal Degree Course Requirements
The requirements (by semester) of the bachelor of music degree in the Conservatory are:
Conservatory Course Requirements
All conservatory students take a full range of music classes including:
Conservatory Performance Requirements
All conservatory students must fulfill the following performance requirements:
Additional Performance Opportunities
Information about the Bard College bachelor of arts curriculum can be found here.
Faculty List: link to bios
Recognized as one of the finest conservatories in the United States, the Bard College Conservatory of Music, founded in 2005, is guided by the principle that young musicians should be broadly educated in the liberal arts and sciences to achieve their greatest potential. All undergraduates complete two degrees over a five-year period: a bachelor of music and a bachelor of arts in a field other than music. The Conservatory Orchestra has performed twice at Lincoln Center and has completed three international concert tours: in June 2012 to China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan; in June 2014 to Russia and six cities in Central and Eastern Europe; and in June 2016, to three cities in Cuba. For additional information about The Bard College Conservatory of Music, please visit bard.edu/conservatory.
Vocal performance students will work with faculty in both the Bard College Conservatory of Music and the Bard College Music Program. Opportunities for collaboration include the Chamber Singers, led by Maestro James Bagwell; the annual, fully-staged Opera Workshop at Bard’s Fisher Center; and performance classes led by Rufus Müller. Performance coursework will be matched with body and breath awareness courses in the Feldenkrais Method and/or Alexander Technique.
For information about the Conservatory’s undergraduate program, visit here. For application and audition information, visit here. To open an application, visit here.
Vocal Degree Course Requirements
The requirements (by semester) of the bachelor of music degree in the Conservatory are:
- Vocal Coaching (six)
- Diction for Singers (four)
- Chamber Singers (four)
- Vocal Pedagogy (one)
- Vocal Seminar (two)
- Vocal Electives (four)
- Song Class
- Opera Workshop
- Bard Baroque Ensemble
- Feldenkrais and the Voice
- Alexander Technique
Conservatory Course Requirements
All conservatory students take a full range of music classes including:
- Studio Instruction
- Chamber Music
- Conservatory Core Sequence in Theory, Analysis, and Composition
- Aural Skills
- Music History
Conservatory Performance Requirements
All conservatory students must fulfill the following performance requirements:
- First and Second year Juries
- Mid-Point recital (3rd year)
- Off-campus Community Recital (4th year)
- Final Degree Recital (5th year)
Additional Performance Opportunities
- Recital Performances on-campus and in off-campus concert series’
- Annual concerto competition
- Performances with Bard Baroque Ensemble
- Performances with Bard Conservatory Orchestra and Bard College Orchestra
- Performances with Symphonic Chorus and Bard Chamber Singers
Information about the Bard College bachelor of arts curriculum can be found here.
Faculty List: link to bios
- Stephanie Blythe
- Teresa Buchholz
- Richard Cox
- Lucy Fitz Gibbon
- Kayo Iwama
- Ilka LoMonaco
- Rufus Müller
- Erika Switzer
Recognized as one of the finest conservatories in the United States, the Bard College Conservatory of Music, founded in 2005, is guided by the principle that young musicians should be broadly educated in the liberal arts and sciences to achieve their greatest potential. All undergraduates complete two degrees over a five-year period: a bachelor of music and a bachelor of arts in a field other than music. The Conservatory Orchestra has performed twice at Lincoln Center and has completed three international concert tours: in June 2012 to China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan; in June 2014 to Russia and six cities in Central and Eastern Europe; and in June 2016, to three cities in Cuba. For additional information about The Bard College Conservatory of Music, please visit bard.edu/conservatory.
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(8.18.20)08-12-2020
The Bard College Conservatory of Music announces the faculty appointments of violinists Gil Shaham and Adele Anthony. Shaham, one of the most celebrated violinists of his generation, performs regularly with the Berlin Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, and New York Philharmonic, among many others. With an extensive recording career of more than two dozen concerto and solo CDs, he is a Grammy Award winner and recipient of Gramophone’s Editor’s Choice award. Anthony is an acclaimed international performer, appearing regularly with the Houston, Seattle, and San Diego symphony orchestras and performing throughout North America, Europe, Australia, India, and Asia. An avid and accomplished chamber musician, she appears regularly at La Jolla’s SummerFest and the Aspen Music Festival.
“I am so excited to welcome Gil Shaham and Adele Anthony to the faculty of the Bard Conservatory,” said Bard Conservatory Dean Tan Dun. “Their musical excellence and dedication to teaching will be a gift to the entire Conservatory community.”
In addition to private teaching, Shaham and Anthony will coach chamber music and lead regular master classes. Shaham and Anthony will perform regularly at Bard with the Bard Conservatory orchestra or TON and in chamber music and recital settings.
About Gil Shaham
Gil Shaham is one of the foremost violinists of our time; his flawless technique combined with his inimitable warmth and generosity of spirit has solidified his renown as an American master. The Grammy Award winner, also named Musical America’s Instrumentalist of the Year, is sought after throughout the world for concerto appearances with leading orchestras and conductors, and regularly gives recitals and appears with ensembles on the world’s great concert stages and at the most prestigious festivals.
Highlights of recent years include the acclaimed recording and performances of J. S. Bach’s complete sonatas and partitas for solo violin. In the coming seasons, in addition to championing these solo works, he will join his long time duo partner, pianist Akira Eguchi, in recitals throughout North America, Europe, and Asia.
Appearances with orchestra regularly include the Berlin Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Israel Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, and San Francisco Symphony, as well as multiyear residencies with the orchestras of Montreal, Stuttgart, and Singapore. With orchestra, Shaham continues his exploration of “Violin Concertos of the 1930s,” including the works of Barber, Bartok, Berg, Korngold, and Prokofiev, among others.
Shaham has more than two dozen concerto and solo CDs to his name, earning multiple Grammys, a Grand Prix du Disque, Diapason d’Or, and Gramophone Editor’s Choice. Many of these recordings appear on Canary Classics, the label he founded in 2004. His CDs include 1930s Violin Concertos, Sarasate: Virtuoso Violin Works, Elgar: Violin Concerto, Hebrew Melodies, The Butterfly Lovers, and many more. His most recent recording in the 1930s Violin Concertos series, Vol. 2, includes Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2 and Bartok’s Violin Concerto No. 2, and was nominated for a Grammy Award. He will release a new recording of Beethoven and Brahms concertos with The Knights in 2020.
Shaham was born in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, in 1971. He moved with his parents to Israel, where he began violin studies with Samuel Bernstein of the Rubin Academy of Music at the age of 7, receiving annual scholarships from the America-Israel Cultural Foundation. In 1981, he made debuts with the Jerusalem Symphony and Israel Philharmonic, and the following year, took first prize in Israel’s Claremont Competition. He then became a scholarship student at Juilliard, and also studied at Columbia University. He was awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant in 1990 and, in 2008, he received the coveted Avery Fisher Prize. In 2012, he was named Instrumentalist of the Year by Musical America. Shaham performs on an Antonio Stradivari violin, Cremona c1719, with the assistance of Rare Violins In Consortium Artists and Benefactors Collaborative. He lives in New York City with his wife, violinist Adele Anthony, and their three children.
About Adele Anthony
Since her triumph at Denmark’s 1996 Carl Nielsen International Violin Competition, Adele Anthony has enjoyed an acclaimed and expanding international career. As a soloist with orchestra and in recital, as well as an active chamber music player, Anthony has performed throughout North America, Europe, Australia, India, and Asia.
In addition to appearances with all six symphonies of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, recent highlights include performances with the symphony orchestras of Houston, San Diego, Seattle, Fort Worth, and Indianapolis, as well as the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. An avid chamber music player, Anthony appears regularly at the La Jolla SummerFest and Aspen Music Festival. Her wide-ranging repertoire extends from the baroque of Bach and Vivaldi to contemporary works by Ross Edwards, Arvo Pärt, and Philip Glass.
Anthony’s recording work includes releases with Sejong Soloists, Eric Ewazen, Concerto for Violin and String Orchestra (Albany); a recording of Philip Glass’s Violin Concerto with Takuo Yuasa and the Ulster Orchestra (Naxos); Arvo Pärt’s Tabula rasa with Gil Shaham, Neeme Järvi, and the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra (Deutsche Grammophon); and her latest recording of the Sibelius Violin Concerto and Ross Edwards’s Maninyas with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra (Canary Classics/ABC Classics).
Anthony performs on an Antonio Stradivarius violin, crafted in 1728.
About the Bard College Conservatory
Recognized as one of the finest conservatories in the United States, the Bard College Conservatory of Music, founded in 2005, is guided by the principle that young musicians should be broadly educated in the liberal arts and sciences to achieve their greatest potential. All undergraduates complete two degrees over a five-year period: a bachelor of music and a bachelor of arts in a field other than music. The Conservatory Orchestra has performed twice at Lincoln Center, and has completed three international concert tours: in June 2012 to China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan; in June 2014 to Russia and six cities in Central and Eastern Europe; and in June 2016, to three cities in Cuba. For additional information about the Bard College Conservatory of Music, visit bard.edu/conservatory.
“I am so excited to welcome Gil Shaham and Adele Anthony to the faculty of the Bard Conservatory,” said Bard Conservatory Dean Tan Dun. “Their musical excellence and dedication to teaching will be a gift to the entire Conservatory community.”
In addition to private teaching, Shaham and Anthony will coach chamber music and lead regular master classes. Shaham and Anthony will perform regularly at Bard with the Bard Conservatory orchestra or TON and in chamber music and recital settings.
About Gil Shaham
Gil Shaham is one of the foremost violinists of our time; his flawless technique combined with his inimitable warmth and generosity of spirit has solidified his renown as an American master. The Grammy Award winner, also named Musical America’s Instrumentalist of the Year, is sought after throughout the world for concerto appearances with leading orchestras and conductors, and regularly gives recitals and appears with ensembles on the world’s great concert stages and at the most prestigious festivals.
Highlights of recent years include the acclaimed recording and performances of J. S. Bach’s complete sonatas and partitas for solo violin. In the coming seasons, in addition to championing these solo works, he will join his long time duo partner, pianist Akira Eguchi, in recitals throughout North America, Europe, and Asia.
Appearances with orchestra regularly include the Berlin Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Israel Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, and San Francisco Symphony, as well as multiyear residencies with the orchestras of Montreal, Stuttgart, and Singapore. With orchestra, Shaham continues his exploration of “Violin Concertos of the 1930s,” including the works of Barber, Bartok, Berg, Korngold, and Prokofiev, among others.
Shaham has more than two dozen concerto and solo CDs to his name, earning multiple Grammys, a Grand Prix du Disque, Diapason d’Or, and Gramophone Editor’s Choice. Many of these recordings appear on Canary Classics, the label he founded in 2004. His CDs include 1930s Violin Concertos, Sarasate: Virtuoso Violin Works, Elgar: Violin Concerto, Hebrew Melodies, The Butterfly Lovers, and many more. His most recent recording in the 1930s Violin Concertos series, Vol. 2, includes Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2 and Bartok’s Violin Concerto No. 2, and was nominated for a Grammy Award. He will release a new recording of Beethoven and Brahms concertos with The Knights in 2020.
Shaham was born in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, in 1971. He moved with his parents to Israel, where he began violin studies with Samuel Bernstein of the Rubin Academy of Music at the age of 7, receiving annual scholarships from the America-Israel Cultural Foundation. In 1981, he made debuts with the Jerusalem Symphony and Israel Philharmonic, and the following year, took first prize in Israel’s Claremont Competition. He then became a scholarship student at Juilliard, and also studied at Columbia University. He was awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant in 1990 and, in 2008, he received the coveted Avery Fisher Prize. In 2012, he was named Instrumentalist of the Year by Musical America. Shaham performs on an Antonio Stradivari violin, Cremona c1719, with the assistance of Rare Violins In Consortium Artists and Benefactors Collaborative. He lives in New York City with his wife, violinist Adele Anthony, and their three children.
About Adele Anthony
Since her triumph at Denmark’s 1996 Carl Nielsen International Violin Competition, Adele Anthony has enjoyed an acclaimed and expanding international career. As a soloist with orchestra and in recital, as well as an active chamber music player, Anthony has performed throughout North America, Europe, Australia, India, and Asia.
In addition to appearances with all six symphonies of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, recent highlights include performances with the symphony orchestras of Houston, San Diego, Seattle, Fort Worth, and Indianapolis, as well as the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. An avid chamber music player, Anthony appears regularly at the La Jolla SummerFest and Aspen Music Festival. Her wide-ranging repertoire extends from the baroque of Bach and Vivaldi to contemporary works by Ross Edwards, Arvo Pärt, and Philip Glass.
Anthony’s recording work includes releases with Sejong Soloists, Eric Ewazen, Concerto for Violin and String Orchestra (Albany); a recording of Philip Glass’s Violin Concerto with Takuo Yuasa and the Ulster Orchestra (Naxos); Arvo Pärt’s Tabula rasa with Gil Shaham, Neeme Järvi, and the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra (Deutsche Grammophon); and her latest recording of the Sibelius Violin Concerto and Ross Edwards’s Maninyas with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra (Canary Classics/ABC Classics).
Anthony performs on an Antonio Stradivarius violin, crafted in 1728.
About the Bard College Conservatory
Recognized as one of the finest conservatories in the United States, the Bard College Conservatory of Music, founded in 2005, is guided by the principle that young musicians should be broadly educated in the liberal arts and sciences to achieve their greatest potential. All undergraduates complete two degrees over a five-year period: a bachelor of music and a bachelor of arts in a field other than music. The Conservatory Orchestra has performed twice at Lincoln Center, and has completed three international concert tours: in June 2012 to China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan; in June 2014 to Russia and six cities in Central and Eastern Europe; and in June 2016, to three cities in Cuba. For additional information about the Bard College Conservatory of Music, visit bard.edu/conservatory.
08-05-2020
The two-discussion program, on July 21 and 28, focused on the power of cultural diplomacy, the universal appeal of great music, overcoming hardship (as exemplified by Beethoven's story and the story of modern China), and the importance of maintaining cultural bridges despite political tensions.
July 2020
07-31-2020
Xinyi Wang experienced quarantine twice during the height of the pandemic, and although she had to quarantine for a total of three months, she still keeps a bright smile on her face. Her initial period of isolation was in Jiangsu, China, in January, when she went home from Bard for winter break. She was quarantined with her family during the week of the annual spring festival. Even though Xinyi was stuck inside, she enjoyed herself because “spring festival was fun, with a lot of eating and drinking.” Her time there was focused on her family, while her time at Bard has been focused on schoolwork.
Xinyi managed to make it back to Bard, and was surprised to be quarantined again because of COVID-19 regulations, but working on her Senior Project in classical studies has kept her busy. For her project she chose to write about an inspiring Greek female character: Ariadne, daughter of Pasiphaë and the Cretan king Minos, who helped the Athenian hero Theseus escape the Labyrinth after he slew the Minotaur. She discovered the character through her adviser, classics professor Lauren Curtis, and was intrigued by how a female character was viewed in ancient poetry and how the same character is perceived in 20th-century opera. Xinyi appreciates her professors, who have stayed connected with her through this difficult time. She is also grateful for her adviser, who has been a help above and beyond academics. “She is very supportive,” Xinyi exclaims. “She pushes me to get out more.”
Xinyi, who has one more year at Bard as a double major in the Bard College Conservatory of Music, finds joy in playing her violin and staying connected to her friends via WeChat. She has learned to enjoy the peace of the quiet campus. As she chooses her classes for the fall, she is looking forward to the coming academic year, when the campus will be full of people again.
Xinyi managed to make it back to Bard, and was surprised to be quarantined again because of COVID-19 regulations, but working on her Senior Project in classical studies has kept her busy. For her project she chose to write about an inspiring Greek female character: Ariadne, daughter of Pasiphaë and the Cretan king Minos, who helped the Athenian hero Theseus escape the Labyrinth after he slew the Minotaur. She discovered the character through her adviser, classics professor Lauren Curtis, and was intrigued by how a female character was viewed in ancient poetry and how the same character is perceived in 20th-century opera. Xinyi appreciates her professors, who have stayed connected with her through this difficult time. She is also grateful for her adviser, who has been a help above and beyond academics. “She is very supportive,” Xinyi exclaims. “She pushes me to get out more.”
Xinyi, who has one more year at Bard as a double major in the Bard College Conservatory of Music, finds joy in playing her violin and staying connected to her friends via WeChat. She has learned to enjoy the peace of the quiet campus. As she chooses her classes for the fall, she is looking forward to the coming academic year, when the campus will be full of people again.
07-09-2020
Chairman Mao banned all classical music in 1966, but that didn’t stop some from listening to the music they loved, sometimes as an act of rebellion. Beethoven was a favorite. Jindong Cai, director of the US-China Music Institute at the Bard College Conservatory of Music, talks about a life-changing moment as a teenager: secretly listening to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 4 on a scratchy gramophone at a friend’s house.
May 2020
05-05-2020
The Times spotlights Bard Conservatory violist Molly Carr and her nonprofit organization Project: Music Heals Us, whose bedside concerts, performed by musicians playing over the phone from around the country, are bringing comfort to hospitalized COVID-19 patients in New York City.
April 2020
04-24-2020
GRAMMY Award–winning composer and longtime Bard professor Joan Tower’s first composition was “a total disaster.” Sixty years later, Tower, Asher B. Edelman Professor in the Arts at Bard, is one of the most celebrated composers in the world. Here, she talks with Kai Talim for Skip the Repeat about her wonderful childhood in Bolivia, her drive to compose, and how she, reluctantly at first, began to teach. “I came up here [to Bard] and I fell in love with this campus.... I love to teach. I didn’t know about that at the time. You have to start teaching to know whether you like it or not.”
04-23-2020
Julia Bullock, Bard Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Program alumna, offers the New York Times Frederica von Stade’s stunning performance of Massenet’s “Cendrillon” as her five minutes that will make you love opera.
March 2020
03-04-2020
The Bard Conservatory Orchestra joins an exciting principal cast of singers in a semi-staged performance of Richard Strauss’s once infamous, now famous opera, Salome—a biblical story, with a twist. The program, directed by R. B. Schlather and performed by the Bard Conservatory Orchestra, Leon Botstein, conductor, features leading opera singers Melody Moore, Jay Hunter Morris, Nathan Berg, Betsy Bishop, Robert Stahley, and others, including students of the Conservatory’s Graduate Vocal Arts Program. Salome takes place Friday, April 3, at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, April 5, at 2 p.m. in the Fisher Center’s Sosnoff Theater. Tickets start at $15 and can be ordered online at fishercenter.bard.edu or by calling the box office at 845-758-7900. $5 student tickets are available to Bard undergraduate students through the Passloff Pass.
Adapted from Oscar Wilde’s one-act play, Richard Strauss’s opera Salome depicts the biblical story of Salome, the Judean princess who demanded, and obtained, the head of St. John the Baptist. Bard Visiting Associate Professor of Music Peter Laki writes that the first performance of Salome, given in Dresden on December 9, 1905, caught even the most progressive critics off guard. “There was little doubt that the opera was a masterpiece, that its music was radically innovative, even ‘revolutionary,’ but many were profoundly disturbed by the image of Salome kissing the severed head of John the Baptist on the mouth,” writes Laki, stressing that, despite its early notoriety, Salome was Strauss’s first successful opera and went on to become part of the standard repertoire of every house that can meet the almost superhuman demands it places on the singers and the enormous orchestra alike. “The opera certainly stands with Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, which followed eight years later, at the threshold of a new era. It did away with many old taboos and presented human situations and emotions in a way they had never been presented before. Strauss made an old story breathtakingly new, boldly confronting the dark sides of the human psyche.”
Salome (1905)
libretto: Hedwig Lachmann (1865-1918) after Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
music: Richard Strauss (1864-1949)
Cast:
Melody Moore, Salome
Jay Hunter Morris, Herod
Nathan Berg, Jochanaan
Betsy Bishop, Herodias
Robert Stahley, Narraboth
Hailey MacEvoy ’20, Page of Herodias
Ricardo Lugo, First Nazarene
Ben Wager, First Soldier
Andrew Potter, Second Soldier
Marc Molomet, First Jew
Vincent Festa, Second Jew
Cody Ray Caho ’21,Third Jew
Chauncey Parker, Fourth Jew
Paul An, Fifth Jew
Paul LaRosa, Second Nazarene
Lighting Designer: Jax Messenger
Projection Designer: S. Katy Tucker
To purchase tickets, call the Fisher Center box office at 845-758-7900 or go to fishercenter.bard.edu.
Adapted from Oscar Wilde’s one-act play, Richard Strauss’s opera Salome depicts the biblical story of Salome, the Judean princess who demanded, and obtained, the head of St. John the Baptist. Bard Visiting Associate Professor of Music Peter Laki writes that the first performance of Salome, given in Dresden on December 9, 1905, caught even the most progressive critics off guard. “There was little doubt that the opera was a masterpiece, that its music was radically innovative, even ‘revolutionary,’ but many were profoundly disturbed by the image of Salome kissing the severed head of John the Baptist on the mouth,” writes Laki, stressing that, despite its early notoriety, Salome was Strauss’s first successful opera and went on to become part of the standard repertoire of every house that can meet the almost superhuman demands it places on the singers and the enormous orchestra alike. “The opera certainly stands with Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, which followed eight years later, at the threshold of a new era. It did away with many old taboos and presented human situations and emotions in a way they had never been presented before. Strauss made an old story breathtakingly new, boldly confronting the dark sides of the human psyche.”
Salome (1905)
libretto: Hedwig Lachmann (1865-1918) after Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
music: Richard Strauss (1864-1949)
Cast:
Melody Moore, Salome
Jay Hunter Morris, Herod
Nathan Berg, Jochanaan
Betsy Bishop, Herodias
Robert Stahley, Narraboth
Hailey MacEvoy ’20, Page of Herodias
Ricardo Lugo, First Nazarene
Ben Wager, First Soldier
Andrew Potter, Second Soldier
Marc Molomet, First Jew
Vincent Festa, Second Jew
Cody Ray Caho ’21,Third Jew
Chauncey Parker, Fourth Jew
Paul An, Fifth Jew
Paul LaRosa, Second Nazarene
Lighting Designer: Jax Messenger
Projection Designer: S. Katy Tucker
To purchase tickets, call the Fisher Center box office at 845-758-7900 or go to fishercenter.bard.edu.
February 2020
02-18-2020
Fourteen singers. Five operas. An extraordinary undertaking. Mark your calendars for Rest in Pieces: In Memory of Opera on March 6, directed by Stephanie Blythe, renowned mezzo-soprano and Bard Vocal Arts Program director.
02-07-2020
Sun-Ly Pierce MM '19 has won the first prize of $10,000 in the Houston Grand Opera's prestigious competition for young singers. The 32nd annual Eleanor McCollum Competition culminated in the Concert of Arias on Friday, February 7, in which eight finalists performed in the Cullen Theater of the Wortham Theater Center in Houston. The concert was the final event in a process that began with initial auditions in November. This year's competition received over 650 applications from singers around the world.
Concert of Arias supporters raised more than $600,000, with proceeds benefiting the Eleanor McCollum Competition for Young Singers and Houston Grand Opera Studio’s ongoing outreach efforts to identify, attract, and nurture young artists who have the potential for major careers in opera.
Originally from Clinton, New York, Chinese American mezzo-soprano Sun-Ly Pierce recently completed the Graduate Vocal Arts Program at the Bard College Conservatory of Music and holds a bachelor’s degree in vocal performance from the Eastman School of Music. As a winner of the Marilyn Horne Song Competition, Pierce will perform on an international recital tour with pianist Chien-Lin Lu. The tour includes appearances in Santa Barbara, Chicago, New York City, and London and will feature the premiere of a new song cycle written by two-time Grammy Award winning composer, Jennifer Higdon. This past fall, Pierce joined the Broad Street Orchestra as Dorinda in Handel’s Acis and Galatea. She returns to the Music Academy of the West this summer as a 2020 Vocal Fellow, performing the role of L’enfant in Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges and covering Hänsel in Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel.
Concert of Arias supporters raised more than $600,000, with proceeds benefiting the Eleanor McCollum Competition for Young Singers and Houston Grand Opera Studio’s ongoing outreach efforts to identify, attract, and nurture young artists who have the potential for major careers in opera.
Originally from Clinton, New York, Chinese American mezzo-soprano Sun-Ly Pierce recently completed the Graduate Vocal Arts Program at the Bard College Conservatory of Music and holds a bachelor’s degree in vocal performance from the Eastman School of Music. As a winner of the Marilyn Horne Song Competition, Pierce will perform on an international recital tour with pianist Chien-Lin Lu. The tour includes appearances in Santa Barbara, Chicago, New York City, and London and will feature the premiere of a new song cycle written by two-time Grammy Award winning composer, Jennifer Higdon. This past fall, Pierce joined the Broad Street Orchestra as Dorinda in Handel’s Acis and Galatea. She returns to the Music Academy of the West this summer as a 2020 Vocal Fellow, performing the role of L’enfant in Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges and covering Hänsel in Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel.
January 2020
01-26-2020
In 2019, the eminent composer and Bard professor Joan Tower was named Composer of the Year by Musical America, was recognized for her lifetime of work by Chamber Music of America, received the League of American Orchestras’ Gold Baton, and became one of the first women composers to have her collected works archived in the Library of Congress. Tower joined the faculty at Bard College in 1972, at the age of 33, where she now serves as Asher B. Edelman Professor in the Arts. Today, she teaches a variety of composition courses, coaches players, and puts on concerts of contemporary composers. “I always learn something every day,” she says. “I always learn from my students.”
01-17-2020
The US-China Music Institute presents its first annual Chinese New Year Concert featuring Bard College’s The Orchestra Now performing a lively collection of Chinese symphonic works. Conductor and director of the US-China Music Institute Jindong Cai will share the stage with guest conductor Chen Bing and Chinese instrument masters from the world-renowned faculty of the Central Conservatory of Music, China. The concert will be performed on Saturday, January 25, 2020 at 7 p.m. in Bard’s Fisher Center’s Sosnoff Theater. Admission is $20. For tickets and more information go to fishercenter.bard.edu, or call the Fisher Center box office at 845-758-7900.
Special guest soloists from the Central Conservatory of Music include Wang Jianhua, percussion; Wang Lei, sheng; Yu Hongmei, erhu; Zhang Hongyan, pipa; Zhang Weiwei, suona; and Shaanxi Folk singer Ji Tian.
The program features HongMei (Red Plum) Capriccio for Erhu, by Wu Houyuan; Yun Xiang Hua Xiang Pipa Concerto, by Wang Danhong; Long Teng Hu Yue Percussion Concerto, by Li Minxiong; YanAn YanAn for Tenor, Suona and Orchestra, by Li Shaosheng; Wan Li Xing Sheng Concertino for Sheng and Orchestra, by Hao Weiya; and The Spring Festival Overture by Li Huanzhi. Special Chinese New Year public reception before the concert, starting at 6 p.m.
The program will be repeated on Sunday, January 26, 2020 at 3 p.m. at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater, New York, NY.
Visit barduschinamusic.org/new-year-2020 for more details.
This concert is co-presented by the Central Conservatory of Music, China, with the participation of China Institute in New York.
Special guest soloists from the Central Conservatory of Music include Wang Jianhua, percussion; Wang Lei, sheng; Yu Hongmei, erhu; Zhang Hongyan, pipa; Zhang Weiwei, suona; and Shaanxi Folk singer Ji Tian.
The program features HongMei (Red Plum) Capriccio for Erhu, by Wu Houyuan; Yun Xiang Hua Xiang Pipa Concerto, by Wang Danhong; Long Teng Hu Yue Percussion Concerto, by Li Minxiong; YanAn YanAn for Tenor, Suona and Orchestra, by Li Shaosheng; Wan Li Xing Sheng Concertino for Sheng and Orchestra, by Hao Weiya; and The Spring Festival Overture by Li Huanzhi. Special Chinese New Year public reception before the concert, starting at 6 p.m.
The program will be repeated on Sunday, January 26, 2020 at 3 p.m. at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater, New York, NY.
Visit barduschinamusic.org/new-year-2020 for more details.
This concert is co-presented by the Central Conservatory of Music, China, with the participation of China Institute in New York.
01-02-2020
“Notwithstanding the conservatism of the opera business,” writes the New Yorker’s Alex Ross, “many top houses offer a world première every season or two.” Chaya Czernowin’s Heart Chamber, which premiered at the Berlin Deutsche Oper in December, is a case in point: “Heart Chamber, for which Czernowin wrote her own libretto, tells of a contemporary love affair infiltrated by anxieties and hesitations. In an early scene, the soprano sings, ‘Hey! Pick up your phone! Are you home? Later, the baritone sings, ‘You can’t just suddenly close up like that.’ The feeling is less of two souls being joined in eternal love than of two individuals negotiating the intersection of their separate lives.
“At first glance, Czernowin, an Israeli native who teaches at Harvard, is an unlikely composer for such a project. Much of her work has tended toward images of primordial upheaval and elemental change. Her previous operas, Pnima and Infinite Now, conjured scenes of 20th-century catastrophe: the Holocaust in the former, the First World War in the latter. She avoids familiar harmonic signposts and is inclined toward spectacularly vivid eruptions of instrumental and electronic sound. The wonder of Heart Chamber is how she uses her radical sonic palette to evoke the stream of consciousness beneath the surface of ordinary life.”
“At first glance, Czernowin, an Israeli native who teaches at Harvard, is an unlikely composer for such a project. Much of her work has tended toward images of primordial upheaval and elemental change. Her previous operas, Pnima and Infinite Now, conjured scenes of 20th-century catastrophe: the Holocaust in the former, the First World War in the latter. She avoids familiar harmonic signposts and is inclined toward spectacularly vivid eruptions of instrumental and electronic sound. The wonder of Heart Chamber is how she uses her radical sonic palette to evoke the stream of consciousness beneath the surface of ordinary life.”
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