Bard Conservatory of Music News Archive

On December 20, Bard College Conservatory of Music will present “Come Out of the Cold: A Winter Cabaret,” a celebration of seasonal cheer, warmth, and song. The inaugural, intimate winter cabaret, which will take place at the Fisher Center Luma Theater on Bard’s Annandale campus at 7 PM, will wrap up the Conservatory's fall concert season with a program that blends treasured holiday classics and art song intended to transport audiences to a world of winter joy and musical splendor.

“Although we regret that internationally renowned mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe cannot perform as previously announced due to illness, we are delighted to welcome acclaimed opera star and countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, who will join the talented singers of the Graduate Vocal Arts Program and the exceptional Conservatory Piano Fellows for this one-night-only, holiday-infused evening,” said Conservatory director Frank Corliss.

Celebrated for his radiant voice and compelling stage presence, Anthony Roth Costanzo will bring his unique artistry to the Luma Theater stage. Costanzo, who is currently general director and president of Opera Philadelphia, has appeared with many of the world’s most prestigious opera companies and orchestras including the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera, Opera National de Paris, Teatro Real, New York Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, and many others.

The program features cherished seasonal songs including “Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming,” “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” (Pola & Wyle), “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” (Martin & Blane), and “White Christmas” (Irving Berlin).

“We are thrilled to close our fall concert season with a performance that brings together the beauty of winter with the festive spirit of the holidays,” said Corliss. “This concert will highlight the talent of our young artists, alongside members of the renowned Vocal Arts Program faculty, and is a perfect way to ring in the season.”

Tickets: Priced at $45 general admission ($5 for Bard students). Tickets are limited and may be purchased at https://fishercenter.bard.edu/events/winter-cabaret/ or by calling the Fisher Center’s Box Office at 845-758-7900.

The Bard College Conservatory Orchestra presents a concert performance with Music Director Leon Botstein conducting and featuring soloists from the Bard Graduate Vocal Arts Program. The program includes Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 8 in B Minor “Unfinished”; Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy’s Psalm 42, Op. 42, Wie der Hirsch schreit (As the hart cries out); and Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10 in E minor, Op. 93. The performance will be held on Saturday, December 14, at 7 pm in the Fisher Center’s Sosnoff Theater. Tickets have a suggested donation of $15–$20 or free for Bard students and members of the Bard community. The performance will be livestreamed. Virtual livestream tickets are pay what you wish. All ticket sales benefit the Bard College Conservatory Scholarship Fund. For tickets and information visit fishercenter.bard.edu or call 845-758-7900 (Mon-Fri 10am-5pm).

Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 8 in B Minor “Unfinished,” composed just over 200 years ago, heralds a new Romantic sound in its orchestration, provides a supreme example of Schubert’s lyrical gifts, displays his bold harmonic daring, and projects an extraordinary range of emotions. Beginning in 1830, Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy composed an impressive series of psalm settings and drafted Psalm 42 (“As the hart cries out for fresh water”) while on his honeymoon in the summer of 1837. Psalm 42 became one of his most popular religious compositions, unfolding in seven movements, beginning with a chorus that is calm and lyrical and ending in a triumphant finale. Dmitri Shostakovich began writing his Tenth Symphony in the summer of 1953, a few months after Stalin died, and completed it quickly. Premiering in Leningrad in December 1953, the work received a mixed reception but has since emerged for many listeners as Shostakovich’s greatest symphonic achievement. “In this work I wanted to convey human feelings and passions,” he has stated.

This concert in the Fisher Center’s Sosnoff Theater is dedicated to the late Richard B. Fisher, whom we celebrate on the 20th anniversary of his death. Richard Fisher was a man of deep intellectual curiosity, an enlightened patron of the arts, chairman emeritus of Morgan Stanley, and former chair of Bard College’s Board of Trustees. The magnificent Fisher Center building and the extraordinary arts experiences that take place within it are a tribute to his vision.

Bard College Conservatory of Music is pleased to announce that baritone Tyler Duncan will join its faculty in the Graduate Vocal Arts program. Duncan, whose voice faculty appointment will begin in fall 2025, has performed worldwide to great acclaim in both opera and concert repertoire, and with several of the world’s leading orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Tafelmusik, Minnesota Orchestra, and the Kansas City Symphony. He has performed numerous roles at The Metropolitan Opera, including Fiorello in Il barbiere di Siviglia, Moralès in Carmen, Prince Yamadori in Madama Butterfly, and the Journalist in Lulu. Other notable appearances have included Mr. Friendly in the 18th-century ballad opera Flora and Sprecher in Die Zauberflöte at the Spoleto Festival USA, Raymondo in Handel’s Almira, Dandini in La Cenerentola with Pacific Opera Victoria and Demetrius in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Princeton Festival. Duncan has also been the recipient of prizes from the Naumburg, London’s Wigmore Hall, and Munich’s ARD competitions, and has won the Joy in Singing competition, the New York Oratorio Society’s Lyndon Woodside Oratorio-Solo Competition, the Prix International Pro Musicis Award, and the Bernard Diamant Prize from the Canada Council for the Arts. 

A New Day, a cello concerto released in 2021 by Joan Tower, Asher B. Edelman Professor in the Arts at Bard College, was featured in Times Union. The work, which began as a commission by the Colorado Music Festival, Cleveland Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and National Symphony Orchestra, was written while Jeff Litfin, her late husband of 50 years, was dying. “I was in real bad shape,” Tower said. “So I decided to write. In fact, all the music I've been writing since then is about him.” The concerto, which will be performed by Albany Symphony in Troy on November 16 and 17, contains four movements: “Daybreak,” “Working Out,” “Mostly Alone” and “Into the Night.” The titles are intentionally simple, allowing for many interpretations of a single day, she told Times Union.

The Bard College Conservatory of Music is pleased to present a celebration of the new album release by renowned pianist and conductor Benjamin Hochman, a lecturer at Bard College Berlin. The event, which takes place on November 8, 2024 at 7 pm in the Bitó Conservatory Building on Bard’s campus, will begin with a reception followed by a piano concert of Hochman’s album Resonance. The event is free and open to the public. For more information, please visit here.

Resonance will be released by Avie Records on November 1, 2024. It features Beethoven Piano Sonatas Op. 109 and 110, George Benjamin’s Shadowlines, and works by Josquin de Prez and John Dowland. “This program is a journey from darkness to light, a study in contrasts that nevertheless finds resonance across the centuries, ultimately finding transcendence and even triumph,” Hochman writes.

Born in Jerusalem in 1980, Hochman’s chamber music collaborations have taken him to Berlin, Budapest, Vancouver, Boston, Seattle, Dallas, Charlottesville, the Clark Art Institute in Massachusetts, and Brown University. He currently curates the Kurtág Festival, a three-day event inspired by the musical explorations of György Kurtág, at Bard College in Annandale.

The China Now Music Festival, a collaboration between the US-China Music Institute of the Bard College Conservatory of Music and the Central Conservatory of Music, China, was reviewed in China Daily. The festival, now in its seventh season and with the theme Composing the Future, performed on Saturday at Carnegie Hall in New York City, where Sun Yuming, a composer and lecturer on electronic music composition at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, introduced his piece “Starry Night.” The composition featured AI-driven visuals which were rendered in real time to blend physical and virtual instruments. “This approach combines the unique characteristics of traditional instruments with the innovations of electronic music, integrating AI throughout the entire performance—not only in sound but also in the visual effects on stage.” Sun told China Daily.

The US-China Music Institute of the Bard College Conservatory of Music and the Central Conservatory of Music, China, announce the seventh season of the China Now Music Festival, titled Composing the Future, from October 12 to 19. The festival’s major concerts will take place at Carnegie Hall in New York City and at Bard College.

The China Now Music Festival is dedicated to promoting an understanding and appreciation of music from contemporary China through an annual series of concerts and academic activities. In the previous six seasons, China Now has attracted more than 10,000 live audience members, and nearly 100,000 viewers have participated in online programs. The seventh season features contemporary works on the cutting edge of music with two concerts at Carnegie Hall, in Stern Auditorium on October 12 and Zankel Hall on October 19, to look at the intersection of technology and music.

Artistic Director Jindong Cai says: “Generations of composers in China have been paving the way for the future of classical music. Some are now experimenting with rapidly developing technologies, like AI, that can provide us with new ways to enhance musical expression. This year, China Now explores these new frontiers in music with some of the greatest living composers from China. But even as we venture into this brave new world, we remain certain that, at its core, music-making must always come from the creative heart and imaginative mind of a human being.”

On October 12, Conductor Jindong Cai leads The Orchestra Now in a future-focused program of new symphonic works by contemporary Chinese composers in the opening concert of China Now in Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall. The richly varied program features Juilliard-trained composer and pianist Peng-Peng Gong’s Of Peking and Opera, an abridged version of his magnificent Tenth Symphony. The Tenth Symphony was originally co-commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra and was praised as “a sweet, sentimental, and direct work with highly original sounds presented in a series of vivid episodes” by the Philadelphia Inquirer.

From the inspiration of Peking Opera to a tribute to American jazz master Ray Charles, the program also presents New York–based Pulitzer Prize winner Du Yun’s Hundred Heads (In Tribute to Ray Charles). The musical theme hints at Charles’s best-known tune, “Georgia on My Mind,” and his trademark brass rhythms, while drawing on Buddhist mythology to represent the essence of Charles’ musical gifts.

In keeping with the future-focused theme of this year’s festival events, China Now asked the Department of Music Artificial Intelligence of the Central Conservatory of Music (CCOM) to contribute orchestral pieces composed in part by AI, as well as works that experimentally incorporate AI technology in live performances. Highlights of this segment of the program include Li Xiaobing’s use of a ‘Cloud Chorus’ of 1,000 voices gathered from around the world, and a piece by Sun Yuming where a traditional ‘guzheng’ zither is played on stage without the performer touching the instrument.

Rounding out the dynamic program are two captivating symphonic pieces by Qin Wenchen and Yao Chen from the composition faculty of CCOM, locus of some of the most forward-thinking and innovative composers of our time.

A pre-concert event at the Rohatyn Room at Carnegie Hall from 5:30 pm to 7:00 pm brings together an illustrious panel of composers and music researchers convene for the 2nd annual US-China Music Forum to explore how technology and music can intersect in new music composition. Note that seating is limited for the forum and advance reservations are required.

The China Now Music Festival concludes with a second concert on October 19 at Carnegie’s intimate Zankel Hall with a chamber opera by visionary composer Hao Weiya, performed by the China Now Chamber Orchestra and conductor Jindong Cai. Unlike the October 12 concert program, which highlights the fusion of music and technology, Hao Weiya’s AI’s Variation: Opera of the Future confronts us with a series of chilling questions relating to the ethics of science and technology merging with human creativity. A science fiction-themed drama for three voices and a chamber orchestra, AI’s Variation tells the story of a troubled artist who allows his identity to be ‘enhanced’ by AI but then struggles with the consequences in his personal life.

The program at Zankel Hall also features a performance by the dynamic young musicians of the Bard East/West Ensemble, whose unique combination of Chinese and Western instruments has been widely enjoyed by the audience of the China Now Music Festival in past years. They will be joined by Duo Chinoiserie, a unique pairing that combines the Chinese guzheng and the European classical guitar, to perform French composer Mathias Duplessy’s Zhong Kui’s Regrets and Zhong Kui’s Journey in a new arrangement for the Duo and the Bard East/West Ensemble.

The Ensemble further advances into imaginative spaces with Chinese composer Jia Guoping’s Ripples in Spacetime, inspired by pulsar signals in deep space, and Shi Fuhong’s Vital Momentum. Commissioned by the China Now Music Festival and inspired by the cicada, Shi’s hope-filled piece delves into profound themes of life, vitality, humanity, nature, heaven, earth, and time. Another commission for the Bard East/West Ensemble by young composer Yan Yan, from China Now’s Emerging Composers Discovery Project, presents a new re-imagining of the classic ghost story Painted Skin, composed especially for the Bard East/West Ensemble.

Note: This program will also be performed in a free concert at Bard’s Fisher Center for the Performing arts on Friday, October 18 at 7 pm.

EVENT DETAILS AND TICKETING

CONCERT 1:
COMPOSING THE FUTURE: THE ORCHESTRA NOW (TŌN) CONDUCTED BY JINDONG CAI

Saturday, October 12 at 7:30 pm
Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage at Carnegie Hall
Tickets: $25/$40/$60
Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage at Carnegie Hall
57th Street and Seventh Ave, New York, NY, 10019
For tickets, visit: https://www.carnegiehall.org/Calendar/2024/10/12/Composing-the-Future-A-Concert-with-The-Orchestra-Now-Jindong-Cai-Conductor-0730PM


CONCERT 2:
COMPOSING THE FUTURE: THE CHINA NOW CHAMBER ORCHESTRA AND THE BARD EAST/WEST ENSEMBLE
Featuring AI’S VARIATION: OPERA OF THE FUTURE
Jindong Cai, conductor

Friday, October 18 at 7 pm
Sosnoff Theater, Fisher Center at Bard College
FREE and open to the public.
For more information, visit: https://fishercenter.bard.edu/events/composing-the-future/

Saturday, October 19 at 7:30 pm
Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall
Tickets: $25/$35/$45/$60
Seventh Avenue between 56th and 57th Streets, New York, NY, 10019
For tickets, visit: https://www.carnegiehall.org/Calendar/2024/10/19/Composing-the-Future-A-Concert-with-the-China-Now-Chamber-Orchestra-and-the-Ba-0730PM

US-CHINA MUSIC FORUM: COMPOSING THE FUTURE
Saturday, October 12 from 5:30 pm to 7 pm
Rohatyn Room at Carnegie Hall
57th Street and Seventh Ave, New York, NY, 10019
The US-China Music Forum is free and requires reservations via Eventbrite. Seating is limited.
For more information about the China Now Music Festival and for full programming details, please visit: barduschinamusic.org/composing-the-future

Mezzo-soprano Sun-Ly Pierce VAP ’19, alumna of the Bard Conservatory Vocal Arts Program, has won third prize in Operalia 2024, the world opera competition founded by Plácido Domingo in 1993 to discover and help launch the careers of the most promising young opera singers of today. Operalia’s goal is to attract singers between the ages of 20 and 32, of all voice types from and all over the world, to have them audition and be heard by a panel of distinguished international personalities, in the most prestigious and competitive showcase in the world. 

The international jury, presided by Plácido Domingo, listens to each of the chosen participants during two days of quarterfinals. Twenty participants are then selected to continue on to the semifinals, and ten singers are chosen for the finals. The quarterfinals and semifinals are carried out in audition form, but the final round is presented in the form of a gala concert accompanied by a full orchestra. This year, Operalia was held at The National Centre for the Performing Arts in Mumbai, India, September 15–21.

The Bard College Conservatory of Music announces the appointment of Satoshi Okamoto to the faculty in double bass. Okamoto has been a member of the New York Philharmonic since 2003. He served as an acting principal and assistant principal in 2013–16. Prior to the Philharmonic, he was an assistant principal double bassist in the San Antonio Symphony for eight years and a member of the New York City Ballet Orchestra for a year. As a soloist, he was a finalist of the International Society of Bassist Solo Competition and the Izuminomori International Double Bass Competition, also a twice winner of the Aspen bass competition. He was a faculty member at Stonybrook University from 2023–24. He has given master classes at institutions such as The Juilliard School Pre-College, Toho school of music, LSU at Baton Rouge, TCU, Aichi University of fine arts, and Pyongyang Conservatory. He received his master’s degree from The Juilliard School, and a bachelor’s degree from Tokyo University of Fine Arts.

Despite China’s status as a major world leader, few American students are returning to study abroad in China. Last semester, only about 700 US students were in China, compared to more than 11,000 prior to the pandemic. In opposition to this trend, Bard is expanding its engagement in China. 

Malia Du Mont ’95, Bard’s Vice President for Strategy and Policy and the first person to earn a BA in Chinese from Bard, stated, “The US and China will play a major role in determining the future of the planet we share, so it is our responsibility as educators to create opportunities for young people from both countries to learn from each other. In the context of challenging political relations and the rise of artificial intelligence, we must strengthen our commitment to the humanities and nurture many forms of communication, including through music and the arts.”

Underscoring the College’s commitment, President Leon Botstein returned to China in June to spend two weeks in the cities of Xiamen and Ningbo, where he conducted concerts and met with high school and university students and administrators. President Botstein also attended a concert in Ningbo conducted by Oscar-winning composer and Dean of the Bard College Conservatory of Music Tan Dun.

In July, Bard College Conservatory of Music Director Frank Corliss taught for a week at the Shandong University of the Arts (SUA) in Jinan, concluding with a performance by the students and Corliss with members of the faculty and the director of SUA. The director of SUA, GQ Wang, is eager for continued visits by Bard Conservatory faculty and a trip by Graduate Vocal Arts Program Associate Director Kayo Iwama is planned for the coming academic year.

Following the week in Jinan, Frank Corliss traveled to Changsha where he joined Bard Conservatory Dean Tan Dun and four percussion students of the Conservatory (Maddy Dethof, Jonathan Collazo BM/BA ’19, APS ’24, Estaban Ganem MM ’24; Arnav Shirodkar BM/BA ’24) for concerts with Tan Dun and the Changsha Symphony Orchestra. Tan Dun led the students and Frank Corliss in two of his pieces for voice, piano, and percussion ensemble, and in his recent arrangement of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring for two pianos and percussion. The students, with the Changsha Symphony, also gave the premiere of a piece by Tan Dun “Noa Concerto” for four percussionists and orchestra. The students played on specially made replicas of ancient bronze bells recently discovered in Changsha. The week of concerts also included a performance featuring the Bard String Quartet: Bard Director of Asian Recruitment and Institutional Relations Shawn Moore BM/BA ’11, Fangxi Liu BM/BA ’16, Lin Wang BM/BA ’12, and Zhang Hui APS ’17.  There was also a panel discussion at the Changsha Symphony on Education and Music with Tan Dun, Frank Corliss, and Changsha Symphony President Wang Zhi.
 At a time when language instruction is being cut in many American high schools and institutions of higher education, Chinese language is offered throughout the Bard Early College network. This summer, student cohorts from both Bard High School Early College Baltimore (Bard Baltimore) and Bard High School Early College DC (Bard DC) traveled separately to China. From July 21 to August 5, Bard Baltimore students visited Baltimore's sister city of Xiamen, Maryland’s sister province of Anhui, and China’s capital Beijing as part of the Baltimore-Xiamen Sister City Committee 2024 Youth Ambassadors Program. Their two-week study tour included living and interacting with Chinese peers from local schools in Xiamen, cultural immersion experiences, and meetings with local leaders. They had the opportunity to visit cultural sites including Gulangyu Island (a UNESCO World Heritage site), Lingling Zoo (a local zoo where they saw two twin brother pandas), and Xiamen’s first mangrove-themed ecological coastal wetland park Xiatanwei. Their trip also included travel to the famous Yellow Mountains of Anhui Province and China’s capital Beijing, where they visited the Great Wall, Summer Palace, Temple of Heaven, as well as the US Embassy to attend a panel discussion on the career path of a diplomat.
Bard DC Chinese language students had the opportunity to visit China this summer too. They spent two weeks at Yunnan Normal University in the city of Kunming, taking language classes and enjoying local food, tea, traditional dance, and other cultural experiences such as a visit to the hot springs. Interacting with local Chinese students was a key part of the program for both the Bard Baltimore and Bard DC student groups.

As part of the Chinese language program at the Bard College main campus, Bard undergraduate students from Annandale also went to China this summer, for an eight-week intensive at Qingdao University, which has hosted Bard’s summer immersion courses for over a decade. In addition to taking language classes, participants studied Kung Fu and painting, lived with a host family for one week, and conducted cultural tours in Beijing, Tai’an, and Qingdao.

Jacquelyn Stucker ’13, an alumna of Bard’s Graduate Vocal Arts Program, was reviewed in the New York Times for her role as Delilah in the opera Samson at the Aix-en-Provence festival. Samson, a never-performed opera by Voltaire and Rameau, two of Enlightenment France’s most important cultural figures, was performed as an updated production with pieces drawn from other Rameau works to replace the original score, which was lost some 250 years ago. The Aix production “retains the hypnotic continuity of Rameau’s complete operas, their steadiness and also their variety, veering from festive to soulful, from raucous dances to hushed, hovering arias and radiant choruses,” writes Zachary Woolfe for the New York Times.  “The mezzo-soprano Lea Desandre (Timna) and the soprano Jacquelyn Stucker (Dalila) are both exquisitely sensitive in their floating music.”

Bard College will receive a $50,006 grant as part of New York State’s Higher Education Capital Matching Grant Program, which supports projects at colleges and universities across the state by providing construction and renovation of laboratory and research spaces, the purchase of instructional technologies and equipment, and other significant investments. The grant will support the purchase of pianos and equipment for Bard’s László Z. Bitó Conservatory building. The equipment will be available to Bard’s community of students, faculty, and staff, as well as to the greater Hudson Valley community that participates in the opportunities Bard provides for learning, enrichment, and enjoyment. “New York’s colleges and universities are second to none, offering students unparalleled opportunities to learn, explore, and prepare to launch their careers,” Governor Hochul said. “With this funding, my administration is reaffirming our commitment to providing our students—including those at our private, not-for-profit institutions—with a top-tier, New York education with the best possible resources and facilities that will help them succeed inside and outside of the classroom.”

Soprano Lucy Fitz Gibbon, visiting faculty in vocal arts at the Bard College Conservatory of Music, has been awarded a 2024 fellowship from the Borletti-Buitoni Trust (BBT) in support of her professional projects. The BBT Fellowship Program rewards musical excellence demonstrated by outstanding young musicians—for individuals and ensembles that have been selected from over 32 countries—with fellowships in 2024 being given to seven artists, including Fitz Gibbon. BBT winners are awarded between £20,000 and £30,000. There are no set criteria for how artists spend their budget. Winners are encouraged to be creative and to use their awards in a way that will help to establish and build their careers. Over the next three years, BBT’s fellowship funding will support Fitz Gibbon in the commissioning of new works, performances, and recordings. BBT also will provide advice, guidance, contacts, and public relations exposure. BBT artists join a supportive family that helps to advance their careers.

“I am overwhelmed with gratitude to have received one of the Borletti-Buitoni Trust’s 2024 Artist Fellowships. The nomination process asked me to dream about what I could accomplish with the kind of latitude that this funding and administrative support would represent, but I found the range of possibilities almost too tantalizing to imagine, as if I could permit myself only an oblique gaze at what might be,” wrote Fitz Gibbon upon receiving the fellowship.

Lucy Fitz Gibbon is noted for her “dazzling virtuoso singing” (Boston Globe) and believes that creating new works and recreating those lost in centuries past makes room for the diversity of voices integral to classical music’s future. Spotlighted as a Rising Star of Classical Music for 2024 in the February 20, 2024, edition of the British Broadcasting Corporation's (BBC) Music Magazine, Fitz Gibbon is one of 15 young classical musicians that the BBC has identified worldwide who are making a prominent stamp on the industry, whether with concert performances, opera roles, or dazzling new recordings.

In a profile of the US-China Music Institute of the Bard College Conservatory of Music for China Daily, Minlu Zhang spoke with Director Jindong Cai and several current Bard Conservatory students. “Our faculty comprises top experts in their fields, which naturally fosters interaction and collaboration,” Cai told China Daily. “At Bard, students studying Chinese music and Western music work closely together, becoming friends and often forming duets, trios, or learning each other’s instruments. This integration creates a vibrant musical community.” Zhang also spoke with Bard students Andrew Chan ’24 MA ’25, Kendall Griffith ’26, Beitong Liu ’24 MA ’25, and Yixing Wang ’25 about their artistic practices and love of traditional Chinese music. Griffith, who was able to study at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, China, last semester, said she learned more about her passion and was able to move beyond her comfort zone. “There was an interesting lecture that talked about how most Chinese music emulates things in calligraphy,” Griffith said. “There’s a lot of empty space, and I can now incorporate that feeling into a lot of the music I play.” One of the goals of the US-China Music Institute is to create opportunities for these kinds of cross-cultural exchanges. “Globally, music is the most effective way to connect people,” Cai said. “When you look at various cultures or regions, you often see conflicts. However, when you consider music, it has a way of connecting everyone.”

Hannah Park-Kaufmann ’24, who is graduating with dual degrees in piano performance and mathematics, has won a Knight-Hennessy Scholarship for graduate-level study at Stanford University. Park-Kaufmann will pursue a master's degree in computational and mathematical engineering at Stanford University School of Engineering. After completing her master’s degree at Stanford through Knight-Hennessy, she will matriculate into the PhD program in applied mathematics at Harvard University, a program to which she has already been accepted. As a pianist, Hannah became fascinated by human fine-motor movement. She aspires to help more people reach mastery in physiologically complex professions by using experiment, theory, and computation to explore what simpler patterns might underlie our movements, and turning this understanding into new educational paradigms. 

At Bard, Hannah was president of the Association for Women in Mathematics Chapter, tutored mathematics in New York state prisons through the Bard Prison Initiative, and gave a TEDx talk on a research study she designed and led at MIT on the physiological correlates of healthy versus injury-prone piano playing. She participated in the Polymath Jr., Emory and CMU mathematics REUs, and has coauthored multiple papers published in peer reviewed journals. Her teams’ projects won first place at the international hackathon HackMIT in the tracks Sustainability (2022) and Education (2023, with Elliot Harris ’24). She is the recipient of the Bard Distinguished Scientist Scholar Award, the Community Action Award, the Mind, Brain and Behavior Award, the Seniors to Seniors Award, and the Conservatory Scholarship.

Established in 2016, the Knight-Hennessy Scholarship program seeks to prepare students to take leadership roles in finding creative solutions to complex global issues. Scholars receive full funding to pursue any graduate degree at Stanford and have additional opportunities for leadership training, mentorship, and experiential learning across multiple disciplines.

Missy Mazzoli, composer in residence at Bard College, performed together with violinist Jennifer Koh for Tiny Desk Concerts at NPR’s headquarters. The two artists, who have collaborated on projects for 15 years, performed a set of pieces composed by Mazzoli and brought to life by Koh’s violin. “Dissolve, O my Heart, the first piece Mazzoli wrote for Koh, spirals out into an emotional journey touched with spasms of joy and grief,” writes Tom Huizenga for NPR. He continues: “Hearing this set, in all its rugged delight, feels like we're eavesdropping on something personal—a fruitful, collaborative friendship between composer and performer that has yielded amazing music.”

Two groups of Bard College students have been awarded 2024 Projects for Peace Summer Grants, which provide student leaders awards of $10,000 to implement a Project for Peace, typically over the summer. Bard students Ifigeneia Gianne ’25, Noa Doucette ’24, Leonard Gurevich ’24, Mujtaba Naqib ’24, and Antonios Petras won for their project “Creative Play in Malaysia,” an initiative to create immersive workshops and performances around the mediums of music, theater, and storytelling with the goals of helping refugee children in Malaysia to articulate their emotions, encourage their self-expression and build community. Bard Conservatory students Blanche Darr ’25, Aleksandar Vitanov ’25, Lexi Lanni ’26, and Fredrick Otieno ’28 won for their project, “Musical Mentorship Initiative Kenya,” to establish a music mentorship program in Nairobi, Kenya, in which Bard students will teach music lessons and establish a creative partnership between Bard and the Ghetto Classics Program in Korogocho, an area of dense poverty in Nairobi.

Bard students Gianne and Doucette witnessed firsthand the challenges faced by displaced children during a study abroad experience in Malaysia. As of January 2024, Malaysia has some 186,490 refugees and asylum-seekers registered with UNHCR. Inspired by the fieldwork and relationships they started while abroad, Gianne and Doucette, along with Gurevich, Naqib, and Petras, initiated their Projects for Peace proposal, “Creative Play in Malaysia.” The first phase of their project will offer in-person collaborative creative workshops, aimed at fostering direct engagement and interactive learning, at three schools in Kuala Lumpur—Agape Mission School, Elom Community Center, and Fugee School—and will reach about 300 school children. The workshops they’ve designed will engage children in the exploration of music and sound, theater techniques and bodily experience of movement, and storytelling, recording, and sound editing for podcasts. “These facets of art underscore its transformative power, making them vital tools for personal growth, advocacy, effective self-expression, community building, and empathetic communication. We believe in the transformative power of art and performance as a medium of expression and communication beyond words,” write the project leaders. The second phase of their project is the creation of a set of activities, a kind of curriculum, which include a detailed list of ‘games’ aimed at integrating the arts into daily academic routines and introducing some new teaching techniques. While in Malaysia, they will collaborate with teachers on this curriculum, respecting the existing cultural and academic frameworks, discuss how it might be incorporated into the students’ learning, and adjust it based on feedback. Committed to an ongoing dialogue with the children, teachers, and school administration, the group plans to launch an online forum with the schools and children for continual communication.

Initiated by Bard Conservatory students Darr, Vitanov, Lanni, and Otieno, the Projects for Peace proposal, “Musical Mentorship Initiative Kenya,” builds upon two student-run Trustee Leader Scholar projects at Bard—the Musical Mentorship Initiative (MMI) founded in 2020 by Vitanov and co-led by Darr and Lanni, and Musical Mentorship Initiative Kenya (MMIK) founded in 2023 by Otieno, a viola student from Kenya. Their project will establish a musical mentorship program as a collaborative partnership between MMI, MMIK, and the Ghetto Classics Program (GCP), which serves more than 1,500 children in Korogocho, one of Nairobi’s largest slums and home to approximately 300,000 urban poor. Bard student mentors will teach individual private music lessons, offer personalized high-level music instruction in strings, winds, voice, percussion, and other instruments, and organize masterclasses, presentations, and music performances for the children in the program. Mentors will also donate much needed musical instruments including oboes, French horns, violins, recorders, and bassoons to the children in Korogocho. At GCP, children share a limited number of instruments, many in poor condition and in need of repair, which hinders progress for the young students who cannot practice at home. An even bigger problem is GCP’s teacher to student ratio, which cannot facilitate individual learning. MMIK plans to provide pedagogical workshops to the teachers in GCP, in order to improve the teaching methodology and potential of the program. MMIK will also organize an online mentorship program to help facilitate ongoing individualized music instruction and access to world-class professional musical education for young children, which is an extremely rare opportunity in Korogocho. The goal is to keep this program running for many years to come. “Music, with its ability to transcend linguistic and cultural barriers, can be used as a powerful peacemaker by fostering unity across diverse individuals,” write the project leaders. “While our project focuses on Korogocho, it also serves as a blueprint for unifying people from varied backgrounds in different locations. The purpose and community that music provides is also an incentive for the children in GCP to not turn to a life of crime, drugs, or violence on the streets of Korogocho. Our initiatives stand as a beacon of hope—instilling discipline, perseverance, patience, and empathy in the youth, as well as forging the next generation of aspiring artists.”

Otieno, an alumnus of GCP and one of the project leaders, adds: “Growing up in the third largest slum in Kenya, Korogocho, means that you are exposed to the darkest side of the world. Joining Ghetto Classics gave me a choice to live a different life. The exposure and the people I met through Ghetto Classics supported me and made sure that the dream of becoming an architecture student and viola player in a school like Bard College was no longer an impossible dream to reach. I managed to change my life through music and I know that someone else in Korogocho can also change their life as long as they have a skill at hand. With these children getting these opportunities, they are pulled away from their normal life and shown a different dimension of being in a slum. They are helped to shape purpose and build dreams for themselves.”

Projects for Peace was created in 2007 through the generosity of Kathryn W. Davis, a lifelong internationalist and philanthropist who believed that today’s youth—tomorrow’s leaders—ought to be challenged to formulate and test their own ideas. The Summer Grants program encourages young adults to develop innovative, community-centered, and scalable responses to the world’s most pressing issues. Since its founding, Projects for Peace has funded more than 2000 projects in more than 150 countries. Learn more here.

The Bard College Conservatory of Music and Graduate Vocal Arts Program present Jacques Offenbach’s Orphée aux enfers (Orpheus in the Underworld). In a production by stage director Katherine M. Carter, the opera will be performed by Bard Conservatory of Music’s Vocal Arts Program singers with the Bard Conservatory Orchestra, conducted by James Bagwell, director of music performance studies and professor of music at Bard. The opera will be sung in French with English supertitles, and dialog will be in English. The performances will be held on Friday, March 8 at 8pm and on Sunday, March 10 at 2pm in the Fisher Center’s Sosnoff Theater. Tickets start at $25, with $5 tickets for Bard students made possible by the Passloff Pass. The first performance (March 8) will be livestreamed. Virtual livestream tickets are pay what you wish. All ticket sales benefit the Bard Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Scholarship Fund. To purchase or reserve tickets visit fishercenter.bard.edu, call 845-758-7900 (Mon-Fri 10am-5pm), or email [email protected].

Orphée aux enfers (Orpheus in the Underworld) welcomes the audience to a world of humans, gods, and goddesses that seems all too familiar. This is Olympus High, a place where the tipping scales of popularity and power provide the perfect backdrop for a tale of love, jealousy, and intrigue. This is prom and circumstance for the ages, a lively, witty operetta springing from the genius of a young, aspiring Jacques Offenbach in 1858, playing out here in the year 1986, where relationships and hierarchy haven’t changed a bit.

“It has been exciting to see the opera evolve under the artistic guidance of director Katherine Carter, who, along with the cast, is creating new dialogue to set the story in a 1980’s American high school,” says Associate Director of the Graduate Vocal Arts Program Kayo Iwama. “If you ever thought high school was ‘hell’, you will relate to this ironic twist on the classic love story of Orpheus and Eurydice!”

At the 66th annual GRAMMY Awards ceremony, the Recording Academy honored the 2024 GRAMMY winners. Among them, Bard Composer in Residence Jessie Montgomery won Best Contemporary Classical Composition, her first GRAMMY award, for her composition “Rounds.” Bard Conservatory of Music’s Graduate Vocal Arts Program alumna Julia Bullock MM ’11 also won her first GRAMMY award, winning Best Classical Solo Vocal Album for her album Walking in the Dark. Artistic Director of the Graduate Vocal Arts Program Stephanie Blythe is featured on the album Blanchard: Champion, which won for Best Opera Recording. 

Jessie Montgomery’s “Rounds” is a composition for piano and string orchestra inspired by the imagery and themes from T.S. Eliot’s epic poem Four Quartets, fractals (infinite patterns found in nature that are self-similar across different scales), and the interdependency of all beings. 

Julia Bullock’s Walking in the Dark was recorded with her husband, conductor and pianist Christian Reif, and London’s Philharmonia Orchestra. The album combines orchestral works by American composers John Adams and Samuel Barber with a traditional spiritual and songs by jazz legend Billy Taylor and singer-songwriters Oscar Brown, Jr., Connie Converse, and Sandy Denny.

The Metropolitan Opera’s recording of Terence Blanchard’s Champion, an opera about young boxer Emile Griffith who rises from obscurity to become a world champion, was conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin and featured a cast including mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe as Kathy Hagen. 
The GRAMMYs are voted on by more than 11,000 music professionals—performers, songwriters, producers, and others with credits on recordings—who are members of the Recording Academy. 

Further Reading:
Jessie Montgomery’s “Rounds” Wins 2024 GRAMMY Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition

Julia Bullock Wins First Grammy Award with Walking in the Dark, Her Solo Album Debut

The Metropolitan Opera wins 2024 Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording for Terence Blanchard’s Champion

Artistic Director of Bard Conservatory of Music’s Graduate Vocal Arts Program and acclaimed mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe spoke to The Daily Catch ahead of her concert performance, Stephanie Blythe Sings Brahms, with The Orchestra Now at the Fisher Center on February 3–4. Renowned for the emotional depth of her performances, Blythe connects the lines of Brahm’s “Alto Rhapsody,” which uses Goethe’s poetry for lyrics, to “a feeling of a place where you can breathe. I understand the notion of breaking through and wanting to breathe. When you understand the universality of this music, you understand its essential nature,” says Blythe, who believes opera, when presented for what it actually is, can appeal to a broader, more popular audience. “Being able to illuminate and elevate opera in a new way is really important,” she said. “I find that far too often people who present opera feel like they need to repackage it. Opera doesn’t need to be excused. You don’t need to make it something else for people to appreciate it.”

The US-China Music Institute of the Bard College Conservatory of Music, in collaboration with the Central Conservatory of Music, China, present the fifth annual “The Sound of Spring”: A Chinese New Year Concert with The Orchestra Now, conducted by Director of the US-China Music Institute Jindong Cai. Performances will take place on Saturday, February 10, 2024 at 3 pm in The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College and on Sunday, February 11, 2024 at 3 pm in the Rose Theater of Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall in New York City. To purchase tickets for the February 10 Fisher Center concert, visit fishercenter.bard.edu, call 845-758-7900 (Mon–Fri 10 am – 5 pm), or email [email protected]. For tickets to the February 11 Jazz at Lincoln Center concert, please visit ticketing.jazz.org, or call 212-721-6500.

“The Sound of Spring” offers an authentic Chinese New Year concert of festive contemporary symphonic music from China. This year's program features erhu virtuoso Zhang Haiyue and dizi (bamboo flute) virtuoso Feng Tianshi from the Central Conservatory of Music, plus renowned Chinese wind virtuoso Guo Yazhi premiering composer Li Xinyan's new Suona Concerto.

In keeping with the long history and cultural diversity of Chinese society, the concert program includes a number of new works by contemporary Chinese composers inspired by musical traditions and folk customs from different regions. More than half of the repertoire has never been performed in the United States. Music Director and conductor Jindong Cai said: “Every one of us has familiar melodies that have been imprinted in our memories since we were children, and no matter where you come from or where you go, we can all enjoy listening to them. At the same time, to hear music from unfamiliar cultural traditions in distant places stirs the imagination with completely different pleasures and longings.”

The program starts off with Li Huanzhi's Spring Festival Overture, inspired by northern Shaanxi folk songs. Composer Ye Xiaogang, steeped in the folk music of his native Guangdong Province since childhood, presents familiar melodies reconstructed with Western orchestration for his Cantonese Suite. The young Taiwanese composer Chang Shiuan's Diu Diu Diu Diu Dang is a rhapsodic variation based on a Taiwanese nursery rhyme describing the sound of water dripping from the ceiling as a train passes through a tunnel. At the end of the first half, the US premiere of Hao Weiya's 2023 dizi (bamboo flute) concerto Blooming in the Spring evokes the beauty of nature in the countryside.

The second half of the concert begins with “Erhu Rhapsody No. 6,” the latest masterpiece of composer Wang Jianmin with Tibetan folk music at its core. This stirring work is a milestone in the development of modern erhu as a solo instrument, combining the structure of a Western rhapsody with Chinese folk style. The suona concerto The Magic Land was commissioned by “The Sound of Spring” and composed by Li Xinyan for wind instrument master Guo Yazhi. Both are on the faculty of the Bard Conservatory of Music. The concert concludes with Joyful Songs of Mountains and Waters, composed by up-and-coming composer Wang Danhong in 2023. Wang says she was inspired to write this piece after a visit to the Eighteen Caves Village in southern China, where she heard joyful folk singing in the Miao ethnic style.

The two performances of this year’s “The Sound of Spring” coincide with the first Lunar New Year weekend since New York State declared the Spring Festival an official holiday, demonstrating the importance of this time in the local community. The concerts are family friendly events which will include Chinese instrument demonstrations and new year celebrations in the theater lobby prior to each the performance. Pre-concert events start at 2 pm.

“The Sound of Spring” is generously sponsored by the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute. For more information about the concerts visit barduschinamusic.org/events.