BARD COLLEGE COMMUNITY ORCHESTRA CONDUCTED BY JOAN TOWER, PERFORMS CONCERT ON FRIDAY, DECEMBER 1 Works by Bartók, Fauré, Haydn, Beethoven, Ravel, and Copland will be performed

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, NY—The Bard College Community Orchestra, under the direction of Joan Tower, Asher B. Edelman Professor of Music, will present a concert on Friday, December 1. The program, free and open to the public, begins at 8:00 p.m. and is followed by a reception in Olin Hall.

Works to be performed include Bartók\'s \"Six Rumanian Dances,\" Fauré\'s \"Pavane,\" Haydn\'s Symphony No. 104, Ravel\'s \"Mother Goose Suite,\" and Beethoven\'s Piano Concerto No. 3 with pianist Jun Dai Bates.

The forty-four-person orchestra made its debut in 1999. \"We were able to form a student orchestra because the Music Program has grown over the past few years, and more students are available to play a variety of instruments,\" Tower explains. The orchestra is now only two violinists short of standard chamber orchestra size. Members of the freshman class have filled gaps that were previously filled by community musicians. Six of the current members are from the outside community: three high school students from Rhinebeck and Hyde Park, and three adults from the area. Two of the adults serve as coaches for the orchestra: Rachel Handman, violinist with the Hudson Valley Philharmonic, and Cornelia MacGiver \'99, bassoonist and Bard College graduate.

Joan Tower is one of the most highly regarded composers in the United States today. In 1998, the year of her sixtieth birthday, more than twenty concerts were presented in her honor throughout the country. Tower received the Delaware Symphony’s Alfred I. Dupont Award for Distinguished American Composers and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony, and the Guggenheim Foundation, and in 1990 was the recipient of the prestigious Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition. Tower, whose orchestral works have been commissioned and performed around the world, is currently composer-in-residence with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s in New York City. Recent commissions include works for percussionist Evelyn Glennie and the National Symphony Orchestra, pianist John Browning, Emerson and Tokyo Quartets, Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, and a viola concerto for Paul Neubauer. Tower recently conducted the Anchorage Symphony and the University of Southern California orchestras. She was active as pianist with the 1973 Naumburg Award-winning ensemble, the Da Capo Chamber Players, which she founded. She was composer-in-residence with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and is currently co-artistic director of the Yale/Norfolk Chamber Music Festival and composer-in-residence at the Institute at Deer Valley in Utah. Her most recent recording is Fanfares for the Uncommon Woman (Koch International Classics), with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, Marin Alsop, conductor.

Other Music Program events in December include a performance on Sunday, December 10, by the Bard College Vocal Ensemble and Community Chorus. The vocal ensemble will perform works by Monteverdi, Berg, and Zemlinsky. On Wednesday, December 13, the Gala Music Concert will feature performances by the Bard Jazz Band, Vocal Ensemble, and Hudson Valley Gamelan. Both performances begin at 8:00 p.m. in Olin Hall and are free and open to the public. For further information, call the Music Program at 845-758-7250.