Catalogue

The Orchestra Now

The Orchestra Now (TŌN) is a unique preprofessional orchestra offering a master’s degree and a certificate program designed to prepare musicians for the challenges facing the modern symphony orchestra. Musicians in the master’s degree program receive three years of advanced orchestral training and take graduate-level courses in orchestral and curatorial studies, leading to a master of music degree in curatorial, critical, and performance studies. Musicians in the advanced certificate program receive two years of training and take core seminars in orchestral and curatorial studies. Bard faculty and guest scholars in music history, art history and visual culture, and other disciplines in the humanities participate in the program’s seminars. Based at Bard’s main campus in Annandale, the orchestra’s home is the Frank Gehry–designed Fisher Center at Bard, where it performs multiple concerts each season and takes part in the annual Bard Music Festival. It also performs regularly at Carnegie Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and other concert halls across the Northeast. TŌN offers full-tuition scholarships and fellowships. 

Leon Botstein, president of Bard College, is the music director and principal conductor of The Orchestra Now. The orchestra has performed with many distinguished guest conductors and soloists, including Leonard Slatkin, Neeme Järvi, Vadim Repin, Fabio Luisi, Hans Graf, Gerard Schwarz, Tan Dun, and JoAnn Falletta. Recordings featuring TŌN include two albums of piano concertos with Piers Lane on Hyperion Records and a Sorel Classics concert recording of pianist Anna Shelest performing works by Anton Rubinstein with conductor Järvi. Buried Alive with baritone Michael Nagy, released on Bridge Records in August 2020, includes the first recording in almost 60 years—and only the second recording ever—of Othmar Schoeck’s song cycle Lebendig begraben. Recent releases include Classics of American Romanticism—featuring the first-ever complete recording of George Bristow’s Arcadian symphony—and an album of piano concertos with Orion Weiss, both on Bridge Records, and the soundtrack to the motion picture Forte.