Bard Conservatory of Music News Archive

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.”

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.