The Fisher Center at Bard Presents Thrilling Multidisciplinary Programming in its Spiegeltent Throughout Bard SummerScape 2026, June 26 – August 15

Justin Vivian Bond, Martha Redbone, BenDeLaCreme, Jacqueline Novak, James Austin Johnson, Samora Pinderhughes, Adrienne Truscott and Le Gateau Chocolat, Chanel Ali, Al Olender, the Tray Wellington Band, American Patchwork Quartet, Underground System, and others will perform this summer in the majestic, handmade pavilion of mirrors

Bluegrass on Hudson Series returns for fourth season with The Fretliners, the John Hartford Fiddle Tune Project, Darrol Anger and Bruce Molsky, Kittel & Co., The Onlies, and Big Richard

The Fisher Center at Bard, one of the country’s leading multidisciplinary producing institutions, today announces SummerScape 2026’s Spiegeltent programming, June 26 – August 15. Curated by Jason Collins, Spiegeltent programming brings to audiences a cornucopia of wildly distinct performers working across various disciplines. Throughout SummerScape, the Spiegeltent showcases a dynamic blend of music, comedy, and cabaret, creating an inclusive gathering place for live performance, dancing, drinks, dining, and revelry all summer long in the idyllic Hudson Valley. The season will again be emceed by world-renowned artist and Spiegeltent favorite Adrienne Truscott, who also returns with a headlining show on July 24.

Spiegeltent programming highlights the Fisher Center’s multifaceted role as a developer, producer, and presenter of innovative performance. One work, Martha Redbone’s Guardian Spirit: The Words of bell hooks, is a co-commission of Fisher Center LAB and Apollo Theater. The artist, whose powerful music has become a Spiegeltent pillar, will come to the Fisher Center for a developmental residency leading up to performances of this new multidisciplinary musical celebration of bell hooks (July 11 & 12). Expanding the Fisher Center’s engagement with a vast range of artists, this year also features 14 Spiegeltent debut performances.

The program also includes:
 

• Underground System, kicking off the Spiegeltent season with a night of their “exuberant” (Rolling Stone) New York eclecticism combining Afrobeat, dance punk, disco, and electronic music, June 26
• A standup set from James Austin Johnson, “Saturday Night Live’s impressions master” (GQ), renowned for his impeccable Donald Trump, June 27
• Tray Wellington Band, returning to the Spiegeltent with another concert blending banjo-led virtuosity with intricate rhythms, improvisation, and a modern sonic palette that pushes the boundaries of acoustic music, July 3
• Chanel Ali’s “gripping” (Theatermania) one-person comedy show, Relative Stranger, equal parts humor, heartbreak, and healing, July 17
• Samora Pinderhughes, “one of the most affecting singer-songwriters today, in any genre” (The New York Times), with an evening of song continuing his ongoing The Healing Project, July 18
• Comedian and performance artist Adrienne Truscott and drag artist Le Gateau Chocolat’s collaboration, Grey Arias, where comic banter turns personal, political debates erupt, and grey areas (and arias) are exposed, July 24
• Jacqueline Novak, acclaimed for her “playful and skillful” (The Guardian) “brilliant comedy” (The New Yorker), is making a stop on her 2026 Tour in the Spiegeltent, July 25
• Grammy-nominated American Patchwork Quartet, whose style mirrors America’s cultural mosaic, in concert, July 31
• Singer-songwriter and Kingston local Al Olender, performing songs from her second full-length album, The Worrier, August 1
• Justin Vivian Bond’s Heated Rivalry-themed cabaret, Heated Revelry, August 7–9
• BenDeLaCreme—“comedic powerhouse [drag artist] with classic pinup looks who never misses her mark” (The New York Times)—in her most candidly personal work yet, August 14 & 15

On Thursdays, the Bluegrass on Hudson series celebrates the contemporary bluegrass and roots music of America. Guest-curated by Ruth Oxenberg and Rob Schumer, it features concerts from The Fretliners (July 2), The John Hartford Fiddle Tune Project (July 16), Darol Anger and Bruce Molsky (July 23), Kittel & Co. (July 30), The Onlies (August 6), and Big Richard (August 13).

A marvel of engineering derived from a beloved nineteenth-century Belgian tradition, the Spiegeltent is a glittering, majestic mirrored pavilion with an interior of carved wood surfaces, parquet floor, beveled mirrors, stained-glass windows, and sumptuous velvet canopies. Since 2006, it has enchanted guests with boundary-breaking and entertaining performances in the Fisher Center’s awe-inspiring setting.

On Fridays and Saturdays, for patrons 21 and up, the Spiegeltent festivities continue long after performances end with Spiegeltent After Hours; the space remains open until 12:30 am, with dancing, DJs, and food and drink at the Spiegeltent Garden Bar.

Spiegeltent programming is part of Bard SummerScape 2026, which runs June 25 – August 16, with seven weeks of music, opera, dance, and theater. SummerScape, a “hotbed of intellectual and aesthetic adventure” (The New York Times), serves as an incubator for adventurous works that often go on to have extended lives and make significant impacts on the performance landscape in New York and around the country and world. This year, in addition to Spiegeltent offerings, it includes the world premiere of Suddenly Last Summer, a new opera by Courtney Bryan, with libretto by Gideon Lester and Daniel Fish, based on the Tennessee Williams seldom performed play of the same name, and directed by Fish (June 25 – July 19); a program of premiere and revived works from celebrated choreographer Lucinda Childs, Lucinda Childs: Momentary Reprise (June 26–28); a rare staging of Richard Strauss’s opera The Egyptian Helen, with a libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, directed by Christian Räth, with the American Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leon Botstein (July 24 – August 2); and the 36th Bard Music Festival: Mozart and His World (August 7–16).
 

2026 Spiegeltent Performance Descriptions and Schedule

Underground System

Friday, June 26 at 8 pm

Underground System is a shape-shifting, larger-than-life force in New York City's dance music scene, fusing Afrobeat, punk, and disco into a sound that’s as unpredictable as it is infectious. The band’s debut LP, What Are You, earned cult status for its “David Byrne meets Soulwax” (KCRW) energy and propelled them onto global stages like Eurockéennes and Fusion Festival. Led by Domenica—returning to Bard SummerScape after playing flute for Illinoise in 2023—Underground System launches the Spiegeltent season with an unforgettable night of “exuberant dance music that blooms out into countless directions” (Rolling Stone).
 

James Austin Johnson

Saturday, June 27 at 8 pm

Comedian and actor James Austin Johnson makes his Spiegeltent debut with a stand-up set showcasing the sharp wit and chameleonic impression skills that have made him one of today’s most exciting comedians. Named “one of SNL’s most versatile celebrity impressionists” by The New York Times, Johnson is widely recognized for his uncanny portrayal of Donald Trump and is currently in his fourth season as a cast member on the show. Fresh off appearances in film (A Complete Unknown, Inside Out 2), television (Barry, Better Call Saul), and podcasting, Johnson brings a bold, unpredictable night of comedy to the Spiegeltent.
 

Tray Wellington Band

Friday, July 3 at 8 pm

The Tray Wellington Band returns to the Spiegeltent with a forward-looking, high-energy performance that pushes the boundaries of acoustic music. Led by virtuosic banjo player Tray Wellington—winner of the Steve Martin Banjo Award and an International Bluegrass Music Association Award—the ensemble brings his compositions to life through rich instrumentation and inventive arrangements. Highly original and unconcerned with tradition, the Tray Wellington Band seamlessly fuses folk, bluegrass, jazz, and contemporary roots music into a thrilling, singular experience.

Martha Redbone

Guardian Spirit: The Words of bell hooks
Friday, July 11 at 8 pm
Saturday, July 12 at 8 pm

Artist, composer, vocalist, and Spiegeltent favorite Martha Redbone returns to Bard SummerScape with a musical celebration of the words and legacy of bell hooks. In this developmental work-in-process, Redbone and longtime musical collaborator Aaron Whitby embark on a multidisciplinary musical exploration of bell hooks’s landmark poetry collection, Appalachian Elegy: Poetry and Place. Known for their powerful and award-winning settings of poets Ntozake Shange in for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf (2019 Drama Desk Award; 2022 Broadway revival) and William Blake on the album, The Garden of Love: Songs of William Blake, Redbone and Whitby channel bell hooks’s meditative, confessional, and political lyricism into a genre-defying soundscape that echoes the spirit of her Kentucky roots and heritage she shares with Redbone.

Guardian Spirit: The Words of bell hooks is a co-commission by the Apollo Theater and Fisher Center LAB, the Fisher Center’s artist residency and commissioning program, and includes a developmental residency leading up to performances. The presentation of Guardian Spirit at the Spiegeltent is co-presented with the Center for Indigenous Studies at Bard College. Guardian Spirit is generously supported by the New York State Council on the Arts.
 

Chanel Ali

Relative Stranger
Friday, July 17 at 8 pm

Comedian Chanel Ali returns to the Spiegeltent with Relative Stranger, a triumphant comedy that blends the chaos of identity, family, and survival into a bold, hilariously raw theatrical event. Equal parts humor, heartbreak, and healing, Relative Stranger is packed with the punch only Chanel can deliver.

Relative Stranger details Chanel’s tumultuous foster care childhood, her mother’s untimely slip into schizophrenia, and a court-ordered paternity test that led her to meet her cop dad when she was 18 years old. In 2023, Chanel starred in a commercial produced by Kevin Hart for 23andMe, a popular DNA and genetics company. That commercial opportunity led her to a shocking revelation: she had a 30-year-old brother whom she had never heard of. After connecting with her new brother, Chanel realized they have the same father—an award-winning, handsome, community hero police officer who seems wholly unable to accept the idea that his past has caught up to him.

Relative Stranger aims to answer the question: When will it end? When will the generations before us take accountability for their mistakes? When will they be able to face the music? Why did Kevin Hart set this all up?

TaTa Sherise (NY Comedy Festival Comic to Watch) opens the evening with a stand-up set brimming with her signature charm, humor, and physical comedy.
 

Samora Pinderhughes

The Healing Project
Saturday, July 18 at 8 pm

Composer, pianist, vocalist, and activist Samora Pinderhughes makes his Spiegeltent debut with a unique and powerful evening of song. Known for striking intimacy and carefully crafted, radically honest lyrics alongside high-level musicianship, Pinderhughes has been named “one of the most affecting singer-songwriters today, in any genre” by The New York Times. He is the first-ever Art for Justice + Soros Justice Fellow, a United States Artist Fellow, a recipient of Chamber Music America’s Visionary Award, the 2025 Adobe Creative Residency at The Museum of Modern Art, and has received awards from Creative Capital and Sundance.

Adrienne Truscott and Le Gateau Chocolat

Grey Arias
Friday, July 24 at 8 pm

Le Gateau Chocolat is a man. Adrienne Truscott is a woman. Le Gateau Chocolat is a gay, black, English-Nigerian man and drag artiste. Adrienne Truscott is a cis white feminist American female performance artist. Le Gateau Chocolat is a multi-award-winning, plus-sized, bearded, drag diva feminist. Adrienne Truscott is a multi-award-winning comedian and provocateur who enjoys chocolate cake, up to a point. They are dear friends, and here, as in everyday life, they perform a multiplicity of identities: perceived, lived, and projected. As their comical banter turns personal, political debates erupt, and grey areas (and arias) are exposed. Between musical numbers that span Madame Butterfly and Annie, they spring rhetorical traps designed to catch any who overstep the blurred lines of the politically correct and interrogate the boundaries of allyship.
 

Jacqueline Novak: 2026 Tour

Saturday, July 25 at 8 pm

Comedian and writer Jacqueline Novak makes her Spiegeltent debut on her 2026 tour. Her solo show Get On Your Knees sold out major New York runs at the Cherry Lane Theatre and the Lucille Lortel Theatre, toured nationally and internationally, and is now streaming on Netflix; the special, directed by Natasha Lyonne, received an Emmy nomination, praised by The Hollywood Reporter as “one of the most intricately conceived and written specials I’ve ever watched.” She co-hosts the podcast Poog with Kate Berlant, named one of TIME’s Top Ten Podcasts of the Year at its launch and Best of 2025 by The New York Times. Novak is a regular on Late Night with Seth Meyers and The Tonight Show. Her depression memoir, How to Weep in Public: Feeble Offerings on Depression from One Who Knows, published by Crown, celebrates its tenth anniversary this year.
 

American Patchwork Quartet

Friday, July 31 at 8 pm

Making their Spiegeltent debut, the Grammy-nominated American Patchwork Quartet binds timeless American folk songs with jazz sophistication, country twang, West African hypnotics, and East Asian ornamentation—a deliberately designed homage to America’s past and a showcase of its dynamic present. The quartet’s music is grounded and sincere, resisting easy symbolism in favor of lived complexity, as each carefully chosen piece reflects the joys, sorrows, and enduring hope of a nation shaped by shared dreams and diverse histories.
 

Al Olender

The Worrier
Saturday, August 1 at 8 pm

Singer-songwriter and Kingston local Al Olender makes her Spiegeltent debut performing songs from her tender new album, The Worrier. Olender tries to grasp the brief, beautiful moments that make up our lives in slow motion—but finds that the tighter she holds on, the more they dissolve into a soupy blur. Change may be our only constant, but The Worrier lingers in the now, capturing the anxieties of an ever-moving world with sweet, silly sincerity. Exploring anxiety, sexuality, and anarchy—both within herself and across her relationships—Olender’s acoustic, blues-tinged melodies trace the butterflies of first crushes, the gut-punching weight of responsibility, and the eternal romance of friendship, never shying away from staring the truth straight in the face.
 

Justin Vivian Bond

Heated Revelry
Friday, August 7 at 8 pm
Saturday, August 8 at 8 pm
Sunday, August 9 at 7 pm
“I’m coming to the cabaret.”
Grab some vodka, a blueberry smoothie, or some ginger ale and join Vivian Bond and her band for an evening of music to lose your gay virginity by. Featuring songs from the soundtrack of Heated Rivalry, and soundtrack-adjacent numbers. Pucker up for your rookie season. Don’t go back to Russia! Don’t be boring.

BenDeLaCreme

Friday, August 14 at 8 pm
Saturday, August 15 at 8 pm
Lauded drag storyteller BenDeLaCreme is well known for her critically acclaimed multimedia solo works and glitzy camp productions. This time around, she is ready to lay it bare. For the very first time, DeLa is dropping the trappings and trimmings and doing her most hilariously candid personal work yet. It’s DeLa unplugged; an intimate evening with the campiest of queens. Join DeLa as she reveals her vulnerable side for the very first time, moving past the superficial outer self to explore the superficial self within.

How can an evening of camp, song, and storytelling crack at your funny bone and hit you in the heart? Forbes said it best—“keeping you entertained while making you think about your place in the world is all a part of the BenDeLaCreme experience.” Billboard says DeLa “soars past entertainment and into the realm of theatrical art.” TheaterMania calls her work “spectacular… helping to redefine what cabaret can be: an intoxicating cocktail of high, low, topical, and timeless.”

Bluegrass on Hudson

Thursdays at 7 pm

About the Series
A series celebrating the contemporary bluegrass and roots music of America, featuring the next generation of talent carrying the tradition forward for a new time. Returning for its fourth season at the Spiegeltent, Bluegrass on Hudson is guest curated by Ruth Oxenberg and Rob Schumer.
 

The Fretliners

Thursday, July 2 at 7 pm

The Fretliners are a band defined by their songwriting—stories carried by powerful harmonies, dynamic arrangements, and a sound that feels both timeless and new. Their music leans into the tradition of acoustic string instruments but reaches well beyond genre, resonating with listeners through honesty and craft.

In 2023, they swept both the Telluride Bluegrass and RockyGrass band competitions—an achievement matched only once before. That fall, their debut self-titled album earned widespread acclaim, praised for its originality and heartfelt lyricism. With songs that balance tradition and innovation, The Fretliners continue to chart a bold path forward, creating music that connects as deeply on record as it does on stage.
 

The John Hartford Fiddle Tune Project

Thursday, July 16 at 7 pm

The musical legacy of John Hartford has found a new chapter with The John Hartford Fiddle Tune Project. Mandolinist Sharon Gilchrist, fiddle player Rachel Baiman, and banjo/guitarist Ella Korth bring newly discovered Hartford tunes to old-time and bluegrass fans everywhere. These compositions, found handwritten in 60 notebooks after John’s death, were compiled in The John Hartford Mammoth Collection of Fiddle Tunes, and recorded on the Grammy-nominated album, The John Hartford Fiddle Tune Project Vol. 1, and Vol. 2: Julia Belle (co-produced by Gilchrist and released in February 2025). The John Hartford Fiddle Tune Project is passionate about sharing these tunes far and wide so that they can become part of the roots music canon for future musicians to love and enjoy.

The John Hartford Fiddle Tune Project has performed at festivals such as the Earl Scruggs Music Festival, Cowichan Valley Bluegrass Festival, and Folky Fish Fest, and has toured house concerts throughout the United States. The Project also presents workshops, teaching tunes from Hartford’s Mammoth Collection of Fiddle Tunes and sharing aspects of the iconic songwriting and creative ensemble practices that Hartford led in his own band.

Darol Anger and Bruce Molsky

Thursday, July 23 at 7 pm
Darol Anger and Bruce Molsky have been musical explorers together for years, sharing a creative universe that’s resulted in some epic collaborations, like the Grammy-nominated Fiddlers Four with Michael Doucet and Rushad Eggleston, crashing each other’s concerts and recordings, and just finding big joy in playing together.
 

Kittel & Co.

Thursday, July 30 at 7 pm

Led by acclaimed violinist Jeremy Kittel (formerly of the Grammy-winning Turtle Island Quartet), Kittel & Co. inhabits the space between classical and acoustic roots, Celtic and bluegrass aesthetics, and folk and jazz sensibilities. Some of the greatest musicians in the incredible acoustic scene, the members of Kittel & Co., have collaborated with Béla Fleck, Sarah Jarosz, Chris Thile, and Yo-Yo Ma. Together, Jeremy Kittel and mandolin phenom Josh Pinkham, transcendent guitarist Quinn Bachand, bassist Jacob Warren, and hammer-dulcimer wizard Simon Chrisman coalesce into a singular voice that’s thrilled audiences from the Telluride Bluegrass Festival to A Prairie Home Companion. The Times (UK) says, “[Kittel & Co.] takes the string band tradition to marvelously rarefied levels of collective virtuosity…thrillingly spontaneous.” The Grammy-nominated Kittel & Co. will get your toes tapping and lift you out of your seat.
 

The Onlies

Thursday, August 6 at 7 pm

The Onlies are a longstanding collective of young friends defining a powerful new generation of stringband music. Described as “the best old-time stringband out there” (Songlines), they “make old-time music sound fuller and richer and more dense than most bands of a similar ilk” (Bandcamp Daily). Their music moves with a pulsating drive, sharp arrangements, and rich vibration—it resounds with the present.
 

Big Richard
Thursday, August 13 at 7 pm

Big Richard delivers ferocious, unapologetic acoustic music with big energy and even bigger chops. Their live shows are raucous, emotional, and irreverent—mixing ripping instrumentals, dark humor, and raw, socially charged songs. Their new album Pet, out now on Signature Sounds, was recorded live to tape to capture the chaos and catharsis that define their performances.
 

Spiegeltent After Hours

Fridays and Saturdays, June 26 – August 15

Andy Monk of Queer Conspiracy hosts and co-curates this year’s After Hours series, with a DJ lineup featuring fresh faces and returning favorites.

DJ Schedule
June 26 • Patrick Kyle
June 27 • Jams Bond
July 3 • Tikka Masala
July 10 • Brandon Wolcott
July 11 • Flared Bass
July 17 • Scotia
July 18 • Michael V
July 24 • Nath Ann Carrera and Tommi Calamari
July 25 • Bright Light Bright Light
July 31 • Tikka Masala
August 1 • Amber Valentine
August 7 and 8 • Sammy Jo
August 14 • PrettyWoman
August 15 • Kristill Avalanche

$15 in advance; $18 at the door or free with same-day ticket to any performance 

Entry available from 10:30 pm – 12 am; Spiegeltent closes at 12:30 am
Open to patrons age 21 and up

Note: There will be no performances or After Hours on Saturday, July 4.

About Jason Collins, Curator

Born and raised in NY's Capital District, Jason Collins is the curator and producer of the Spiegeltent at Bard Summerscape. While at Fisher Center Bard (FCB), he has produced works by artists across all performing arts disciplines, including world premieres by Pam Tanowitz, Caroline Shaw, David Lang, Justin Peck, Jackie Sibblies Drury, and Elevator Repair Service, as well as Spiegeltent seasons 2022–2025 and the Fisher Center LAB Biennial Festival 2022. He has also produced FCB tours around the world, including at Lincoln Center, La Biennale di Venezia, Barbican Center, Royal Ballet, New York City Center, and BAM. Before joining the Fisher Center in 2022, Collins was the producer/company manager of Pam Tanowitz Dance and associate produced works by Pavel Zuštiak and Big Dance Theater. A Juilliard graduate, Collins danced professionally for over a decade, most notably with Pam Tanowitz, Ryan McNamara, the Metropolitan Opera, and the Merce Cunningham Trust.

Eat and Drink at the Spiegeltent

The Spiegeltent Garden (weather permitting) offers beer, wine, and light food to all SummerScape patrons from 6:30 pm until 12 am on Fridays and Saturdays and some Thursdays. Ticket holders for Spiegeltent programs can enjoy a light fare and a full bar from 7 pm until 12 am. Food and beverage options for Sunday events vary.

Ticketing
 
Tickets are available at fishercenter.bard.edu and 845.758.7900. Tickets start at $25. Save 20% when you choose three or more SummerScape events.

Programming Notes

Programs, dates, and times are subject to change without notice. Friday/Saturday and After Hours performances may contain nudity and are for mature audiences only. Friday/Saturday admission is restricted to those over 18 years old unless accompanied by a parent or guardian. No one under 21 is permitted during After Hours.

Credits

Venue by Mirror Palace BVBA via West Coast Spiegeltents.

Guardian Spirit is generously supported by the New York State Council on the Arts.

The Fisher Center is generously supported by Jeanne Donovan Fisher, Rebecca Gold Milikowsky, Daniel Shapiro, Stephen E. Simcock, the Martin and Toni Sosnoff Foundation, Felicitas S. Thorne, the Advisory Board of the Fisher Center, Fisher Center members and general fund donors, The Shubert Foundation, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. Fisher Center LAB is funded in part by the Lucille Lortel Foundation and the Fisher Center’s Artistic Innovation Fund, with lead support from Rebecca Gold Milikowsky and additional funding from The William and Lia G. Poorvu Family Foundation. The Bard Music Festival is generously supported by Helen and Roger Alcaly, the Bettina Baruch Foundation, Jeanne Donovan Fisher, the H&L Family Foundation, Gary and Edna Lachmund, the Marstrand Foundation, Denise Simon and Paulo Vieira da Cunha, Felicitas S. Thorne, the Wise Music Family Foundation, the Bard Music Festival Board, and Bard Music Festival members.

About the Fisher Center at Bard
The Fisher Center is a premier professional performing arts center and a hub for research and education that demonstrates Bard College’s commitment to the performing arts as a cultural and educational necessity. To support artists, students, and audiences in the examination of artistic ideas, the Fisher Center develops, produces, and presents performing arts across disciplines through new productions and context-rich programs that challenge and inspire.

Home is the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, designed by Frank Gehry and located on the campus of Bard College in New York’s Hudson Valley. This world-class theater building will be complemented by a new studio building designed by Maya Lin, scheduled to open in 2026. More than 200 events and 50,000 visitors are hosted at the Fisher Center each year, and over 300 professional artists are employed annually. As a powerful catalyst of art-making regionally, nationally, and worldwide, the Fisher Center produces 8 to 10 major new works in various disciplines every year. The Fisher Center offers outstanding programs to many communities, including the students and faculty of Bard College, and audiences in the Hudson Valley, New York City, across the country, and around the world. Building on a 166-year history as a competitive and innovative undergraduate institution, Bard is committed to enriching culture, public life, and democratic discourse by training tomorrow’s thought leaders.
The Fisher Center was born from the Bard Music Festival, founded in 1990, which, for the first 13 years of its existence, occupied several spaces on campus, including a large tent. Each summer, the Music Festival focuses on the life, work, and influences of one composer, promoting new ways of understanding and presenting the history of music to a contemporary audience. When the Fisher Center and its two theaters opened in 2003, the summer festival expanded to include a fully staged opera, as well as theater and dance performances. The highly acclaimed opera program brings unjustly neglected works to the stage in major productions—often making their U.S. debuts.

Through Fisher Center LAB, the Center’s acclaimed residency and commissioning program, artists are provided with custom-made support toward their innovative projects, and their work has been seen in over 100 communities around the world. Resident choreographer Pam Tanowitz’s 2018 Four Quartets was recognized as “the greatest creation of dance theater so far this century” by The New York Times. In 2019, the Fisher Center won the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical for Daniel Fish’s production of Oklahoma!, which began life in 2007 as an undergraduate production at Bard and was produced professionally by the Fisher Center in 2015 before transferring to New York City. Illinoise, a 2023 Fisher Center world premiere from artists Sufjan Stevens, Justin Peck, and Jackie Sibblies Drury, was recognized with a Tony Award for Best Choreography following its tour and transfer to Broadway.

The Fisher Center is home to several of Bard’s academic programs in the performing arts. Year-round, it hosts performances by the undergraduate Dance Program and Theater and Performance Program; the US-China Music Institute of the Bard College Conservatory of Music; The Orchestra Now (TŌN), a Bard graduate program that is training the next generation of classical-music ambassadors; and students at the Bard Conservatory, the first (and so far only) conservatory to require all its students to pursue a bachelor of arts degree in a field other than music in addition to their specialized music studies. As a hybrid institution, the Fisher Center brings together professional and academic art-making of the highest caliber, where student and professional artists work side by side, learning from each other and informing one another’s practices.

Fishercenter.bard.edu
Facebook.com/fishercenterbard
Instagram.com/fishercenterbard
Youtube.com/fishercenterbard
Bsky.app/profile/fishercenterbard.bsky.social
 
For more information, please contact Blake Zidell of Blake Zidell & Associates at [email protected] or 917.572.2943.
 

This event was last updated on 03-31-2026

Back to Top