BARD’S MUSIC PROGRAM PRESENTS TWO FREE VOCAL CONCERTS IN MAY IN OLIN HALL May 3 concert features the Bard Community Chorus and May 5 concert features the Bard College Chamber Singers

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.—Under the direction of James Bagwell, the Bard College Community Chorus performs on Wednesday, May 3, and the Bard Chamber Singers on Friday, May 5. The free concerts are presented by the Music Program at Bard, and take place in Olin Hall at 8:00 p.m. The Bard College Community Chorus will perform choral masterworks by Bach, Brahms, Haydn, and Mendelssohn, with featured guest, pianist James Fitzwilliam. The Bard College Chamber Singers will perform the music of Claudio Monteverdi. Conductor James Bagwell maintains an active schedule throughout the United States as a conductor of choral, operatic, and orchestral literature. During Bard SummerScape 2005, he led six sold-out performances of Copland’s The Tender Land, which received unanimous praise from the New York Times, New Yorker, and Opera News. In October 2002 he premiered Cinderella’s Bad Magic by microtonal composer Kyle Gann in Moscow as part of the Alternativa Festival. As music director of Light Opera Oklahoma, he conducted three new productions for the 2005 summer festival season, including the company’s debut at the OK Mozart International Music Festival in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, and a concert version of La Périchole. In 2003 Bagwell was named director of choruses for the Bard Music Festival, conducting and preparing choral works during the summer festival at the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, and at Alice Tully Hall in New York. During the 2004–05 season he prepared the Concert Chorale of New York for concerts with the American Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Mostly Mozart Festival, all in Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center, and has trained choruses for a number of major American orchestras, including the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, Indianapolis Symphony, the Hudson Valley Philharmonic, and the Asheville (NC) Symphony. He is music director of the May Festival Youth Chorus in Cincinnati and the Dessoff Choirs in New York City; artistic director for the New York Repertory Singers; and conductor for the Berkshire Bach Society Chorus and Orchestra. Bagwell has worked with noted conductors such as Leon Botstein, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Louis Langrée, Raymond Leppard, James Conlon, Christof Perick, Jesús López-Cobos, Erich Kunzel, Leon Fleischer, and Robert Shaw. In 2000 he joined the faculty of Bard College, where he is director of the Music Program. James Fitzwilliam is a classically trained professional pianist; an organist with more than 15 years’ experience in church music; a vocalist; a violinist; an operatic vocal coach, and a composer. He received a bachelor’s degree and a master of music degree in performance (piano) from the Eastman School of Music. No reservations are necessary. Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis. For further information, call the Music Program at 845-758-7250. # # # (4/25/06)

This event was last updated on 05-05-2006

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