Graduate Vocal Arts Program

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Core Seminar

Core Seminars meet at least three hours a week for each of the student’s four semesters at Bard. These seminars introduce and tie together the historical and cultural perspective, the analytical tools, and the performance skills that distinguish vocal and operatic performance at the highest level. At the same time, the shifting focus reflected in the sequence of core seminar topics provides for intensive training in fundamental skill areas: working with text, expanding expressive and vocal resources and professional development.

The Core Seminars draw on the expertise of a variety of specialists, including Bard faculty and guest artists. 

Core Seminar I: Poetry Into Song

This seminar views text as a central point of departure for all vocal performance. It introduces and develops an essential range of workshop skills in working with text and understanding its realization in song. The choice of poets becomes a means of connecting with primary bodies of established repertory, with works by lesser-known composers from past style periods, and with music by contemporary and active composers. The seminar is designed to begin with a study of a poet’s life, work and style, and continues with a detailed examination of an appropriate musical exemplar. Workshop skills are further refined as the student works independently to find, prepare and perform related repertory.

Core Seminar II: Music For Today

This course explores developments in vocal music, acknowledging an artist’s vital need to engage with music of and for today alongside canonical works that have shaped music history. With a curriculum that reflects contemporary currents in both music and broader society, the seminar incorporates the study and performance of seminal 20th and 21st century works with student-led exploration of living composers’ repertoire. Renowned guest artists, including performers and composers, contextualize, coach, and offer perspective from their careers. Selected course projects and performances since 2020 have included György Kurtág’s complete Kafka-Fragmente, a study of climate change and environmentalism in music, premieres of works in Yiddish at midtown Manhattan’s YIVO Center, and a survey of contemporary BIPOC-identifying composers.

Core Seminar III: The Performer as Curator

In this seminar each group of 3-4 students creates and produces with their pianist one concert and one outreach event, both of which are performed in nearby community venues. Every aspect of creation and production - searching for music, choice of repertoire, shaping the program, securing a venue, publicity, printed program and program notes, scheduling of rehearsals - everything is coordinated and organized by the students themselves. This seminar helps students appreciate a full range of options and possibilities available to them, in order to recognize the ways in which their individual strengths and acquired skills relate to these possibilities, and to better understand and appreciate the steps to realizing their musical, artistic, and creative goals. Building on skills and awareness acquired in the Professional Development Workshop (detailed below), students learn to develop working relationships not only with fellow musicians, but also with those involved in other essential roles in the industry, such as artistic direction, promotion, and grant applications.

Core Seminar IV: The Singer and the Stage

This seminar encompasses a fully staged operatic production and utilizes the skills developed in the three previous seminars. These productions strive to combine technical vocal artistry and dramatic skills with creative productions and ideas that are co-developed between the artists and the production team. The seminar also includes an intensive study of classical and Baroque operas by Mozart and Handel, through individual role development.

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Vocal Arts Workshops

Acting Explorations
This workshop gives students an opportunity to focus solely on the acting component of performing. In a studio setting, students work on a variety of theatrical texts selected to address the particular needs of each performer.

Diction and Phonetics
This workshop is an advanced study of the diction of the languages most commonly used by singers. German, Italian, and French diction are studied, with additional units in other languages such as Spanish or English. Also included is attention to the physiology of phonetics, in order to create a better understanding of how diction relates to the production of sound, as well as an exploration of the repertoire and composers of each language.

Language Translation for Singers
This workshop, taught by Bard College language professors, develops translation skills, reading facility, and general cultural awareness of the three main languages used by singers: French, German, and Italian.

Opera Workshop
The opera workshop develops the singing actor through creative questioning, acting and improvisation exercises, and aria and opera scene work. Stagecraft techniques are developed to create the most effective storytelling. Interpretation of character is developed through discussion, research, and analysis to enable clarity of communication and a personal artistic voice. Additional work in audition techniques and presentation of professional materials may also be addressed.

Professional Development
This workshop consists of 14 encounters with a variety of professionals who present topics of interest necessary for the students’ development as individual artists. The workshop’s content ranges from “outer artist” concerns such as networking, auditioning, and promotion to “inner artist” considerations of creativity, authenticity, and self-care.

Recital Class
This class provides a forum for an in-depth exploration of the repertoire programmed on the graduate degree recital. Weekly musical presentations and class discussion, along with an exploration of research materials, provide a comprehensive basis to enable performers to create unique and personal interpretations of their selected works. Singers also prepare a lecture/demonstration to be presented in class in advance of the graduation recital.

Performance Workshop 
The Performance Workshop offers all VAP singers an opportunity to perform in class, and share with their classmates, any well-prepared piece of their own choosing.

Vocal Chamber Music
The vocal chamber music workshop cultivates the skills of instrumental collaboration and is run in partnership with the Conservatory chamber music program. Vocal Arts Program students come together with Conservatory instrumentalists to perform works from the vocal chamber music repertory.

Vocal Ensemble Workshop
The study of duets, trios, and quartets from the art song repertory cultivates skills in listening and musicianship. The workshop culminates in a public performance of works for vocal ensemble.