Bard Conservatory of Music News Archive

The Bard College Conservatory Orchestra recently performed at Eastern Correctional Facility in Napanoch, New York, in a concert conducted by Bard College President Leon Botstein. The event featured compositions by Johann Nepomuk Hummel and Ludwig van Beethoven, and was enthusiastically received by an audience of several hundred inmates, as well as Bard College faculty and supporters. Officials of the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision also attended, including Acting Deputy Commissioner for Correctional Facilities James O’Gorman and Assistant Commissioner Linda Hollmen. Bard College has a regular presence at Eastern through the Bard Prison Initiative, which enrolls incarcerated students in two- and four-year degree programs.

The Bard College Conservatory of Music will teach an undergraduate program in Chinese musical instrument performance starting next fall.

President Botstein "drew rich, expressive playing" from The Orchestra Now at the Met, and Professor Dawn Upshaw sang "compellingly" with the Brentano String Quartet at the 92nd Street Y.

Julia Bullock MM '11 speaks about her life as an opera singer and her role as Dame Shirley in the world premiere of John Adams’s Girls of the Golden West.

Conducted by Leon Botstein, music director, the Bard College Conservatory Orchestra will perform Hummel’s Trumpet Concerto in E flat with soloist Szabolcs Koczur, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, and Mahler’s Symphony No. 1, "Titan."

Star soprano and Bard professor Dawn Upshaw performs in San Francisco with Sō Percussion, a group comprising Bard faculty members Eric Cha-Beach, Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski, and Jason Treuting.

The winners of the 2017 Concerto Competition were announced on Saturday, October 14, at the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts. Students in the Bard College Conservatory of Music competed for the honor in two rounds of performances over the course of the weekend. This year's winners are: Eric Carey, voice (Benjamin Britten, Les illumination); Zhen Liu, violin (Brahms, Violin Concerto); and Emily Munstedt, cello (Kabalevsky, Cello Concerto). The winners will perform with the Conservatory Orchestra, The Orchestra Now, or the American Symphony Orchestra during the 2018–2019 season.

Bard Conservatory alumnus Christopher Carroll is among the young movers and shakers of New York City, in his role as political director of the Associated Musicians of Greater New York.

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.