All Bard News by Date
listings 1-5 of 5
November 2023
11-28-2023
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.
11-16-2023
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.
11-14-2023
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].
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].
11-10-2023
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.
11-03-2023
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 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.”
listings 1-5 of 5