Bard Conservatory Offers Master Classes and Performances by World-Acclaimed Musicians in April
ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.—The Bard College Conservatory of Music offers master classes and performances by world-acclaimed musicians this April. All programs are free and open to the public. No reservations are necessary; seating is on a first-come, first-served basis.
During the master classes the musicians work with selected students from the Conservatory, who perform pieces that are then explained and critiqued. This is a special opportunity to see master musicians work with talented Conservatory students in intimate settings.
The Conservatory master classes are held on Tuesday, April 15, in Blum Hall, at 7:00 p.m., with pianist Peter Frankl; on Wednesday, April 23, in Blum Hall, at 4:00 p.m., with violinist Eugene Drucker, founding member of the Emerson String Quartet and Conservatory faculty member; and on Monday, April 28, in Olin Hall, at 1:00 p.m. with Conservatory faculty member, pianist Richard Goode.
In addition to the master class, pianist Peter Frankl performs a recital on Wednesday, April 16. His program includes Haydn’s Sonata No. 52 in E-flat Major; Schumann’s Carnaval, Op. 9; Bartok’s Fifteen Hungarian Peasant Songs; and Chopin’s Second Nocturne, Op. 55, and Andante Spianato, Op. 22.
For additional information, call 845-758-7196, e-mail [email protected], or visit www.bard.edu/conservatory.
About the Musicians
Violinist Eugene Drucker, a founding member of the Emerson String Quartet, has also been active as a solo artist. He has appeared with the orchestras of Montreal, Brussels, Antwerp, Liege, Austin, Hartford, Richmond, Toledo, and the Rhineland-Palatinate, as well as the American Symphony Orchestra and Aspen Chamber Symphony. A graduate of Columbia University and the Juilliard School, where he studied with Oscar Shumsky, Drucker was concertmaster of the Juilliard Orchestra, with which he appeared as soloist several times. He made his New York debut as a Concert Artists Guild winner in the fall of 1976, after having won prizes at the Montreal Competition and the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels. Drucker has recorded the complete unaccompanied works of Bach, recently reissued by Parnassus Records, and the complete sonatas and duos of Bartok, for Biddulph Recordings. He is presently on the faculty of the Bard College Conservatory of Music. In addition, in the fall of 2002, he began a teaching affiliation with his Emerson colleagues at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
Hungarian-born Peter Frankl is one of the world’s outstanding pianists. Recognised as a major artist of his generation, he has a long-standing international career which has taken him to more than 50 countries as a recitalist, chamber musician and soloist with the world’s greatest conductors, including Abbado, Ashkenazy, Haitink, Boulez, Solti, and Chailly, to name a few. From highly acclaimed performances in recitals and with the world’s finest orchestras, Frankl’s repertoire combines romanticism and inspiration with vivacity and color. A highly versatile performer, his repertoire ranges extensively from classics to expressionism and contemporary music.
A native of New York City, pianist Richard Goode has been hailed for music making of tremendous emotional power, depth and expressiveness. His ability to enter and illuminate the different worlds of each composer he plays has inspired one critic to remark, “You’d swear the composer himself was at the keyboard, expressing musical thoughts that had just come into his head.” As one of the 2007–08 artists in residence at the South Bank Centre, Goode performs and curates a multievent residency in London. This season he also performs recitals in such venues as the Philharmonie in Berlin, Lincoln Center in New York City, Orchestra Hall in Chicago, and Kimmel Center in Philadelphia. His orchestral appearances this season include concerts with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under James Levine, London Philharmonic under Christoph Eschenbach, Concertgebouw Orchestra under Ivan Fisher, the New York Philharmonic under Sir Colin Davis, and Radio Philharmonique in Paris with Peter Oundjian. In the 2006-2007 season, Goode was honored with the first-ever Jean Gimbel Lane Prize in Piano Performance, which culminated in a two-year residency at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL. During the 2005–06 season, Carnegie Hall featured him in an eight-event Carnegie Perspective, including performances with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and Budapest Festival Orchestra under Ivan Fisher; his first all-Beethoven recital since the early ’90s; four chamber music concerts in Zankel Hall; and lecture/demonstrations in Weill Hall and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Goode studied with Elvira Szigeti and Claude Frank, with Nadia Reisenberg at the Mannes College of Music and with Rudolf Serkin at the Curtis Institute. He has served with Mitsuko Uchida as coartistic director of the Marlboro Music School and Festival since 2000 and is on the faculty of the Bard College Conservatory of Music.
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The Bard College Conservatory of Music
Robert Martin, Director
Melvin Chen, Associate Director
Building on its distinguished history in the arts and education, Bard College launched The Bard College Conservatory of Music, which welcomed its first class in August 2005. Now in its third year, the Conservatory’s undergraduate program is guided by the principle that musicians should be broadly educated in the liberal arts and sciences to achieve their greatest potential. While training and studying for the bachelor of music degree with world-class musicians and teachers and performing in state-of-the-art facilities, such as the Frank Gehry–designed Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, Conservatory students also pursue a bachelor of arts degree at Bard, one of the nation’s leading liberal arts colleges.
Conservatory faculty include violinists Eugene Drucker, Yi-Wen Jiang, Ani Kavafian (master classes), Ida Kavafian, Soovin Kim, Weigang Li, Laurie Smukler, and Arnold Steinhardt; violists Steven Tenenbom, Michael Tree, and Ira Weller; cellists Sophie Shao and Peter Wiley; double bassist Marji Danilow; pianists Melvin Chen, Jeremy Denk, Richard Goode (master classes) and Peter Serkin; oboists Laura Ahlbeck and Richard Dallessio; flutists Nadine Asin (master classes) and Tara Helen O’Connor; clarinetists Laura Flax and David Krakauer; bassoonist Marc Goldberg; horn players Julie Landsman and Jeffrey Lang; trombonist John Rojak; trumpeter Mark Gould; and tuba player Alan Baer. Joan Tower and George Tsontakis direct the Conservatory Composition Program. The Colorado Quartet and Da Capo Chamber Players are in residence. Members and principals of the American Symphony Orchestra are available for instruction, coaching, and leading of sectional rehearsals of the Conservatory Orchestra. In addition, the resources and faculty of the Bard College Music Program are available to students of the Conservatory. The Graduate Collaborative Piano Fellowship, directed by Frank Corliss, provides accompanists for students in the undergraduate and the graduate vocal arts program.
The Graduate Program in Vocal Arts is a two-year master of music degree conceived by soprano Dawn Upshaw. The course work is designed to support a broad-based approach to a singing career that extends from standard repertory to new music. Alongside weekly voice lessons and diction and repertory courses is training in acting, as well as core seminars that introduce and tie together the historical/cultural perspective, analytical tools, and performance skills that distinguish vocal and operatic performance at the highest level. In addition to artistic director Upshaw, the program includes head of program Kayo Iwama; voice teachers Edith Bers, Patricia Misslin, and Lorraine Nubar; diction coach Jennifer Ringo; Alexander Technique teachers Gwen Ellison and Judith Grodowitz; staff pianist Ying-Chien Lin; and career workshop coordinator Carol Yaple. Master classes have been held with conductor James Conlon; pianist Richard Goode; vocalists Phyllis Curtin, Timothy Hill, and Lucy Shelton; and directors JoAnne Akalaitis, Eve Shapiro, and Peter Sellars.
The Conductors Institute at Bard aims to promote technical clarity and precision in baton movement; disarm the competitive learning process so that conductors assist and support one another; and encourage conductors to be advocates of contemporary composers. The six-week summer Conductors Institute offers four programs: the Discovery Program; the Composer-Conductor Program for composers who want to learn the fundamentals of conducting; Visual Score Study/Baton Placement and Body Movement Technique; and the Conducting Program for Fellows and Colleagues, in which students study with Maestro Harold Farberman and guest conductors and composers. The M.F.A. in conducting program comprises two consecutive summer Institutes and course work during the intervening academic year. The academic-year program features master classes in technical score study and analysis; class study in orchestral repertoire, composition, German or Italian for conductors, a “second” instrument, and solfège; and podium time, including class sessions with the Institute String Quintet, conducting opportunities with orchestra and chorus, and a thesis concert with the Institute Orchestra.
For more information about the Bard College Conservatory of Music, call 845-758-7196, e-mail [email protected], or visit www.bard.edu/conservatory.
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(4/11/08)
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Pianist Richard Goode Master class April 28 |