The Fisher Center at Bard College Hosts 20th Anniversary Concert and Celebration for New Maya Lin Performing Arts Studio on Saturday, October 21
Rendering of new performing arts studio building for the Fisher Center at Bard. Photo credit: Maya Lin Studio with Bialosky New York | Courtesy of Maya Lin Studio © 2022
The Fisher Center at Bard concludes its immensely successful 20th Anniversary Season: Breaking Ground with a concert and celebration for its new 25,000-square-foot performing arts studio building designed by Maya Lin. The event, on Saturday, October 21, will feature a special concert at 5pm in the Sosnoff Theater, with longtime Fisher Center collaborator Ms. Lisa Fischer and her band Grand Baton, alongside Bard’s own The Orchestra Now conducted by James Bagwell, and a rare performance of Béla Bartók’s The Wooden Prince conducted by Leon Botstein.
Tickets to the concert start at $25, with $5 tickets available for Bard students through the Passloff Pass. Premium tickets—including an intimate cocktail reception with Maya Lin at 3:30 pm, and prime orchestra seat tickets for the concert—can be purchased for $500. Proceeds from the event will support the Fisher Center’s work. Tickets can be purchased here.
Over the course of its first 20 years, the Fisher Center has become a leading incubator of major performing arts productions, such as Daniel Fish’s Tony Award-winning production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!; Pam Tanowitz’s Four Quartets; and, most recently, as part of Bard SummerScape 2023, Justin Peck’s Illinoise. The institution gives precedence to artistic research and education, and the new building will offer artists at all stages of their careers vastly expanded room to explore as they build works from the ground up. It will function as a laboratory for the performing arts, where students and professional artists work side by side, informing each other’s practices and sharing their discoveries and works-in-progress with audiences from the Bard community and the public. The building will contain four state-of-the-art studios for artist residencies, rehearsals, informal performances, and dance and theater classes, connected by gathering hubs. These spaces will provide a home for Fisher Center LAB, the center’s acclaimed residency and commissioning program for professional artists.
Covered by a sloping, grass-covered roof and responding to the Hudson Valley landscape, the spiral-shaped construction—designed by Lin in collaboration with architects Bialosky and Partners and theater and acoustic consultants Charcoalblue—will appear to emerge from the meadow, encircling a grassy courtyard for outdoor convenings. Once completed, the new building will expand the Fisher Center’s footprint beyond the walls of Frank Gehry’s stunning landmark to become a cultural campus that comprises both the Gehry and Lin buildings.
Maya Lin’s practice, encompassing art, architecture, and landscape, has made her one of the world’s most sought-after artists. Her recent commissions include the Neilson Library at Smith College, the Museum of Chinese in America in Manhattan, and the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama. She was recently chosen to design a public art installation for the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago. In 1981, Lin, then a 21-year-old architecture student, won the design competition for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC, which remains one of the most visited public memorials in the world. She is also well known to Hudson Valley residents for Wavefield, her spectacular earthwork at Storm King Art Center.
Editor’s Note: A previously announced ceremonial ground breaking has been rescheduled and will be announced at a later date.
Funding Credits
The Fisher Center’s 20th anniversary season is generously supported by Jeanne Donovan Fisher, the Martin and Toni Sosnoff Foundation, Felicitas S. Thorne, the Advisory Boards of the Fisher Center at Bard and Bard Music Festival, and Fisher Center and Bard Music Festival members, as well as by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature. Fisher Center LAB has received funding from members of the Live Arts Bard Creative Council, The Educational Foundation of America, the Lucille Lortel Foundation, and the Fisher Center's Artistic Innovation Fund, with lead support from Rebecca Gold and S. Asher Gelman '06 through the March Forth Foundation.
Post Date: 09-26-2023
Tickets to the concert start at $25, with $5 tickets available for Bard students through the Passloff Pass. Premium tickets—including an intimate cocktail reception with Maya Lin at 3:30 pm, and prime orchestra seat tickets for the concert—can be purchased for $500. Proceeds from the event will support the Fisher Center’s work. Tickets can be purchased here.
Over the course of its first 20 years, the Fisher Center has become a leading incubator of major performing arts productions, such as Daniel Fish’s Tony Award-winning production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!; Pam Tanowitz’s Four Quartets; and, most recently, as part of Bard SummerScape 2023, Justin Peck’s Illinoise. The institution gives precedence to artistic research and education, and the new building will offer artists at all stages of their careers vastly expanded room to explore as they build works from the ground up. It will function as a laboratory for the performing arts, where students and professional artists work side by side, informing each other’s practices and sharing their discoveries and works-in-progress with audiences from the Bard community and the public. The building will contain four state-of-the-art studios for artist residencies, rehearsals, informal performances, and dance and theater classes, connected by gathering hubs. These spaces will provide a home for Fisher Center LAB, the center’s acclaimed residency and commissioning program for professional artists.
Covered by a sloping, grass-covered roof and responding to the Hudson Valley landscape, the spiral-shaped construction—designed by Lin in collaboration with architects Bialosky and Partners and theater and acoustic consultants Charcoalblue—will appear to emerge from the meadow, encircling a grassy courtyard for outdoor convenings. Once completed, the new building will expand the Fisher Center’s footprint beyond the walls of Frank Gehry’s stunning landmark to become a cultural campus that comprises both the Gehry and Lin buildings.
Maya Lin’s practice, encompassing art, architecture, and landscape, has made her one of the world’s most sought-after artists. Her recent commissions include the Neilson Library at Smith College, the Museum of Chinese in America in Manhattan, and the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama. She was recently chosen to design a public art installation for the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago. In 1981, Lin, then a 21-year-old architecture student, won the design competition for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC, which remains one of the most visited public memorials in the world. She is also well known to Hudson Valley residents for Wavefield, her spectacular earthwork at Storm King Art Center.
Editor’s Note: A previously announced ceremonial ground breaking has been rescheduled and will be announced at a later date.
Funding Credits
The Fisher Center’s 20th anniversary season is generously supported by Jeanne Donovan Fisher, the Martin and Toni Sosnoff Foundation, Felicitas S. Thorne, the Advisory Boards of the Fisher Center at Bard and Bard Music Festival, and Fisher Center and Bard Music Festival members, as well as by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature. Fisher Center LAB has received funding from members of the Live Arts Bard Creative Council, The Educational Foundation of America, the Lucille Lortel Foundation, and the Fisher Center's Artistic Innovation Fund, with lead support from Rebecca Gold and S. Asher Gelman '06 through the March Forth Foundation.
Post Date: 09-26-2023