THE CONDUCTORS INSTITUTE AT BARD COLLEGE PRESENTS TWO "PASS-THE-BATON" CONCERTS ON JULY 20 AND 27
ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.-Two special concerts will be presented by the Conductors Institute at Bard College on Friday, July 20, and Friday, July 27, in Olin Hall. Free and open to the public, these concerts will begin at 9:00 a.m. (with a break for lunch between noon and 1:00 p.m.) and continue until 4:00 p.m. The audience is welcome to attend any or all of each day's activities. Each concert will feature the Institute Orchestra, conducted by Institute conductors.
The July 20th "Pass-the-Baton" concert will feature a special preview of the 2001 Bard Music Festival, "Debussy and His World," with a performance of the composer's Afternoon of a Faun. Also featured will be Brahms's Symphony No. 1, movements 1 and 2 of Mahler's Sixth Symphony, and Harold Farberman's The Great American Cowboy Suite (the score from the 1973 Academy Award-winning documentary).
The July 27th concert will also highlight the Bard Music Festival, with a performance of Claude Debussy's Jeux. In addition, there will be performances of arias from Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, with soprano Vanessa Conlin; Ravel's Rapsodie espagnol; and movements 3 and 4 of Mahler's Sixth Symphony.
Twenty-two years ago, Harold Farberman founded the Conductors Institute (CI) at the University of West Virginia in Morgantown, seeking to fill a void in the United States with a summer training program for conductors. "I hit on a formula that remains the same to this day-vigorous technical training and promotion of American music in a cooperative atmosphere," he said. This is the third year that the CI will be held at Bard College and also marks the first year that the master of fine arts degree in conducting is offered. The Institute is designed so that there are new instructors and new repertoire each week, assuring the participants exposure to a variety of expert opinions. The visiting faculty include maestri Leon Botstein, Apo Hsu, and George Rothman, and composer Anthony Korf. Michelle Basile directs the Discovery Program, designed for beginning conductors.
Artistic director Harold Farberman is a noted conductor, composer, and musician. His earliest composition, Evolution, has been recorded four times, once by Leopold Stokowski. Aaron Copland invited Farberman to study composition with him at Tanglewood after hearing Evolution. He was music director of the Colorado Springs and Oakland Symphony Orchestras, and principal guest conductor of the Denver Symphony Orchestra and the Bournemouth (Great Britain) Sinfonietta. He has been a frequent guest conductor and recording artist with orchestras including the London Symphony, Royal Philharmonic, BBC Symphony, and Stockholm Philharmonic. A prolific composer of music for orchestra, ballet, film, chamber ensemble, and opera, he was awarded the Ives Medal for his dedication to the music of Charles Ives. In November 2000, his cello concerto was premiered by the American Symphony Orchestra at Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall. Farberman founded the Conductors Guild and is the author of The Art of Conducting Technique.
During a "Pass the Baton" concert, the audience is given a seamless rendition of each work as the conductors pass the baton from one to another after completing their assigned section, without missing a beat. This is the second year that the Conductors Institute at Bard has offered these public concerts. For further information, call 845-758-7425 or visit the website www.bard.edu/ci.
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(7.16.01)