Bard Conservatory News Archive

Described as a doyenne of American orchestral composers, Asher B. Edelman Professor in the Arts Joan Tower is one of the top 35 female composers of the recorded music era.

The Bard College Conservatory of Music presents a Bard Conservatory Orchestra concert. Conducted by Leon Botstein, the concert includes Karl Amadeus Hartmann’s Symphony No. 6, Josef Suk’s Symphony No. 2 Asrael, and the world premiere of Thurman Barker’s South Side Suite with jazz quintet Thurman Barker and Time Factor featuring Paavo Cary, clarinet; James Emery, guitar; Noah Barker, piano; Dean Torrey, double bass; and Thurman Barker, percussion. The concert will be held on Sunday, May 7 at 3p.m. in the Sosnoff Theater of The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College. Tickets are a $15–$20 suggested donation and free to the Bard community. For tickets, call the box office at 845-758-7900, or go to: https://fishercentertickets.bard.edu.
 
“In this piece, the jazz quintet represents the vocabulary that I learned in [my] early years of combo playing . . . The first movement centers on a theme that shifts around from section to individual instrument to section. The second movement sets up a repeated vamp while sections play a cat and mouse game with each other until reaching a finale on a repeated ostinato pattern from the strings,” says Barker.  ­
 
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Thurman Barker began his professional career at the age of 16 playing for blues singer Mighty Joe Young. Classically trained at the American Conservatory of Music, he quickly established a reputation as a professional drummer. He has played backup for Billy Eckstein, Marvin Gaye, Bette Midler and Vicki Carr. He was the house drummer at the Schubert Theatre in Chicago for 10 years where he played for national touring companies in Hair, The Wiz, The Me Nobody Knows, Promises, Promises, 1776, Bubblin’ Brown Sugar, A Raisin in the Sun, Grease, One Mo' Time, and Ain’t Misbehavin’. A charter member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), Barker has performed worldwide and recorded with Cecil Taylor, Muhal Richard Abrams, Amina Claudine Meyers, Anthony Braxton, Roscoe Mitchell, Sam Rivers, Billy Bang, Joseph Jarman, and Henry Threadgill. He has produced five recordings under his own record label, Uptee Productions.  In 1994, his composition, "Dialogue," commissioned by Mutable Music, premiered at Merkin Concert Hall in New York City. He has since completed a second commission for Mutable Music as well as two commissions for the Delaware Valley Chamber Orchestra in Sullivan County, New York. The Woodstock Chamber Orchestra premiered his chamber piece, "Expansions," in May 1999. He has developed and taught in the jazz program at Bard College since 1993.
 
In addition to leading the Bard College Conservatory Orchestra, Leon Botstein is in his 25th year as music director and principal conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra. He has been hailed for his visionary approach to creating unique concert programs and reviving rarely performed works. His programming gives audiences opportunities to hear live performances of works that are often neglected in the standard repertory, often broadening the experience with preconcert talks, while bringing his distinctive style to core repertory works. He is artistic codirector of Bard SummerScape and the Bard Music Festival, which take place at The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College, where he has been president since 1975, and is conductor laureate of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, where he served as music director from 2003–11. Botstein leads an active schedule as a guest conductor all over the world, and can be heard on numerous recordings with the London Symphony (including its Grammy- nominated recording of Popov’s First Symphony), the London Philharmonic, NDR Hamburg, and the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra. Many of his live performances with the American Symphony Orchestra are available online, where they have cumulatively sold more than a quarter of a million downloads. In recent seasons he has conducted the Royal Philharmonic, Simón Bolivar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela, Aspen Music Festival, the Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden, Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Russian National Orchestra in Moscow, Taipei Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, and Sinfónica Juvenil de Caracas in Venezuela. Highly regarded as a music historian, Botstein’s most recent book is Von Beethoven zu Berg: Das Gedächtnis der Moderne (2013). He is the editor of The Musical Quarterly and the author of numerous articles and books. For his contributions to music he has most recently received an honorary Doctor of Music from Sewanee: The University of the South, and before that he received the award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters; Harvard University’s prestigious Centennial Award, as well as the Cross of Honor, First Class, from the government of Austria.
 
Members of Time Factor
Pianist Noah Barker, a multi-instrumentalist and composer from Jeffersonville, New York, is the son of the avant-garde jazz drummer, Thurman Barker. He started classical piano studies at age seven and moved on to jazz as a teenager. After undergraduate studies at the University of Louisville,  he received a master of arts degree in music composition and production from SUNY Purchase in 2014. Barker relocated to Brooklyn and started Never Forever Records. He fronts the group Noisebody, in addition to playing with Jerry Paper, Joanna Teters, Murals, and Purr.
 
Clarinetist Paavo Carey enjoys a versatile career as a music director, arranger, composer, conductor, saxophonist, and educator.  Noted for his energetic and passionate performances, he currently serves as music director at Madison Memorial High School, in Madison, Maine, and has taught jazz master classes at Colby College.  He was the founding band director at the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in Queens.  As a saxophonist, Mr. Carey performs in clubs and concert halls throughout the tri-state and New England areas as well as internationally.  He is a long time member of the critically acclaimed Me We and Them Orchestra.
 
Guitarist and composer James Emery has been active on the international jazz and contemporary music scene since 1975. He has recorded 26 CDs and performed in more than 25 countries. In addition to international critical acclaim as a leader of his own ensembles, he is recognized for his work with the String Trio of New York, which he co-founded in 1977. Emery has performed and recorded with Henry Threadgill, Joe Lovano, Anthony Braxton, Steve Reich, and Leroy Jenkins. He has received numerous grants and commissions, including a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship.
 
Dean Torrey is a double bassist and composer from Fairfield, Connecticut, currently residing in Brooklyn. He attended the Jazz Studies Program at SUNY Purchase, where he studied with Doug Weiss and Scott Colley. Since graduating and moving to New York in 2014, Torrey has worked with many great musicians including NEA Jazz Master Muhal Richard Abrams, Hal Galper, Ray Gallon, Tim Green, Thurman Barker, Alex Hoffman, and many others.
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See www.bard.edu/conservatory for the full concert calendar.
 
ABOUT THE BARD COLLEGE CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC ORCHESTRA
The unique undergraduate curriculum of the Bard College Conservatory of Music is guided by the principle that musicians should be broadly educated in the liberal arts and sciences to achieve their greatest potential. The five-year, double-degree program combines rigorous Conservatory training with a challenging and comprehensive liberal arts program. All Conservatory students pursue a double degree in a thoroughly integrated program and supportive educational community. Graduating students receive a bachelor of music (B.Mus.) and a bachelor of arts in a field other than music (B.A.). At the Bard Conservatory the serious study of music goes hand in hand with the education of the whole person.

The Orchestra Now and musicians from the Bard College Conservatory Orchestra perform Elgar’s masterful choral work, conducted by Leon Botstein, April 8–9.

The Bard College Conservatory of Music presents the Conservatory Orchestra in concert in the acoustically superb Sosnoff Theater. Conducted by Leon Botstein, the program includes Schumann’s Cello Concerto in A Minor with Peter Wiley on cello, Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No.4, and features soloist Obadiah Wright ’17 playing Paloma.

Internationally acclaimed, award-winning composer and Bard professor George Tsontakis talks about why continuing to play the viola is important to his work as a composer.

Sō Percussion's Gun Show dissects America's obsession with firearms. The group's members make up the faculty of the Bard Conservatory's percussion program.

The Fisher Center presents the Bard College Conservatory Orchestra in concert at the Sosnoff Theater on Saturday, November 5 at 7 p.m. Music director Leon Botstein will lead the orchestra in a performance of a selection of classic pieces, including Ludwig van Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 2, Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony 5 in D minor, op. 47, and Béla Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra.

Sō Percussion, made up of Bard faculty members Eric Cha-Beach, Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski, and Jason Treuting, has won a Bessie Award for outstanding musical composition and sound design.

The Place of Music: Essays from the First Decade of the Bard College Conservatory of Music celebrates 10 years since the Conservatory's founding and marks the importance of Bard as the only conservatory requiring completion of a bachelor of arts degree in a field other than music concurrently with the awarding of the bachelor of music degree. The collection includes essays by Bard faculty members Robert Martin, Dawn Upshaw, and Robert Kelly, as well as alumni/ae Rylan Gajek-Leonard '16 and Allegra Chapman '10.

The Bard College Conservatory of Music celebrates its 10th Anniversary with one of America’s foremost pianists. Jeremy Denk, whose playing was lauded by the New York Times as “bracing, effortlessly virtuosic and utterly joyous,” will create a time-lapse through seven centuries of Western music, from the 1300s to the present day. Denk describes the program saying, “In a series of 25 short pieces, it will trace the evolution of the musical language, the soundscape—an epic story of human thought and ideals, of what we have found important to express in tones.” The matinee program will be held on Sunday, September 11 at 3 p.m. in the Sosnoff Theater of the Richard B. Fisher Center of the Performing Arts at Bard College.

The work-in-progress Stranger Love will appear in The Industry's FIRST TAKE series in Los Angeles, a biennial West Coast workshop for new American operas.

Professor Tower on the newest in her Fanfare series, and why she embraces the term "woman composer" after joining Nancy B. Reich's Women in Music course at Bard.

From June 3 to 10, The Bard Conservatory Orchestra will embark on a one-week visit to Cuba to foster cultural exchange. The project includes formal concerts conducted by Leon Botstein in Cienfuegos (June 4), Santa Clara (June 6), and Havana (June 7-9), with pianist Peter Serkin as soloist in Havana (June 9). Collaborations with Cuban artists, in the form of shared concerts, side-by-side performances, and chamber music workshops, are another important component of this concert tour. 

The Bard College Conservatory of Music presents a Mother’s Day side-by-side performance with Bard Conservatory Orchestra and The Orchestra Now (TŌN). Conducted by Leon Botstein, the concert includes Alban Berg’s Seven Early Songs featuring soprano Dawn Upshaw and Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 6. The concert will be held on Sunday, May 8 at 3 p.m. in the Sosnoff Theater of The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College. Tickets are a $15–$20 suggested donation and free to the Bard community. Ticket sales benefit the Bard Conservatory of Music’s Scholarship Fund. For tickets, call the box office at 845-758-7900, or go to fishercenter.bard.edu.

Tamzin Elliott discusses her Daughters Concerto, which had its world premiere last weekend at The Orchestra Now's Fisher Center season finale.

Conductor David Bloom '13, M.M. '15 offers tips on leading youth orchestras and reveals what it’s like to work with Courtney Love.

Asher B. Edelman Professor in the Arts Joan Tower has released new recordings on the Naxos label. Performed by the Nashville Symphony, her third album with Naxos presents a concerto and two orchestral works—one of which, "Stroke," was nominated for a 2016 Grammy Award. Last week, a fourth Naxos recording was released, featured three string quartets and a piano quintet with Bard professor Blair McMillen on piano, performed by the Daedalus and Miami quartets. The fifth Naxos recording will be released next year, with the Albany Symphony presenting concertos, and solos performed by percussionist Evelyn Glennie and pianist Blair McMillen.

​George Tsontakis, distinguished composer in residence at Bard, was commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra to compose multiple sonnet-themed tone poems for a concert series commemorating the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. Sonnets was "a complete success" at last week's premiere, writes Susan Miron, adding that Tsontakis, "has written a piece that is not just eloquent for the English horn, but also for the whole orchestra." Read more below.

Themed Programs? Play On!
BSO and Bard Full with Feasting
Concert Preview: English Horn Soloist Robert Sheena on Sonnets

The Success of "Three Songs for Soprano and Orchestra" is owed largely to Upshaw’s fealty to the work and her way with a narrative line, composer Osvaldo Golijov said recently.

Joan Tower, Asher B. Edelman Professor in the Arts, has been nominated for a GRAMMY Award for her composition Stroke.

Founded at Bard in 2010 and led by alumni/ae, Contemporaneous now makes its home in New York City. The ensemble plays Murray's in Tivoli on February 2.

The Fisher Center for the Performing Arts presents the Bard College Conservatory Orchestra in concert at the Sosnoff Theater on Sunday, December 6 at 3 p.m. Guest conductor JoAnn Falletta, music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and Virginia Symphony Orchestra, will lead the orchestra in a performance of Ernest Bloch’s Suite for Viola and Orchestra, with 2015 Conservatory Concerto Competition winner Ye Zi ’16, viola soloist; Vítězslav Novák’s V Tratách (In the Tatras); and the Brahms Symphony No. 2 in D Major.  

"Earnest and all-American, she radiates fireside-chat warmth," writes Zachary Woolfe of Professor Upshaw's set at the Resonant Bodies Festival.

The Bard College Conservatory of Music is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, featuring three special anniversary concerts in September. On September 3 the Conservatory will celebrate the gift of seven historic pianos with a concert featuring pianists Peter Serkin and Julia Hsu, with commentary by President Leon Botstein. Then, on September 22, Conservatory faculty and students will perform the works of Joseph Haydn in the opening concert of the three-part Haydn Project. Finally, singer-songwriter Natalie Merchant will perform with her band and the Conservatory Orchestra on September 26 in a concert to benefit the Conservatory.

Soprano Clarissa Lyons ’11, alumna of the Bard College Conservatory of Music Graduate Vocal Arts Program (VAP), has been invited to join the Metropolitan Opera Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, capping an exciting year in which she was named the Grand Prize Winner at Florida Grand Opera’s Young Patronesses of the Opera Competition and the Glenn & Ginger Flournay Award Winner at Shreveport Opera’s Mary Jacobs Smith Singer of the Year Competition. In January, Lyons participated in The Song Continues series at Carnegie Hall, where she performed in a master class led by Warren Jones. She will return to Carnegie Hall in January 2016 to present a Spotlight Recital in Weill Hall as part of The Song Continues series alongside tenor Miles Mykkanen and pianist Ken Noda.

On May 1, the Bard Conservatory Orchestra directed by Leon Botstein showcased music that for the larger general audience may stray from expected fare, yet was exciting and thrilling. 

Bard College's Fisher Center and the Longy School's Zabriskie House made the list of the most beautiful music education buildings by College Degree Search.

"Considered one of the most successful female composers of all time," Tower is recognized as one of “the classy ladies of classical music throughout history."

Fourth-year Bard Conservatory student Tamzin Elliott talks about composing from a young age, the importance of "screwing up" for creativity, and what she's up to on campus.

Joan Tower composed "For Daniel" in memory of her nephew, Daniel MacArthur. Now Bard Conservatory faculty member Raman Ramakrishnan is performing it with the Horszowski Trio.

Bard students founded Contemporaneous on campus in 2010. On March 8, the group returned to Bard for a well-received anniversary concert.

Grammy Award–winning soprano and Bard professor Dawn Upshaw performs an eclectic repertoire in Vancouver this week.

Gettysburg College alumna and Bard Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Program student Sarah Tuttle talks about working with Bard faculty Edith Bers and Dawn Upshaw.

Contemporaneous, a new music ensemble featuring Bard students and alumni/ae, is performing the opera Kansas City Choir Boy with Courtney Love under the musical direction of David Bloom '13.

"Bullock seems poised on the threshold of an important career—but she’s also determined to make the most of her time as a student," writes Adam Wasserman.

Yulia Van Doren M.M. '08, a graduate of the Vocal Arts Program at the Bard College Conservatory of Music, talks about being mentored by the great Dawn Upshaw.

On Sunday, December 7, acclaimed soprano Dawn Upshaw and members of the Bard Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Program, Postgraduate Collaborative Piano Fellows, Hudson Valley Brass, and the chorus from the Red Hook Mill Road Elementary School, present a program of festive songs and ensembles to benefit the Scholarship Fund of The Bard College Conservatory of Music. A Winter Songfest will be performed as a family-friendly matinee concert at 3 p.m. in the Sosnoff Theater of The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College.

The winners of the 2014–2015 Concerto Competition were announced on Sunday, November 16, at the László Z. Bitó '60 Conservatory Building, after two rounds of competitive performances over the course of the weekend. This year's winners are: Tianpei Ai '18 (Sibelius, Violin Concerto), Sophia Burgos M.M. '16 (Dutilleux, Correspondances), Rylan Gajek-Leonard '16 (Shostakovich, Cello Concerto No. 2), Xi Yang '15 (Tchaikovsky, Rococo Variations), and Ye Zi '15 (Bloch, Suite). The winners will perform with either the Bard Conservatory Orchestra or the American Symphony Orchestra during the 2015–2016 season.

“Remembering the Genocide of European Roma During World War II” Followed By a Performance of Mozart’s Requiem

The Bard College Conservatory of Music presents a special event on Friday, October 17: a panel discussion titled “Remembering the Genocide of European Roma during World War II” followed by a performance of Mozart’s Requiem. Exploring issues of history and responsibility, the themed event was conceived of by acclaimed Hungarian conductor Ádám Fischer, who will conduct the Requiem Mass and participate on the panel. The panel discussion will be held at 4 p.m. in the László Z. Bitó ’60 Conservatory Building, followed by a performance of the Requiem with James Bagwell, chorus master at 6:30 p.m. in the Sosnoff Theater of The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts.

Bard percussion faculty members Eric Beach, Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski, and Jason Treuting make up the group Sō Percussion. The musicians performed last week with the L.A. Philharmonic.

The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts presents “Music Alive! Dynamic Women Making Music from Around the Globe” on Sunday, October 5 at 3 p.m. in the Sosnoff Theater. This exciting program is curated by artistic directors Joan Tower, Grammy Award–winning composer, and Blair McMillen, pianist, and showcases works by female composers performed by more than 30 students from The Bard College Conservatory of Music and the Music Program. There will be a special appearance by Grammy Award–winning soprano Dawn Upshaw.

Distinguished Composer in Residence George Tsontakis has been the recipient of the two richest prizes awarded in all of classical music: the 2005 international Grawemeyer Award for his Second Violin Concerto and the 2007 Charles Ives Living Award, awarded every three years by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

He has also received two Kennedy Center Friedheim Awards, for String Quartet No. 4 (1989) and Perpetual Angelus (1992), and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Lifetime Achievement Award (1995). He studied with Roger Sessions at Juilliard and with Franco Donatoni in Rome. Born in Astoria, New York, into a strongly Cretan heritage, he has in recent years become an important figure in the music of Greece; his music is increasingly performed abroad, with dozens of performances in Europe every season. Tsontakis's works have been commissioned and performed by the American, Blair, Colorado, and Emerson string quartets; New York Virtuoso Singers; Aspen Wind Quintet; Orpheus; flutist Ransom Wilson; violinist Glenn Dicterow; and many other orchestras, ensembles, and musicians.

Most of his music—including 11 major orchestral works and four concertos—has been recorded by Hyperion and Koch, leading to two Grammy Nominations for Best Classical Composition (1999, 2009). He is distinguished composer in residence at the Bard Conservatory and has been a composer in residence with the Aspen Music Festival for decades, where he was founding director of the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble (1991-99). He served for three years as composer in residence with the Oxford (England) Philomusica, continues a six-year Music Alive residency with the Albany Symphony, and was the featured composer in residence with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center (2008-09 season). He lives in New York State’s Catskill Mountains, in Shokan, and has been on the Bard faculty since 2003.

Distinguished soprano and Bard professor Dawn Upshaw has been chosen to head the vocal arts program at the Tanglewood Music Center—the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s summer academy.

Five students in the Bard College Conservatory of Music departed for Cali, Colombia, on Friday, August 15, for a Trustee Leader Scholar (TLS) project called Sounds of Social Change. Rylan Gajek-Leonard '16, Caitlin Majewski '15, Alexzandra Morris '18, Avery Morris '18, and Daniel Zlatkin '16 are teaching music to children in the Orquesta Sinfónica Infantil y Juvenil de Siloé, an organization that serves at-risk youth in the region. Daniel's sister Rebecca Zlatkin is there making a video documentary of the project. The group has brought donated music books, instrument accessories, and other supplies for students in the program. They will perform a benefit concert with the Orquesta de Siloé on August 21.

The new László Z. Bitó Conservatory building combines state-of-the-art teaching facilities with a first-rate performance venue.

Professor Upshaw "possesses the virtue of being not just a top-ranked performer, but also a first-rate teacher and mentor," writes Stephan Bonfield.

Bard Conservatory faculty comprising the group So Percussion "lavished their talents" while Bardian ensemble Contemporaneous "attacked, with passion" at the Bang on a Can Marathon in New York City.

The Bard College Conservatory Orchestra has kicked off its 2014 European Tour. After two well-received concerts played in Warsaw (to a sold-out crowd) and St. Petersburg, they continue to Moscow, Budapest, Bratislava, Vienna, Prague, and Berlin. Click here for the full schedule. Thanks to a donation from Google, our student musicians are creating a travel blog using Google Glass. Follow them on Tumblr.

The Bard College Conservatory of Music presented a marathon day of chamber music performances on May 3, which TMI Arts's Kevin T. McEneaney found mesmerizing.