Bard Conservatory of Music News Archive

Jessie Montgomery, composer in residence at Bard, has been named Musical America’s 2023 Composer of the Year. “Jessie Montgomery grew up surrounded by jazz and activism. A  Juilliard-trained violinist, she gravitated towards composition in her 20s, and later learned to associate her own Black identity with her music. The resulting body of work has been embraced all around the world for its freshness and energy,” writes Musical America. The 62nd annual Musical America awards will be presented at an awards ceremony in New York City on December 4.

Bard composer in residence Missy Mazzoli (2022) and Asher B. Edelman Professor in the Arts Joan Tower (2020) were recent recipients of this award.

Lucy Fitz Gibbon, Bard Conservatory voice faculty, releases a new album, the labor of forgetting, the inaugural album from independent label False Azure Records, on November 4. The album features husband-and-wife duo soprano Lucy Fitz Gibbon and pianist Ryan McCullough performing three world premieres by composers Katherine Balch and Dante De Silva, with new poetry by Katie Ford. “Though sonically distinct, each of the included works explores the effects of time and distance on memory and human relationships, a fitting response to the lingering isolation and irreality of the last several years,” writes the record label of the album.

Countertenor Chuanyuan Liu, who graduated from the Bard Conservatory of Music’s Vocal Arts Program in 2021, has been named a grantee of the Met’s Education Fund. Education Fund grants are available to semifinalists, finalists, and Grand Finals winners of the Metropolitan Opera Eric and Dominique Laffont Competition, following an audition with the Met artistic staff. The grants are intended to support the development of these young artists and are made possible by the generosity of donors. Since the 2021 Laffont semifinals, Chuanyuan Liu has been involved in three world premiere projects: Pittsburgh Opera’s production of In a Grove, with music by Christopher Cerrone and libretto by Stephanie Fleischmann; Philadelphia Orchestra’s concert version of Kevin Puts and Greg Pierce’s The Hours; and Huang Ruo and David Henry Hwang's highly anticipated new opera M. Butterfly 蝴蝶君 at Santa Fe Opera. Liu has committed himself to an Asian-focused project each year stating, “as someone who grew up in China and spent all of my adulthood in the US, I have seen firsthand the differences but also the common ground. I want to use as much power as I have to build a bridge.”

Pianist Jong Sun Woo, who graduated from the Bard Conservatory of Music’s Advanced Performance Studies Program in 2018, is the recipient of the 2022 Gerald Moore Award for outstanding piano accompanists. With this award, she will receive a prize of £5,000 and the opportunity to play at London’s prestigious Wigmore Hall. The Gerald Moore Award is presented biennially to exceptional piano accompanists, usually in the early stages of very promising careers. Now in its 30th year, the Gerald Moore Award has been its own registered charity but from 2022 has made its new home at the UK’s Royal Philharmonic Society. “My favourite activity as a child was to play pretend with a friend. Playing the song repertoire is not far from that . . . Being a song pianist means that I have the limitless possibilities of parallel universes under my fingers,” said Woo.

For Opera News, David Shengold reviews the Bard College Conservatory of Music’s March 2022 production of Richard Strauss’s opera Salome with libretto by Oscar Wilde, directed by R. B. Schlather. In his review, he praises the Conservatory Orchestra, conducted by Leon Botstein. “The performance also aroused admiration for the Bard Conservatory Orchestra: the eighty-six student players for Salome orchestra played the difficult score with notable beauty and precision,” he writes.  The Fisher Center staging was directed by R. B. Schlather.

Stephen Jones, who graduated from the Bard College Conservatory’s Advanced Performance Studies (APS) Program in 2019, joins the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra as Assistant Principal Bass in the 2022-23 season. Following extensive national auditions, Jones won the Trish & Rick Bryan Chair, a tenure-track position with the orchestra. “Each of these musicians won highly competitive auditions, joining the ranks of the exceptional players who make up the CSO,” said President and CEO of the CSO Jonathan Martin.

Jones began playing the double bass at the age of 13 and later received his undergraduate degree from the Eastman School of Music, where he studied with James VanDemark followed by additional studies at Bard College with Leigh Mesh. During his time at Bard he received additional coaching from Daniel Phillips of the Orion Quartet, Tara Hellen O'Connor, Lera Auerbach and Dawn Upshaw. He has recently completed his master’s degree at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music where he studied with Owen Lee.

 

The Bard College Conservatory of Music has appointed acclaimed composers Jessie Montgomery and Missy Mazzoli to the faculty as composers in residence. Composer, violinist, and educator Montgomery has been called “One of the most distinctive and communicative voices in the US, as a player and a creator” (BBC). Grammy-nominated composer, pianist, and keyboardist Mazzoli was recently deemed “one of the more consistently inventive, surprising composers now working in New York” (New York Times). They both join the Bard Conservatory in fall 2022.

Jessie Montgomery is an acclaimed composer, violinist, and educator. A recipient of the Leonard Bernstein Award from the ASCAP Foundation, the Sphinx Medal of Excellence, Montgomery’s works are performed frequently around the world by leading musicians and ensembles. Her music interweaves classical music with elements of vernacular music, improvisation, poetry, and social consciousness, making her an acute interpreter of 21st century American sound and experience. Her profoundly felt works have been described as “turbulent, wildly colorful and exploding with life” (The Washington Post).

Her growing body of work includes solo, chamber, vocal, and orchestral works. Some recent highlights include Shift, Change, Turn (2019) commissioned by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Coincident Dances (2018) for the Chicago Sinfonietta, and Banner (2014)—written to mark the 200th anniversary of “The Star-Spangled Banner”—for The Sphinx Organization and the Joyce Foundation, which was presented in its UK premiere at the BBC Proms on 7 August 2021.

Summer 2021 brought a varied slate of premiere performances, including Five Freedom Songs, a song cycle conceived with and written for soprano Julia Bullock, for Sun Valley and Grand Teton Music Festivals, San Francisco and Kansas City Symphonies, Boston and New Haven Symphony Orchestras, and the Virginia Arts Festival (7 August); a site-specific collaboration with Bard SummerScape Festival and Pam Tanowitz Dance, I was waiting for the echo of a better day (8 July); and Passacaglia, a flute quartet for The National Flute Association’s 49th annual convention (13 August).

Since 1999, Montgomery has been affiliated with The Sphinx Organization, which supports young African American and Latinx string players and has served as composer-in-residence for the Sphinx Virtuosi, the organization’s flagship professional touring ensemble.

A founding member of PUBLIQuartet and a former member of the Catalyst Quartet, Montgomery holds degrees from the Juilliard School and New York University and is currently a PhD Candidate in Music Composition at Princeton University. She is professor of violin and composition at The New School. In May 2021, she began her three-year appointment as the Mead Composer-in-Residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. jessiemontgomery.com

Recently deemed “one of the more consistently inventive, surprising composers now working in New York” (New York Times), “Brooklyn’s post-millennial Mozart” (Time Out NY), and praised for her “apocalyptic imagination” (Alex Ross, The New Yorker), Missy Mazzoli has had her music performed by the Kronos Quartet, LA Opera, eighth blackbird, the BBC Symphony, the Minnesota Orchestra, Scottish Opera and many others. In 2018 she became, along with Jeanine Tesori, the first woman to receive a main stage commission from the Metropolitan Opera, and was nominated for a Grammy award in the category of “Best Classical Composition.” 

From 2018-2021 Mazzoli was Mead Composer-in-Residence at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and from 2012-2015 was Composer-in-Residence with Opera Philadelphia. Her 2018 opera Proving Up, created with longtime collaborator librettist Royce Vavrek and based on a short story by Karen Russell, is a surreal commentary on the American dream. It was commissioned and premiered by Washington National Opera, Opera Omaha and Miller Theatre, and was deemed “harrowing… a true opera for its time” by The Washington Post. 

Mazzoli’s 2016 opera Breaking the Waves, commissioned by Opera Philadelphia and Beth Morrison Projects, was called “one of the best 21st-century American operas yet” by Opera News. Breaking the Waves received its European premiere at the 2019 Edinburgh Festival; future performances are planned at LA Opera, Houston Grand Opera, and the Adelaide Festival. Her next opera, The Listeners, will premiere in 2022 at the Norwegian National Opera, Chicago Lyric Opera and Opera Philadelphia. 

Mazzoli is also active in the orchestral and chamber music field, recently writing new works for the National Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, BBC Philharmonia, and the Bergen Symphony, among others. In 2016, Mazzoli and composer Ellen Reid founded Luna Lab, a mentorship program for young female, non-binary and gender nonconforming composers created in partnership with the Kaufman Music Center. 

Mazzoli attended the Yale School of Music, the Royal Conservatory of the Hague and Boston University.  She has studied with (in no particular order) David Lang, Louis Andriessen, Martin Bresnick, Aaron Jay Kernis, Martijn Padding, Richard Ayres, John Harbison, Charles Fussell, Martin Amlin, Marco Stroppa, Ladislav Kubik, Louis DeLise and Richard Cornell. Her works are published by G. Schirmer. missymazzoli.com

The Borromeo String Quartet (BSQ), now entering its 33rd season, will welcome violist and Bard Conservatory faculty member Melissa Reardon as the newest member of the ensemble. Reardon takes the place of Mai Motobuchi, who is retiring from performing after a remarkable 22-year tenure in the quartet. Leading a multifaceted career, Reardon is an artist in residence at Bard College and the Bard Conservatory, artistic director of the Portland Chamber Music Festival, and a founding member and executive director of East Coast Chamber Orchestra.

A Grammy-nominated performer, Reardon was the violist of the Ensō Quartet from 2006 to 2018. On joining the BSQ, she says, “I have long admired the Borromeo String Quartet and I feel so incredibly excited and lucky to join Nick Kitchen, Kris Tong, and Yeesun Kim. I have some big shoes to fill and hope to honor Mai Motobuchi’s legacy in the group. It is a dream come true to have the opportunity to play quartets with these musicians!” Reardon begins performing with the BSQ in August 2022.

Viveca Lawrie wasn’t looking to come to Bard. She was discovered—by a member of the faculty at the Bard College Conservatory of Music. 
 
Lawrie recalls that Edward Carroll, who teaches trumpet, heard her play and asked her to apply to Bard. She enrolled in the Conservatory, as a bachelor of music student in trumpet performance, and in the College, as a bachelor or arts student majoring in French studies, with a concentration in medieval studies. “The double degree appealed to me,” says the Sedona, Arizona, native. “Trumpet and French are two things I enjoy.” 
 
Her first impression of Bard was of “a beautiful campus.” Her next impression was one of welcome. “It’s a small community and I felt part of it right away.” She soon met Karen Sullivan, Irma Brandeis Professor of Romance Literature and Culture, “and that set me up for the rest of my academic career.” She credits Sullivan with teaching classes “that were 100 percent fun,” and Carroll with “being on board with my love of contemporary music, and help with the technical side” of horn virtuosity. “Bard is very good at matching you with someone,” she says. 
 
At the Conservatory, she and colleagues played together and critiqued one another in “brass class.” “We are a tight-knit group. We really support each other,” she says. “Elsewhere there’s competition, but it’s never been that way here.” 
 
At Bard, “I definitely learned how to write an essay and push the boundaries of how to study.” A surprise was realizing how much she enjoyed academic research and “learning history from the perspective not of the conqueror but of those not in power. This is something that will forever influence how I approach all my research.”
 
With work for her Senior Project in Welsh Arthurian legend, and her Graduation Recital in trumpet, she has little time for extracurricular activities. But she works in the Conservatory audio-visual office on live streaming and recording, and gave AV assistance to a student-organized concert to benefit a Conservatory student whose family is suffering from consequences of COVID-19.
 
For Lawrie, that kind of outreach exemplifies the Bard community. “I meet people who are interested in what I’m doing and I’m open to what they’re doing. It’s healthy that we all show such curiosity.”
 
After graduation, she plans to apply to an MA program in Wales, then a PhD in comparative literature; she also wants to commission composers of contemporary works. “I think people should have multiple options,” she says.
 
How should high school students prepare for Bard? “Come with an open mind. I can’t stress enough how wonderful a preparation Bard’s Language and Thinking Program is for thinking about the world.” She adds, “And come uncomfortable, because you won’t be used to such focused thinking. But don’t feel afraid of it, and be open to listening to others.” 
 
Bard has changed Lawrie’s life in myriad ways. “I am a lot more confident,” she says. “As a homeschooled student, I learned to live on my own. Here I’ve learned how to make friends. I’ve learned—through the support system, counseling, and Upper College students who do tutorials—how to deal when things don’t go my way. Every professor lets me know I can come to them with any problem, especially in the Conservatory. And the French Studies Program has more of a support system than I could imagine, in terms of recommendations, tutoring, wanting to help. Not a lot of colleges have that.”

Micah Gleason GCP ’21, VAP ’22 is currently the music director and conductor on a project in residency at the cell theatre in Manhattan. The Final Veil is a new movement chamber opera based on the true story of Franceska Mann, a Polish-Jewish ballet and burlesque dancer who was captured by the Nazis and used her skills as a dancer to attempt to escape. It was composed by JL Marlor and co-conceived with dancer/director Cassandra Rosebeetle. The show also includes two current VAP students, Abby Cheng and Katherine Lerner-Lee.

Performances are July 14–31, on Thursday Friday, Saturday at 8pm, and Sunday at 5pm at the cell theatre. Book tickets and learn more here.
 

Bard Conservatory of Music horn faculty member Barbara Jöstlein Currie will perform and teach at the International Horn Society symposium at Texas A&M University in Kingsville, Texas. Performing the opening event recital together with fellow Bard horn faculty member Julia Pilant, they will be joined by Philadelphia Orchestra Principal Horn Jennifer Montone. For this recital, Currie commissioned a new piece for horn and piano from Bard Advanced Performance Studies horn student Liri Ronen. The piece is called “Verdant Place,” which is Ronen’s translation of the German title “Anmutige Gegend,” from Faust, Part II by Goethe. The recital will be held at the school of music Performance Hall at Texas A&M University on Monday, August 1 at 8 pm CT. 

Other events, such as an opera excerpt masterclass and a presentation on “How to Succeed in a Time of Need, the Story of the Met Orchestra during the Pandemic,” will be given by on Tuesday, August 2. 

Currie has invented an accessory for brass instruments and created a new company called Brass Witch, which will debut at the symposium. 
Using strong NeoDymium “rare Earth” magnets, she found a new way to attach a pencil to all makes and types of brass instruments. This new product is a vast improvement over the existing hard plastic pencil clip which regularly scratches the surfaces of the instrument and frequently falls off of the instrument. This patent-pending design was tested by many of Currie’s Met Orchestra colleagues, many of whom are also Bard faculty members. Being used in such a rigorous environment such as during 6-hour-long performances of Wagner’s “Die Meistersinger”, or while teaching outside in a tent at Bard during the early stages of the pandemic were great practical ways to test the durability of the product. 

For more information, please visit Brass Witch.

“Bard College's Graduate Vocal Arts Program produced a lively, delightful and musically assured staging of Leoš Janáček's nonpareil Cunning Little Vixen,” writes David Shengold for Opera News. “Doug Fitch's handsome, inventive production and James Bagwell's assured musical direction demonstrated their understanding of this very particular—even peculiar—piece. [...] Bagwell led the youthful Orchestra Now with considerable grace.”

Bard Vocal Arts alum Aiden K. Feltkamp ’16 wants to help transgender and nonbinary people have their voices heard. Anthology of New Music: Trans & Nonbinary Voices, curated by Feltkamp, is thought to be the first compiled volume of songs written for and/or by transgender and nonbinary people. “It’s been in my brain for a long time,” said Feltkamp of the collection. “I really, really love art song, but so much of it was so gendered and I found that it was really hard to connect to it for that reason. Because it was either you had to sing this very feminine music about being a woman or it was this music that . . . was still very much about being a man in the world in the 18th century or whatever.” The compositions featured in the anthology are from 2007 to 2019. “It's really a starting place as a singer to find repertoire, and as a teacher it’s also a place to find things to suggest to students, to teach to students,” says Feltkamp.

The Bard College Conservatory of Music presents Salome, an opera by Richard Strauss with libretto by Oscar Wilde. The Bard Conservatory Orchestra, conducted by Leon Botstein, joins an exciting principal cast of singers in a performance, directed by R. B. Schlather, of Richard Strauss’s once infamous, now famous opera, Salome—a biblical story with a twist. Performances will be held on Friday, March 18 at 8 pm and Sunday, March 20 at 2pm in the Fisher Center’s Sosnoff Theater. Tickets start at $25, with free tickets for Bard students. Virtual livestream tickets are pay what you wish. To purchase or reserve tickets visit fishercenter.bard.edu, call 845-758-7900 (Mon-Fri 10am-5pm), or email [email protected].

Adapted from Oscar Wilde’s one-act play, Richard Strauss’s opera Salome depicts the biblical story of Salome, the Judean princess who demanded, and obtained, the head of St. John the Baptist. Bard Visiting Associate Professor of Music Peter Laki writes that the first performance of Salome, given in Dresden on December 9, 1905, caught even the most progressive critics off guard. “There was little doubt that the opera was a masterpiece, that its music was radically innovative, even ‘revolutionary,’ but many were profoundly disturbed by the image of Salome kissing the severed head of John the Baptist on the mouth,” writes Laki, stressing that, despite its early notoriety, Salome was Strauss’s first successful opera and went on to become part of the standard repertoire of every house that can meet the almost superhuman demands it places on the singers and the enormous orchestra alike. “The opera certainly stands with Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, which followed eight years later, at the threshold of a new era. It did away with many old taboos and presented human situations and emotions in a way they had never been presented before.  Strauss made an old story breathtakingly new, boldly confronting the dark sides of the human psyche.”

Salome is directed by R. B. Schlather with the Bard Conservatory Orchestra conducted by Leon Botstein. The performance features Alexandra Loutsion (Salome), Jay Hunter Morris (Herod), Nathan Berg (Jochanaan), and Katharine Goeldner (Herodias).

Inspired in equal parts by the pandemic, his grandmother, and Julie and Julia, Bard conservatory alumnus ​​Barrett Radziun MM ’13 found sweet fame on Instagram with his account @thetenorchef, writes the Star Tribune. While a graduate student at the Bard College Conservatory of Music, Radziun started baking for his fellow musicians, only to turn the passion into a side business. Now a performer and professor at Texas A&M University-Commerce, when his classes went online, he set about baking every recipe in Claire Saffitz's Dessert Person, documenting his progress on Instagram. “I think part of the reason people have been interested is that because, just like when I found the Bon Appetit channel, it’s beautiful and it feels really positive and uplifting," Radziun says. "I hear from people and they'll say ‘I just wanted to let you know that your posts have been a really bright spot in my life.’”

Full Story in the Star Tribune

A new 14-minute work by Joan Tower, Asher B. Edelman Professor in the Arts, was reviewed in the New York Times. “Imaginative writing for percussion and bustling rhythmic activity — long traits of Tower’s music — course through this restless, episodic score,” writes Anthony Tommasini. Tower, “as inventive as ever,” debuted the piece with the New York Philharmonic as part of Project 19, which commissioned 19 female composers to honor the centennial of the 19th Amendment. “1920/2019” represented the resumption of the series and a return of Tower’s “multilayered, meter-fracturing” style.

Read the Review in the New York Times

 

Faculty members of the Bard College Conservatory of Music and an alumna of the Graduate Vocal Arts Program (VAP) have been nominated for the 2022 GRAMMY Awards. Bard faculty member Gil Shaham has been nominated for a GRAMMY Award for Best Classical Instrumental Solo for his performance in Beethoven & Brahms: Violin Concertos with The Knights. Sō Percussion, a musical group of which Bard Conservatory faculty Eric Cha-Beach and Jason Treuting are members, has received a GRAMMY nod for its performance of composer Caroline Shaw’s Narrow Sea, which has been nominated for Best Contemporary Classical Composition. Dawn Upshaw, star soprano and VAP founding artistic director, also performed in the recording, with pianist Gilbert Kalish. VAP alumna Sophia Burgos MM ’16 was nominated as a principal soloist in the Best Opera Recording category for her performance in Janáček's Cunning Little Vixen with the London Symphony Orchestra,  London Symphony Chorus, and London Symphony Orchestra Discovery Voices. The 64th Annual GRAMMY Awards will air on CBS on January 31, 2022.

A well-regarded artist unexpectedly finds themselves the center of a new TikTok trend: that’s been Jack Ferver’s reality since summer 2021. In an interview with the New York Times, Ferver spoke with Margaret Fuhrer about their work and the journey from a 2007 Starburst commercial to TikTok fame in 2021. Reviving the “Little Lad” character wasn’t in their plan until a friend encouraged them to embrace the phenomenon: “So I thought, OK, I’ll go to Wigs and Plus and get a wig and do this TikTok and then see how it goes. I certainly didn’t anticipate getting two million followers in a month.” What resulted was not only fun and funny, but affirming for Ferver. The TikTok community write comments on each video to remind each other that Ferver uses they/them pronouns. “I’ve felt very bolstered from what I’ve seen from TikTok in terms of breaking away from categorical thinking — with gender, with everything,” Ferver says. Returning the favor, Ferver decided that Little Lad uses all pronouns as a means by which to make sure that “Little Lad includes everybody, that they invite everyone to play.” Ferver is a faculty member in the undergraduate Theater and Performance Program and the Graduate Vocal Arts Program of the Bard College Conservatory of Music.

For the December 2021 cover story of Opera News, Jennifer Melick profiles classical singer and curator Julia Bullock VAP ’11 as she returns to live onstage performances after a pandemic year of performing for video. “Bullock has an unusual quality of being a vivid onscreen presence while seeming simultaneously to be someplace very distant that she wants to take us. The velvety warmth of her voice, phrasing that is not overdone, a natural delivery of the words—all translate well to the screen and microphone. But her unwavering focus and active engagement with the listener are what really jump out,” writes Melick. On coming back to the stage, Bullock says, “I’m not challenged by the scope and scale of the performance, but it’s a very different vibe, a space that I need to practice filling out again.”

More and more, writes Melick, Bullock finds it “very clear the places I want to work, the people with whom I want to work, to ensure that I am entering into a legitimate collaborative relationship.” She also feels the responsibility of making the kind of spaces where unfettered creativity can happen, on more equitable and safer terms, for artists.

Samuel Mutter ’25 was so inspired by reading Vladimir Bukovsky's book To Build a Castle: My Life as a Dissenter as a Bard first-year that he composed “Incarceration,” an original piece of music that premiered at the Atlantic Music Festival over the summer. Mutter read Bukovsky's Soviet prison dissident memoir last year in Alternate Worlds: Utopia and Dystopia in Modern Russia, a common course taught by Sean McMeekin, Francis Flournoy Professor of European History and Culture. In an interview with Soviet History Lessons, a historical archive chronicling the human rights movement in the USSR, Mutter comments on the book and Bukovsky's life as an activist: “What could be a more important battle than a battle for life, for liberty, for basic human rights and freedoms?” He goes on to describe the inspiring experience he had last semester teaching piano lessons to young people in a local juvenile detention center through the Bard student–led Musical Mentorship Initiative. Mutter is a double-degree student in the Conservatory majoring in music composition and global and international studies with a concentration in historical studies.

The Global Search for Education interviews Kira Shiner, a 2021 recipient of a Graduate Certificate in Advanced Performance Studies (APS) from the Bard College Conservatory of Music, about her experience in pulling together an online musical performance during the pandemic. “I think music performance is on the brink of a big transition to something new. This pandemic has made every ensemble rethink how they interact with an audience,” says Shiner. Audiences can watch “Gypsy Song,” from Carmen, a lively performance from five Bard Conservatory and APS recipients on the Planet Classroom Network YouTube Channel. The five musicians in the woodwind quintet, APS recipients Collin Lewis, Kira Shiner, and Timothy Woerner; Conservatory alumna Jillian Reed ’21; and Eleni Georgiadis spread throughout the county, flawlessly mesh together their individual parts to create a perfect arrangement of the classic song from the Bizet opera.

The Bard College Conservatory of Music and Graduate Vocal Arts Program present Songs From The Real World: The French Cabaret, a benefit for the Bard Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Scholarship Fund. The concert features renowned mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe (artistic director), pianist Kayo Iwama (associate director), as well as members of the Graduate Vocal Arts Program and Conservatory Collaborative Piano Fellowship exploring the beginnings of the world of French cabaret, a musical movement that was born to explore an exotic and bohemian ideal, expressing social and political satire through song. The performance will be held on Saturday, November 6 at 8 pm in the Fisher Center’s Sosnoff Theater. Tickets start at $25, with $5 tickets for Bard students made possible by the Passloff Pass. Virtual livestream tickets are pay what you wish. All ticket sales benefit the Bard Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Scholarship Fund. To purchase or reserve tickets visit fishercenter.bard.edu, call 845-758-7900 (Mon-Fri 10am-5pm), or email [email protected].

“One of the most important missions of the Bard Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Program is to teach the art of communication and collaboration. So it makes perfect sense that on the heels of a worldwide pandemic that took us all out of the public world and cast us into very private and often solitary settings, that we would emerge through the world of French chanson,” writes Artistic Director Stephanie Blythe. “These extraordinarily popular songs began in the 1880’s with the appearance of the chanson realiste—unapologetically truthful statements about life on the streets of Paris and all the elements that defined those lives—working class poverty, debauchery, sex, crime, and much of it seen through the lens of romantic, smoky cafés and rain soaked, cobblestone streets. Here was found a healthy dose of nostalgia, peppered with wit and charm, as well as a deep sadness and longing, and not a little accordion. These songs are a perfect way to initiate an intimate dialogue with an audience—one that we have been developing even more keenly after such a long, forced separation from all of you. Through the art of the chanson, we see what it means to be fully human, something we have all been taking a hard look at over the last year and a half.”

The evening’s program includes a repertoire of French cabaret songs spanning 1866 through 1968, and includes “Les temps des cerises” (1866) by Jean-Baptiste Clément (1836-1903), “La Vie en rose” (1945) by Louiguy (1916-91), “Le serpents qui danse” (1957) by Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), and “Les moulins de mon coeur” (1968) by Michel Legrand (1932-2019) among many others.

Stephanie Blythe, world-renowned mezzo-soprano and artistic director of the Graduate Vocal Arts Program at the Bard College Conservatory of Music, will kick off the San Diego Opera’s 2021–22 season on Saturday, October 23 with a tribute to lyricist Johnny Mercer. Mercer cowrote more than 1,500 songs in his half-century career, helping to create the Great American Songbook of the 20th century​​. “He was known as the king of lyrics and he worked with many of the best composers because he was such a great collaborator,” Blythe says in this interview.

The Violin Channel’s VC Live is streaming “Asian American Voices: American Stories & Music,” an online concert featuring a selection of important live symphonic works recorded at this year’s China Now Music Festival presented by the US-China Music Institute of the Bard College Conservatory of Music. Tune in at 7 PM (ET) on Tuesday, October 19 for this special event.

“Asian American artists are taking a greater role in the music world of the 21st Century,” said China Now Music Festival Artistic Director Jindong Cai, who recently sat down with The Violin Channel in an interview. “You can witness this in any symphony orchestra, opera house, or conservatory and the creation of the US-China Music Institute is a reflection of this trend. I hope I can use my experience to create a strong platform to enable a greater appreciation of the music from China and to provide new opportunities for artists to perform Chinese music.”

“The US-China Music Institute of the Bard College Conservatory of Music is proving a leading force in introducing music from contemporary China to the United States, and in promoting musical exchanges between the countries,” writes The Violin Channel. 

“Asian American Voices: American Stories & Music”
Presented by US-China Music Institute of the Bard College Conservatory of Music 
Tuesday, October 19 at 7 PM (ET)

Del Sol Quartet & China Now Festival Chorus
Huang Ruo | Angel Island: Oratorio for voices and String Quartet

Conductor Jingdong Cai & The Orchestra Now | Li Yi (tenor) | Nina Yoshida Nelsen (mezzo-soprano) | Helen Zhibing Huang (soprano) | David Henry Hwang (librettist, live narration)
Huang Ruo | Selections from An American Soldier

Conductor Jingdong Cai & The Orchestra Now | Yixin Wang (guzheng)
Xinyan Li | Awakening Light

Conductor Jingdong Cai & The Orchestra Now
Peng-Peng Gong | A Chinese in New York (2019)

   

This Year’s Theme, Asian American Voices, Focuses on Moving Society Forward Through Music

The US-China Music Institute of the Bard College Conservatory of Music announces the fourth season of the China Now Music Festival, from October 12 to 17. The festival’s concerts will take place at The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College and streaming online. Through an annual series of concerts and academic activities, the China Now Music Festival is dedicated to promoting an understanding and appreciation of music from contemporary China. This year’s theme broadens the festival’s scope to include the voices of a wide array of Asian American composers, with the aim of exploring their importance in contemporary American music and society. “Asian American voices are American voices, and Asian American music is American music. We should always cherish the cultural diversity in American society,” says China Now Music Festival Artistic Director Jindong Cai.

The fourth annual China Now Music Festival, Asian American Voices, arrives in the midst of a particularly challenging time, shadowed by the global pandemic and recent rise in anti-Asian discrimination and violence. The repertoire thus reflects how Asian American composers have responded to this particular moment, as well as to the historical reception of Asians in America. 

“Music is not just an art form but should help move society forward,” says Huang Ruo, the festival’s composer-in-residence.  

The festival features three important works by New York–based composer, Huang Ruo. Born in China in 1976 and based in the United States, Huang has established a career as a major figure in classical music today. Spanning many genres and traditions, Huang’s work often aims to integrate Chinese and Western influences into multidimensional soundscapes. Key festival performances include a preview of excerpts from his latest composition, Angel Island; A Dust in Time, a piece he composed in response to the pandemic; and selections from his opera An American Solider, with libretto by David Henry Hwang. The festival programming also showcases new works by a range of Asian American composers. These works delve into the Asian American experience stretching back 100 years to today.

“The recent spike in anti-AAPI hate reminds us that Asian Americans must lift up our voices and show the world who we are, in all our strength, complexity, and humanity,” says playwright David Henry Hwang.

On Tuesday, October 12 at 8pm, the festival’s opening concert, Asian American Voices: Composing for History, music of Huang Ruo, conducted by China Now Artistic Director Jindong Cai, will be held at the Fisher Center for Performing Arts. The Orchestra Now will perform Huang’s 2020 meditation on the pandemic, A Dust in Time: A Passacaglia for Strings, which mirrors a Tibetan sand mandala in its musical structure. The festival’s ensemble­–in-residence, the San Francisco-based Del Sol Quartet, will also present a preview of excerpts from Huang’s latest work, Angel Island: Oratorio for Voices and String Quartet. Angel Island sets to music the haunting Chinese poetry, more than 200 poems, inscribed on the walls of the Angel Island immigration center in San Francisco by detained immigrants during the early 20th century.

On Wednesday, October 13, 2021 at 8pm, Asian American Voices: Undercurrents in Contemporary American Music, a multimedia chamber concert, will be held at the Fisher Center at Bard College. Korean-American composer Jin Hi Kim presents the world-premiere of A Ritual for COVID-19, a multimedia composition inspired by the Korean shamanistic ‘ssitkimkut’ ritual for purifying the spirits of the dead. The Del Sol Quartet will perform new compositions by Erberk Eryilmaz, Takuma Itoh, Vijay Iyer, Erika Oba, and Jungyoon Wie, representing many diverse voices to reflect various aspects of Asian American society and history, from the early years of Japanese immigration—with Itoh’s piece Picture Brides—to selections from the quartet’s ‘Joy Project’—an effort to respond to current social and political change, technology, and artistic innovation.

On Saturday, October 16 at 3pm, Asian American Voices: Symphonic Portraits, with The Orchestra Now, a festival concert, will be held at the Fisher Center for Performing Arts. Jindong Cai will lead The Orchestra Now to showcase three symphonic works by the composers Tan Dun, dean of the Bard Conservatory; Xinyan Li, Bard Conservatory faculty member; and Peng-Peng Gong, Shanghai-based composer and pianist. Tan’s Prayer and Blessing is his initial response to the pandemic, composed in early 2020. Li’s Awakening Light, concerto for guzheng and orchestra, was commissioned by the festival to be performed by the winner of the 2019 Bard Conservatory Concerto Competition, Yixin Wang. Gong’s A Chinese in New York is a raw description of the experience of a Chinese student confronting cultural differences in America. 

The second half of the concert will feature several moving episodes from composer Huang Ruo’s 2014 opera, An American Soldier. The opera tells the powerful and haunting true story of the death of US Army Private Danny Chen, who was born and raised in New York's Chinatown and died in Afghanistan in 2001 after being subjected to relentless hazing and racial maltreatment by his superiors. The episodes presented here will be introduced by the opera’s librettist, Tony award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang. 

On Sunday, October 17 at 5pm, the festival will offer a free livestream of American Stories, American Music: a Symphonic Concert Online. The program begins with the Del Sol Quartet and China Now Festival Chorus performance of a preview of excerpts from Angel Island: Oratorio for Voices and String Quartet. The concert will also feature the previous day’s live performance of selected episodes from An American Soldier, with The Orchestra Now, soloists, and live narration by librettist David Henry Hwang, along with other pieces previously recorded at Bard’s Fisher Center. This concert will be broadcast in partnership with The Violin Channel. 

An online panel discussion and performance, Asian American Voices: Artists Confronting Society, on Thursday, October 14 at 8pm will bring together some of the major voices in the 2021 China Now Music Festival. Featured composer Huang Ruo, Tony award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang, artistic director of the China Now Music Festival Jindong Cai, violist Charlton Lee of the Del Sol Quartet, and others will discuss their experience as Asian American artists and reflect on how this particular moment in history has shaped their creative process and their views on the role of the artist in society. Following the panel discussion, the Del Sol Quartet will offer an excerpt of their new recording of Huang Ruo’s meditation on the pandemic, A Dust in Time.

For more information about the China Now Music Festival and for full programming details, visit barduschinamusic.org/asian-american-voices.

Tickets for October 12 and 13 have a suggested donation of $15 or $20. Tickets for October 16 are $25, $30, $35, and $40. To purchase tickets for the Fisher Center concerts, visit fishercenter.bard.edu, call 845-758-7900 (Mon-Fri 10am-5pm), or email [email protected]. 

NOTE: Due to unforeseen events, the concert originally scheduled to take place at Jazz at Lincoln Center on October 17 will now be presented online. Online Festival events are presented free to the public. Registration links can be found on the Festival website at barduschinamusic.org/asian-american-voices.

The Bard College Conservatory of Music presents the Bard Conservatory Orchestra with members of The Orchestra Now (TŌN) performing Gustav Mahler’s Second Symphony, “Resurrection” conducted by music director Leon Botstein. The concert features soloists Sungyeun Kim (soprano) and Joanne Evans (mezzo) from the Bard Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Program, as well as vocalists from Bard College Chamber Singers, Bard Festival Chorale, and Bard Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Program, led by choral director James Bagwell. The performances will be held on Saturday, October 23 at 8 pm and Sunday, October 24 at 3 pm in the Fisher Center’s Sosnoff Theater. Tickets have a suggested donation of $20 for Orchestra; $15 for Parterre & Balcony; and are free for Bard community with ID and for virtual livestream. Ticket sales benefit the Conservatory scholarship fund. To purchase or reserve tickets visit fishercenter.bard.edu, call 845-758-7900 (Mon-Fri 10am-5pm), or email [email protected].

Mahler composed Symphony No. 2 in C Minor, “Resurrection” over the span of nearly seven years (1888–94) with it emerging as one of his most powerful and successful compositions. When he began writing it in 1888, at age 28, he had no idea of the overall structure or how it would end; the process of discovery—and self-discovery—that unfolded during this time pondering issues no less weighty than the meaning of life and death. The conclusion was a particular problem and the solution proved something of a revelation: a choral finale setting the “Resurrection” poem by the 18th-century German writer Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, which Mahler adapted with his own words. What became known as the “Resurrection” Symphony is one of the longest, most ambitious, and profoundly moving orchestral works ever composed. 

The Second Symphony held special place for Mahler. It was the first of his symphonies he conducted in Vienna (and also as his farewell to the city in 1907), as well as the first that he presented in Munich, New York, and Paris. Mahler told his confidant Natalie Bauer-Lechner: “Never again will I attain such depths and heights, as Ulysses only once in his life returned from Tartarus. One can create only once or twice in a lifetime works on such a great subject.”

Chaojun Yang, who earned a BM in piano performance and BA in French studies through the Bard College Conservatory of Music’s dual-degree program, talks to IPR’s Kate Botello about the importance of risk taking in musical performance, and helping audiences understand the connections between the music and its broader historic, aesthetic, and humanistic world.

Christina Jones has been working with the A. J. Williams-Myers African Roots Center in Kingston on The Green Book Project, in which she has sifted through archival materials to uncover more about how the Green Book played a role in local Black history. Christina graduated this year from the Bard College Conservatory of Music with a double degree in anthropology with a concentration in Africana studies and cello performance. This fall she will head to Cambridge University to pursue her graduate studies.

“[T]here has been progress for us,” Bard Conservatory Dean Tan Dun tells the New York Times. “I am the first Eastern composer to be the dean of a Western conservatory, at Bard. That’s like a Chinese chef becoming the chef of an Italian restaurant. That’s the future: a different way of approaching color, boundary-less, a unity of the soul.”
 

Grace Molinaro ’24, a dual degree Bard Conservatory and Middle Eastern Studies major at Bard College, has been awarded a U.S. Department of State Critical Language Scholarship to study Arabic during the summer of 2021. The U.S. Department of State’s Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) Program is part of a U.S. government effort to expand the number of Americans studying and mastering critical foreign languages. CLS scholars gain critical language and cultural skills that enable them to contribute to U.S. economic competitiveness and national security. Molinaro is one of nearly 700 competitively selected American students at U.S. colleges and universities who received a CLS award in 2021.

“I feel extremely lucky to have received this scholarship because it will help me develop my ability to better express my thoughts in Arabic and communicate across borders—linguistic, national, cultural, and others,” said Molinaro. “I am hoping it will help me get to know the community in my home area better, since a lot of people speak Arabic, and I especially hope that this experience will give me the skills and tools to communicate, negotiate, and foster understanding through language.”

About the Critical Language Scholarship Program
The Critical Language Scholarship Program provides opportunities to U.S. undergraduate and graduate students to spend eight to ten weeks studying one of 15 critical languages: Arabic, Azerbaijani, Bangla, Chinese, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Portuguese, Punjabi, Russian, Swahili, Turkish, or Urdu. The program includes intensive language instruction and structured cultural enrichment experiences designed to promote rapid language gains. The CLS Program is developed in partnership with local institutions in countries where these languages are commonly spoken. CLS scholars are expected to continue their language study beyond the scholarship and apply their critical language skills in their future careers. Since 2006, CLS has awarded scholarships to more than 8,000 American students to learn critical languages around the world. CLS scholars are among the more than 50,000 academic and professional exchange program participants supported annually by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. These exchange programs build respect and positive relations between the people of the United States and the people of other countries. The CLS Program is a program of the U.S. Department of State and is supported in its administration by American Councils for International Education. For more information, visit clscholarship.org.

About Bard College
Founded in 1860, Bard College is a four-year residential college of the liberal arts and sciences located 90 miles north of New York City. With the addition of the Montgomery Place estate, Bard’s campus consists of nearly 1,000 parklike acres in the Hudson River Valley. It offers bachelor of arts, bachelor of science, and bachelor of music degrees, with majors in nearly 40 academic programs; graduate degrees in 11 programs; eight early colleges; and numerous dual-degree programs nationally and internationally. Building on its 161-year history as a competitive and innovative undergraduate institution, Bard College has expanded its mission as a private institution acting in the public interest across the country and around the world to meet broader student needs and increase access to liberal arts education. The undergraduate program at our main campus in upstate New York has a reputation for scholarly excellence, a focus on the arts, and civic engagement. Bard is committed to enriching culture, public life, and democratic discourse by training tomorrow’s thought leaders. For more information about Bard College, visit bard.edu.(6/15/21)

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), in partnership with Arts Midwest, has awarded Bard College a $19,985 NEA Big Read grant to support the Big Read Hudson Valley: Spanning the Hudson River with Words, a dynamic community-wide reading program offering reading groups, performances, workshops, and events in Red Hook, Rhinebeck, and Kingston. Focused on the Big Read selection, The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. Big Read Hudson Valley, which takes place next March-April, 2022, is a collaboration among Bard College and its Master of Arts in Teaching Program and La Voz magazine, with support from Bard’s Written Arts Program, the Bard Conservatory, and Conjunctions literary journal, along with partner libraries and community organizations, including Radio Kingston, the Kingston Library, the Red Hook Library, Tivoli Library, Starr Library, the Reher Center for Immigrant Culture and History, Ramapo for Children, Oblong Books, and Rough Draft Bar & Books.

“For 15 years the NEA Big Read has supported opportunities for communities to come together around a book, creating a shared experience that encourages openness and conversations around issues central to our lives,” said Ann Eilers, acting chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. “We congratulate all of the new NEA Big Read grantees and look forward to seeing the range of meaningful activities they create for their communities.”

Big Read Hudson Valley is one of 61 grants totaling $1,070,000 supported by NEA Big Read in 2021-2022. The grants, managed by Arts Midwest, will support dynamic community reading programs designed to encourage conversation and discovery, all inspired by a book from the NEA Big Read library. The 2021-2022 NEA Big Read grantees are located in 28 states, with 43 percent of the organizations located in communities with populations under 50,000. Nearly half (44 percent) of the recipients are first-time recipients of an NEA Big Read grant. Each organization is receiving a matching grant ranging from $5,000 to $20,000.

About the National Endowment for the Arts Big Read
The National Endowment for the Arts Big Read, a partnership with Arts Midwest, broadens our understanding of our world, our communities, and ourselves through the joy of sharing a good book. Since 2006, the National Endowment for the Arts has funded more than 1,700 NEA Big Read programs, providing more than $23 million to organizations nationwide. In addition, Big Read activities have reached every Congressional district in the country. Over the past 15 years, grantees have leveraged more than $50 million in local funding to support their NEA Big Read programs. More than 5.7 million Americans have attended an NEA Big Read event, over 90,000 volunteers have participated at the local level, and over 40,000 community organizations have partnered to make NEA Big Read activities possible. Visit arts.gov/neabigread for more information about the NEA Big Read, including reader resources—such as book overviews, discussion questions, and interviews with the authors—as well as community stories from past NEA Big Read grantees. Organizations interested in applying for an NEA Big Read grant in the future should visit Arts Midwest’s website for more information.

Established by Congress in 1965, the National Endowment for the Arts is the independent federal agency whose funding and support gives Americans the opportunity to participate in the arts, exercise their imaginations, and develop their creative capacities. Through partnerships with state arts agencies, local leaders, other federal agencies, and the philanthropic sector, the Arts Endowment supports arts learning, affirms and celebrates America’s rich and diverse cultural heritage, and extends its work to promote equal access to the arts in every community across America. Visit arts.gov to learn more.

Arts Midwest believes that creativity has the power to inspire and unite humanity. Based in Minneapolis, Arts Midwest grows, gathers, and invests in creative organizations and communities throughout the nine-state region of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. One of six nonprofit United States Regional Arts Organizations, Arts Midwest’s history spans more than 30 years. For more information, visit artsmidwest.org.

About Bard College
Founded in 1860, Bard College is a four-year residential college of the liberal arts and sciences located 90 miles north of New York City. With the addition of the Montgomery Place estate, Bard’s campus consists of nearly 1,000 parklike acres in the Hudson River Valley. It offers bachelor of arts, bachelor of science, and bachelor of music degrees, with majors in nearly 40 academic programs; graduate degrees in 11 programs; eight early colleges; and numerous dual-degree programs nationally and internationally. Building on its 161-year history as a competitive and innovative undergraduate institution, Bard College has expanded its mission as a private institution acting in the public interest across the country and around the world to meet broader student needs and increase access to liberal arts education. The undergraduate program at our main campus in upstate New York has a reputation for scholarly excellence, a focus on the arts, and civic engagement. Bard is committed to enriching culture, public life, and democratic discourse by training tomorrow’s thought leaders. For more information about Bard College, visit bard.edu.(6/10/21)

The National Endowment for the Arts has approved a $30,000 Grants for Arts Projects award for “Freedom on the Move: Songs in Flight,” a project envisioned and led by art song organization Sparks & Wiry Cries for the commission of two world premieres and a subsequent performance tour in 2023. This ambitious musical project is a direct response to Cornell University’s Freedom on the Move (FOTM) database, housing digitized, searchable fugitive slave advertisements, resulting in a co-commission by Sparks & Wiry Cries and the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society. The grant was written by Sparks cofounders Martha Guth, Ithaca College, and Erika Switzer, Bard artist in residence; director, Postgraduate Collaborative Piano Fellowship; and faculty in Bard’s undergraduate Music Program, Graduate Vocal Arts Program, and Conservatory of Music, with Sparks Managing Editor Lucy Fitz Gibbon, faculty in Bard College's Conservatory of Music and Graduate Vocal Arts Program.

The first commission is a song cycle by composer Shawn Okpebholo featuring four prominent classical musicians—soprano Karen Slack, countertenor Reginald Mobley, baritone Will Liverman, and pianist and Bard Conservatory faculty Howard Watkins—interlaced with material curated and performed by the singer and multi-instrumentalist Rhiannon Giddens. Okpebholo’s cycle sets poetry curated by Tsitsi Ella Jaji, Duke University, whose work along with that of poet Crystal Simone Smith, Duke University, contextualizes and responds to documents in the FOTM database. This interdisciplinary song cycle will be accompanied by a choral work by Joel Thompson, drawing on the Spiritual tradition as well as the FOTM database. After a New York City premiere in early 2023, the project will travel to Philadelphia, Durham, and the Finger Lakes region of New York, in performances co-presented by the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Lincoln University, Duke University, Cornell University, Ithaca College, the Harriet Tubman Home, Inc., in partnership with Sparks & Wiry Cries.

This project is among the more than 1,100 projects across America totaling nearly $27 million that were selected during this second round of Grants for Arts Projects fiscal year 2021 funding.

“As the country and the arts sector begin to imagine returning to a post-pandemic world, the National
Endowment for the Arts is proud to announce funding that will help arts organizations such as Cornell’s Music Department reengage fully with partners and audiences,” said NEA Acting Chairman Ann Eilers. “Although the arts have sustained many during the pandemic, the chance to gather with one another and share arts experiences is its own necessity and pleasure.”

For more information on the projects included in the Arts Endowment grant announcement, visit
arts.gov/news.

# # #

About Sparks & Wiry Cries
Sparks & Wiry Cries curates opportunities for art song creators, performers, and scholars through innovative initiatives that capture the stories of our diverse communities. For more information, visit sparksandwirycries.org.


About Freedom on the Move
Due to the breaking of family bonds and the illegality of literacy amongst enslaved people, there
remains a paucity of written records to track individual lives during the period of slavery. The Freedom on the Move database notes that it compiles “thousands of stories of resistance that have never been accessible in one place. Created to control the movement of enslaved people, the ads ultimately preserved the details of individual lives—their personality, appearance, and life story. Taken collectively, the ads constitute a detailed, concise, and rare source of information about the experiences of enslaved people.” Cornell Department of History’s Dr. Ed Baptist and William Block, director of the Cornell Institute for Social and Economic Research (CISER), are the principal investigators for FOTM, a joint project of the Department of History, CISER and Cornell University Library. Songs in Flight seeks to bring awareness to these individuals and to the creative possibilities made possible through FOTM, building a living monument to this erased history by highlighting stories of strength rather than stories of oppression. For more information, visit freedomonthemove.org.

About Bard College
Founded in 1860, Bard College is a four-year residential college of the liberal arts and sciences located 90 miles north of New York City. With the addition of the Montgomery Place estate, Bard’s campus consists of nearly 1,000 parklike acres in the Hudson River Valley. It offers bachelor of arts, bachelor of science, and bachelor of music degrees, with majors in nearly 40 academic programs; graduate degrees in 11 programs; eight early colleges; and numerous dual-degree programs nationally and internationally. Building on its 161-year history as a competitive and innovative undergraduate institution, Bard College has expanded its mission as a private institution acting in the public interest across the country and around the world to meet broader student needs and increase access to liberal arts education. The undergraduate program at our main campus in upstate New York has a reputation for scholarly excellence, a focus on the arts, and civic engagement. Bard is committed to enriching culture, public life, and democratic discourse by training tomorrow’s thought leaders. For more information about Bard College, visit bard.edu.(5/27/21)

The American Academy in Berlin has awarded Christopher H. Gibbs, James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Music at Bard College, a 2021-22 Berlin Prize. The Berlin Prize is awarded annually to American or US-based scholars, writers, composers, and artists who represent the highest standards of excellence in their fields, from the humanities and social sciences to journalism, public policy, fiction, the visual arts, and music composition. Gibbs, who is also artistic codirector of the Bard Music Festival and a professor at the Bard College Conservatory of Music, was named a spring 2022 Berlin Prize fellow. Fellows spend a semester at the Academy’s lakeside Hans Arnhold Center, a historic nineteenth-century villa located in Berlin’s Wannsee district.

“Gibbs has long been committed to so-called public musicology, especially to forging links between music scholarship and general audiences through curated concerts and festivals,” writes the American Academy in Berlin in its award citation. “In Berlin, he will explore the past, present, and future of concert life in the city.”

“I am thrilled by the opportunity to think intensely about curation, something familiar with museums but much less so with music,” said Gibbs. “Berlin’s rich musical history and its innovative scene today provide abundant material to help reimage the future, especially in the wake of the pandemic and amid struggles for social justice.”

About the 2021-22 Berlin Prize
Chosen by an independent selection committee, the 2021-22 class of Berlin Prize fellows will pursue a wide array of scholarly and artistic projects, including histories of the legalities of small wars among European empires, the Visigothic political order, competing conceptions of self-government in English and American political thought, Algerian Jewish life, and the Greek Revolution; two new novels and a graphic memoir; investigations into lithium extraction in the US, Chile, and Argentina; EU-China-US relations in the context of global supply chains; the relationship between declining coal-use and the rise of populism; European attitudes toward global democratic decline; and new works by a composer, translator, and two visual artists.

The Berlin Prize provides recipients the time and resources to advance important scholarly and artistic projects, free from the constraints of other professional obligations. Fellows work throughout the semester with Berlin peers and institutions in the Academy’s well-established network, forging meaningful connections that lead to lasting transatlantic relationships. During their stays, fellows engage German audiences through lectures, readings, and performances, which form the core of the American Academy’s public program. For more information, click here.

About Christopher H. Gibbs
Christopher H. Gibbs is James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Music at Bard College; faculty, Bard College Conservatory of Music; and artistic codirector, Bard Music Festival. He is the executive editor of The Musical Quarterly; editor of The Cambridge Companion to Schubert (1997); author of The Life of Schubert (2000), which has been translated into five languages; coeditor of Franz Liszt and His World (2006) and Franz Schubert and His World (2014); and coauthor of The Oxford History of Western Music, College Edition (2013; 2nd ed., 2018). He is a contributor to New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 19th-Century Music, Schubert durch die Brille, Current Musicology, Opera Quarterly, and Chronicle of Higher Education. Additionally, he has served as program annotator and musicological consultant to the Philadelphia Orchestra (2000– ); musicological director of the Schubertiade at the 92nd Street Y in New York City; musicological adviser for the Schubert Festival at Carnegie Hall (1997); and artistic codirector of the Bard Music Festival (2003– ). Among Gibbs’s previous honors were the Dissertation Prize of the Austrian Cultural Institute, ASCAP–Deems Taylor Award, and American Council of Learned Societies fellowship. He previously taught at SUNY Buffalo (1993–2003). BA, Haverford College; MA, MPhil, PhD, Columbia University. At Bard since 2002.

About Bard College
Founded in 1860, Bard College is a four-year residential college of the liberal arts and sciences located 90 miles north of New York City. With the addition of the Montgomery Place estate, Bard’s campus consists of nearly 1,000 parklike acres in the Hudson River Valley. It offers bachelor of arts, bachelor of science, and bachelor of music degrees, with majors in nearly 40 academic programs; graduate degrees in 11 programs; eight early colleges; and numerous dual-degree programs nationally and internationally. Building on its 161-year history as a competitive and innovative undergraduate institution, Bard College has expanded its mission as a private institution acting in the public interest across the country and around the world to meet broader student needs and increase access to liberal arts education. The undergraduate program at our main campus in upstate New York has a reputation for scholarly excellence, a focus on the arts, and civic engagement. Bard is committed to enriching culture, public life, and democratic discourse by training tomorrow’s thought leaders. For more information about Bard College, visit bard.edu.(5/13/21)

From April 8–April 10, the US-China Music Institute of the Bard College Conservatory of Music presents Harmony and Compassion: Music in Buddhist Ritual, a three-day online conference and performance series exploring forms of Buddhist musical practice through online talks, performances, and demonstrations. Speakers will provide historical, sociological, and musicological context for musical rituals in Buddhist traditions. Performances will draw from different regions and styles of traditional chanting, ceremonial music, and contemporary composition. The conference and performances are free and open to the public. For information and to register, please click here.

Buddhism is a philosophy of life that aims to liberate living beings from suffering. Because of that, compassion is at the core of Buddhist teaching. Music plays an integral role in the practice of Buddhism, and has been said to “adorn the places where the Buddha preaches.”

The Harmony and Compassion conference features discussions by scholars, educators, composers, lamas, monks, and musicians on the origins of Buddhist poetics, song, chant, and other forms, as well as performances of ceremonial music from temples in the regions of Northern China, Southern China, Taiwan, and Tibet, as well as Bhutan, and North America. Attendees will hear chanting in solitude and in small groups, and instrumental music as large as a symphony orchestra in a concert hall, or as intimate as a duet for guqin and bamboo flute. The conference will close with a special music-filled event from the Kingdom of Bhutan, a message of healing from one of the happiest nations on earth.

Harmony and Compassion: Music in Buddhist Ritual
Schedule of Events:

Thursday, April 8
BUDDHISM, MUSIC, AND SOCIETY
Panel Discussion (Zoom) 5:30–7 p.m. EST

Performance (Streaming) 8–9 p.m. EST

Friday, April 9
ENTERING THE WORLD, THE PATH OF MUSIC
Panel Discussion (Zoom) 5:30–7 p.m. EST
Performance (Streaming) 8–9 p.m. EST

Saturday, April 10
A BLESSING FROM BHUTAN
Performance (Streaming) 7:30–8:30 p.m. EST
Discussion and Q&A (Zoom) 8:30–9:30 p.m. EST

For more detailed program information please visit
barduschinamusic.org/harmony2021

Contact information:
[email protected]

The US-China Music Institute was founded in 2018 by conductor Jindong Cai and Robert Martin, founding director of the Bard College Conservatory of Music, with the mission to promote the study, performance, and appreciation of music from contemporary China and to support musical exchange between the United States and China. In partnership with the prestigious Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, the Institute has embarked on several groundbreaking projects including the first degree-granting program in Chinese instrument performance in a U.S. conservatory. barduschinamusic.org

Recognized as one of the finest conservatories in the United States, Bard College Conservatory of Music is guided by the principle that young musicians should be broadly educated in the liberal arts and sciences to achieve their greatest potential. The mission of the Conservatory is to provide the best possible preparation for a person dedicated to a life immersed in the creation and performance of music. The five-year, double-degree program combines rigorous conservatory training with a challenging and comprehensive liberal arts program. All Conservatory students pursue a double degree in a thoroughly integrated program and supportive educational community. Graduating students receive a bachelor of music and a bachelor of arts in a field other than music. At the Bard Conservatory the serious study of music goes hand in hand with the education of the whole person. Founded in 2005 by cellist and philosopher Robert Martin, the Conservatory welcomed the composer Tan Dun as its new dean in the summer of 2019. bard.edu/conservatory(4.5.21)
 

Bard College Conservatory student Sophia Kathryn Jackson ’25 has been selected as a 2021 Frederick Douglass Global Fellow, an honor awarding her a full scholarship to represent Bard in a summer study abroad program focused on leadership, intercultural communication, and social justice. Jackson is one of just 14 high-achieving student leaders from diverse backgrounds selected for this prestigious award. The Council for International Educational Exchange (CIEE) announced the 2021 cohort of Frederick Douglass Global Fellows in an online St. Patrick’s Day roundtable where the fellows were congratulated by Vice President Kamala Harris, Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin, and Nettie Washington Douglass, the great-great-granddaughter of Frederick Douglass.

 “You will create friendships around the globe as an extension of the work we do as a country to inspire and to work on and to build on the friendships we have around the world,” said Vice President Harris. “Many of you know that I attended Howard University, a school that was founded at a time when few recognized the potential of Black students to be leaders. At HBCUs, and at fellowship programs like this, students of color are prepared to lead. Like Frederick Douglass in Ireland, you can come as you are, and you can leave who you aspire to be.”

A double major in biology and music performance, Jackson was selected as a Frederick Douglass Global Fellow because of her academic excellence, communication skills, and commitment to social justice. A highlight of Sophia’s service to her community is the Music Mentorship Initiative, a program she cofounded, through which she and other undergraduate musicians provide free private music instruction over Zoom for students who could not otherwise afford lessons. Jackson anticipates her time in Dublin will be transformative. “Growth is a byproduct of being exposed to new and uncertain experiences,” she said in her application video. “Being confronted with the challenges of being in a new place and being able to work through them with the perspectives of my cohort will lead to the start of a growth that I envision will continue to bloom throughout my collegiate years and influence my service-based path.”

Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs will co-sponsor the 2021 Frederick Douglass Global Fellows in Dublin, Ireland, to honor the 175^th anniversary of the meeting between 27-year-old abolitionist Frederick Douglass and the Irish reformer Daniel O’Connell in Dublin in 1845.

“I was delighted to join Vice President Harris this morning in meeting these exceptional young people,” said Prime Minister Martin. “Frederick Douglass has a vital and valued legacy on either side of the Atlantic and my Government is delighted to mark the 175th anniversary of his historic tour of Ireland by welcoming 20 brilliant American students from minority backgrounds to follow in the great abolitionist’s footsteps and learn of the influential relationship between Daniel O’Connell and Frederick Douglass.”

In Ireland, Frederick Douglass Global Fellows will study leadership, effective communication, and strategies to affect positive social change as they explore the life stories and legacies of Frederick Douglass and Daniel O’Connell.

“It’s fitting that this diverse group of young people will have the opportunity to develop their leadership skills in a place so special to Frederick Douglass,” said Nettie Washington Douglass, chairwoman and co-founder of Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives, and the great-great-granddaughter of Frederick Douglass and great-granddaughter of Booker T. Washington. “The welcome and respect with which Frederick was greeted across his tour of Ireland affected him profoundly. I can think of no better place for future American leaders to gain a global perspective and prepare to be agents of change.”

The Frederick Douglass Global Fellowship was launched in 2017 by CIEE to expand access to international education to underrepresented students. In addition to funding the Frederick Douglass Global Fellows, CIEE provides all students who complete the fellowship application a $1,500 grant to attend a CIEE summer study abroad program. Known as the Frederick Douglass Summer Scholars Grant, this award is matched by many colleges and universities, making an international education experience financially attainable for many more students from diverse backgrounds. To learn more about the Frederick Douglass Global Fellowship, visit ciee.org/FDGF.

About the Council on International Educational Exchange
CIEE, the country's oldest and largest nonprofit study abroad and intercultural exchange organization, transforms lives and builds bridges by promoting the exchange of ideas and experiences. To help people develop skills for living in a globally interdependent and culturally diverse world, CIEE sponsors a wide variety of opportunities for cultural exchange, including work exchange programs, teach abroad programs, and a worldwide portfolio of study abroad and internship programs for college and high school students. www.ciee.org.

About Bard College
Founded in 1860, Bard College is a four-year residential college of the liberal arts and sciences located 90 miles north of New York City. With the addition of the Montgomery Place estate, Bard’s campus consists of nearly 1,000 parklike acres in the Hudson River Valley. It offers bachelor of arts, bachelor of science, and bachelor of music degrees, with majors in nearly 40 academic programs; graduate degrees in 11 programs; eight early colleges; and numerous dual-degree programs nationally and internationally. Building on its 161-year history as a competitive and innovative undergraduate institution, Bard College has expanded its mission as a private institution acting in the public interest across the country and around the world to meet broader student needs and increase access to liberal arts education. The undergraduate program at our main campus in upstate New York has a reputation for scholarly excellence, a focus on the arts, and civic engagement. Bard is committed to enriching culture, public life, and democratic discourse by training tomorrow’s thought leaders. For more information about Bard College, visit bard.edu.(3/17/21)
 

Bard College announced today that artist George Condo has made a significant gift supporting the arts on campus, including a new online concert series and a dedicated $400,000 fund underwriting scholarships, musical events, and exhibitions at Bard’s Conservatory of Music, The Orchestra Now, the Center for Curatorial Studies, and the Masters in Fine Art programs. Among those scholarships is the new Inclusive Excellence in Music Scholarship Program that addresses inequities in access to higher education in music.

“The Condo Concerts,” presented by the Bard College Conservatory of Music and CCS Bard, begins February 19 with a performance by violinist Leila Josefowicz, winner of the Avery Fisher Prize and a MacArthur Fellowship, and continues with recitals by The Fred Sherry Quartet on March 14 and April 18, and clarinetist Anthony McGill on May 2. Full details on upcoming performances follow below.

“During one of the most challenging times for colleges in the United States, I wanted to provide both funding and inspirational programming for students,” says Condo, whose daughter, Raphaelle, graduated from Bard in 2018. “Bard College is a place where my daughter thrived and one where the arts are central to the student experience.”

“We are grateful to George Condo for his support not only of the students at Bard, but also for underwriting these concerts and supporting the great musicians on this series, whose opportunities to perform have been so limited by the pandemic,” said Bard Conservatory Director Franks Corliss.

In establishing this fund, Condo created a special edition etching being sold through Hauser & Wirth, with all proceeds dedicated to supporting the arts at Bard. For more information on purchasing Condo’s etching, contact Cristopher Canizares at Hauser & Wirth.

About the Condo Concert Series
The first concert in the series, streaming February 19 at 8 pm, is a solo performance by the internationally renowned violinist Leila Josefowicz, winner of the Avery Fisher Prize and a MacArthur Fellowship. Her program combines a Partita by J. S. Bach with a new work by the noted conductor and composer Matthias Pintscher, La Linea Evocativa, that was composed for her in 2020 and inspired by Condo’s artwork.

For the next two concerts, streaming on March 14 and April 18, Josefowicz will perform as part of the Fred Sherry String Quartet with her renowned colleagues, violinist Jesse Mills, violist Hsin-Yun Huang, and cellist Fred Sherry, to perform string quartets by Schoenberg and Schubert, and other works to be announced.

The final concert in the series will be a recital by clarinetist Anthony McGill, who is the principal clarinet of the New York Philharmonic and a recipient of the 2020 Avery Fisher Career Prize.

The Condo Concerts Spring 2021 programs

Friday, February 19, at 8 pm
Matthias Pintscher La Linea Evocativa (2020)
Bach Partita No. 2 BWV 1004
Leila Josefowicz, violin

Sunday, March 14, at 3 pm
Schoenberg String Quartet #1, Opus 7
Fred Sherry String Quartet, with Leila Josefowicz and Jesse Mills, violins, Hsin-Yun Huang, viola, and Fred Sherry, cello.

Sunday, April 18, at 7 pm
Schubert String Quartet No. 15 in G Major
Fred Sherry String Quartet, with Leila Josefowicz and Jesse Mills, violins, Hsin-Yun Huang, viola, and Fred Sherry, cello.

Sunday, May 2, at 3 pm 
Anthony McGill, clarinet

Please click here for reservations and additional program details.


About the Artists
Leila Josefowicz’s passionate advocacy of contemporary music for the violin is reflected in her diverse programs and enthusiasm for performing new works. In recognition of her outstanding achievement and excellence in music, she won the 2018 Avery Fisher Prize and was awarded a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship in 2008, joining prominent scientists, writers and musicians who have made unique contributions to contemporary life.
 
Highlights of Josefowicz’s 2019/20 season include opening the London Symphony Orchestra’s season with Sir Simon Rattle and returning to San Francisco Symphony with the incoming Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen to perform his Violin Concerto. Other engagements include concerts with Los Angeles Philharmonic, NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and the Cleveland and Philadelphia orchestras, where she will be working with conductors at the highest level, including Susanna Mälkki, Matthias Pintscher and John Adams.
 
A favourite of living composers, Josefowicz has premiered many concertos, including those by Colin Matthews, Steven Mackey and Esa-Pekka Salonen, all written specially for her. This season, she will perform the UK premiere of Helen Grime’s Violin Concerto with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Dalia Stasevska. Other recent premieres include John Adams’ Scheherazade.2 (Dramatic Symphony for Violin and Orchestra) in 2015 with the New York Philharmonic and Alan Gilbert, and Luca Francesconi’s Duende – The Dark Notes in 2014 with Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Susanna Mälkki. Josefowicz enjoyed a close working relationship with the late Oliver Knussen, performing various concerti, including his violin concerto, together over 30 times.
 
Alongside pianist John Novacek, with whom she has enjoyed a close collaboration since 1985, Josefowicz has performed recitals at world-renowned venues such as New York’s Zankel Hall, Washington DC’s Kennedy Center and London’s Wigmore Hall, as well as in Reykjavik, Chicago, San Francisco and Santa Barbara. This season, they appear together at Washington DC’s Library of Congress, New York’s Park Avenue Armory and Amherst College. She will also join Thomas Adès in recital to perform the world premiere of his new violin and piano work at Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris and the Japanese premiere at the Tokyo Opera City Cultural Foundation.
 
Recent highlights include engagements with the Berliner Philharmoniker, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Washington’s National Symphony Orchestra, Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich and Boston and Finnish Radio symphony orchestras. In summer 2019, Josefowicz took part in a special collaboration between Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Royal Ballet, and Company Wayne McGregor featuring the music of composer-conductor Thomas Adès.
 
Josefowicz has released several recordings, notably for Deutsche Grammophon, Philips/Universal and Warner Classics and was featured on Touch Press’s acclaimed iPadapp, The Orchestra. Her latest recording, released in 2019, features Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s Violin Concerto with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted byHannu Lintu. She has previously received nominations for Grammy Awards for her recordings of Scheherazade.2 with the St Louis Symphony conducted by David Robertson, and Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Violin Concerto with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by the composer.Violist Hsin-Yun Huang has forged a career by performing on international concert stages, commissioning and recording new works, and nurturing young musicians. Highlights of her 2017–2018 season included performances as soloist under the batons of David Robertson, Osmo Vänskä, Xian Zhang, and Max Valdés in Beijing, Taipei, and Bogota. She is also the first solo violist to be presented in the National Performance Center of the Arts in Beijing and was featured as a faculty member with Yo-Yo Ma and his new initiative in Guangzhou. She has commissioned compositions from Steven Mackey, Shih-Hui Chen, and Poul Ruders. Her 2012 recording for Bridge Records, titled Viola Viola, won accolades from Gramophone and BBC Music Magazine. Her next recording will be the complete unaccompanied sonatas and partitas of J. S. Bach, in partnership her husband, violist Misha Amory.

Ms. Huang regularly appears at festivals, including Marlboro, Spoleto, Ravinia, Santa Fe, and Music@Menlo, among many others. Huang first came to international attention as the gold medalist in the 1988 Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition. In 1993, she was the top-prize winner in the ARD International Competition in Munich and was awarded the highly prestigious Bunkamura Orchard Hall Award. A native of Taiwan, she received degrees from the Yehudi Menuhin School, the Curtis Institute of Music, and The Juilliard School. She now serves on the faculties of Juilliard and Curtis and lives in New York City.Two-time Grammy nominated violinist Jesse Mills performins music of many genres, from classical to contemporary, as well as composed and improvised music of his own. Since his concerto debut at the Ravinia Festival in Chicago, Mr. Mills has performed throughout the U.S. and Canada. He has been a soloist with the Phoenix Symphony, the Colorado Symphony, the New Jersey Symphony, the Green Bay Symphony, Juilliard Chamber Orchestra, the Denver Philharmonic, the Teatro Argentino Orchestra (in Buenos Aires, Argentina), and the Aspen Music Festival's Sinfonia Orchestra.

As a chamber musician Jesse Mills has performed throughout the U.S. and Canada, including concerts at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall, Carnegie Hall, the 92nd Street Y, the Metropolitan Museum, the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, Boston's Gardener Museum, Chicago’s Ravinia Festival, and the Marlboro Music Festival. He has also appeared at prestigious venues in Europe, such as the Barbican Centre of London, La Cité de la Musique in Paris, Amsterdam’s Royal Carré Theatre, Teatro Arcimboldi in Milan, and the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels. Mills is co-founder of Horszowski Trio and Duo Prism, a violin-piano duo with Rieko Aizawa, which earned 1st Prize at the Zinetti International Competition in Italy in 2006.

Mills is also known as a pioneer of contemporary works, a renowned improvisational artist, as well as a composer. He earned Grammy nominations for his performances of Arnold Schoenberg's music, released by NAXOS in 2005 and 2010. He can also be heard on the Koch, Centaur, Tzadik, Max Jazz and Verve labels for various compositions of Webern, Schoenberg, Zorn, Wuorinen, and others. As a member of the FLUX Quartet from 2001-2003, Mills performed music composed during the last 50 years, in addition to frequent world premieres. As a composer and arranger, Mills has been commissioned by venues including Columbia University’s Miller Theater, the Chamber Music Northwest festival in Portland, OR and the Bargemusic in NYC.

Jesse Mills began violin studies at the age of three. He graduated with a Bachelor of Music degree from The Juilliard School in 2001. He studied with Dorothy DeLay, Robert Mann and Itzhak Perlman. Mr. Mills lives in New York City, and he is on the faculty at Longy School of Music of Bard College and at Brooklyn College.Fred Sherry has introduced audiences on five continents and all fifty United States to the music of our time for over five decades. He was a founding member of TASHI and Speculum Musicae, Artistic Director of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and has been a member of the Group for Contemporary Music, Berio's Juilliard Ensemble and the Galimir String Quartet. He has also enjoyed a close collaboration with jazz pianist and composer Chick Corea.
Elliott Carter, Mario Davidovsky, Steve Mackey, David Rakowski, Somei Satoh, Charles Wuorinen and John Zorn have written concertos for Sherry, and he has premiered solo and chamber works dedicated to him by Milton Babbitt, Derek Bermel, Jason Eckardt, Lukas Foss, Oliver Knussen, Peter Lieberson, Donald Martino and Toru Takemitsu among others.

Fred Sherry’s vast discography encompasses a wide range of classic and modern repertoire; he has been soloist and “sideman” on hundreds of commercial and esoteric recordings. Mr. Sherry was the organizer for Robert Craft’s New York recording sessions from 1995-2012. Their longstanding collaboration produced celebrated performances of the Schoenberg Cello Concerto, all four String Quartets and the String Quartet Concerto as well as major works by Stravinsky and Webern.

Mr. Sherry's book 25 Bach Duets from the Cantatas was published by Boosey & Hawkes in 2011, the revised edition was released in 2019. C.F. Peters unveiled his treatise on contemporary string playing, A Grand Tour of Cello Technique in 2018. He is a member of the cello faculty of The Juilliard School, The Mannes School of Music and The Manhattan School of Music.Clarinetist Anthony McGill is one of classical music’s most recognizable and brilliantly multifaceted figures. He serves as the principal clarinet of the New York Philharmonic — that orchestra’s first African-American principal player — and maintains a dynamic international solo and chamber music career. Hailed for his “trademark brilliance, penetrating sound and rich character” (The New York Times), as well as for his “exquisite combination of technical refinement and expressive radiance” (The Baltimore Sun), McGill also serves as an ardent advocate for helping music education reach underserved communities and for addressing issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion in classical music. He was honored to take part in the inauguration of President Barack Obama, premiering a piece written for the occasion by John Williams and performing alongside violinist Itzhak Perlman, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, and pianist Gabriela Montero.

McGill’s 2019-20 season includes the premiere of a new work by Tyshawn Sorey at the 92Y, and a special collaboration with mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato at Carnegie Hall. He will be a featured soloist at the Kennedy Center performing the Copland concerto at the SHIFT Festival of American Orchestras with the Jacksonville Symphony, and will also perform concertos by Copland, Mozart, and Danielpour with the Richmond, Delaware, Alabama, Reno, and San Antonio Symphonies. Additional collaborations include programs with Gloria Chien, Demarre McGill, Michael McHale, Anna Polonsky, Arnaud Sussman, and the Pacifica Quartet.

McGill appears regularly as a soloist with top orchestras around North America including the New York Philharmonic, Metropolitan Opera, Baltimore Symphony, San Diego Symphony, and Kansas City Symphony. As a chamber musician, McGill is a favorite collaborator of the Brentano, Daedalus, Guarneri, JACK, Miró, Pacifica, Shanghai, Takacs, and Tokyo Quartets, as well as Emanuel Ax, Inon Barnatan, Gloria Chien, Yefim Bronfman, Gil Shaham, Midori, Mitsuko Uchida, and Lang Lang. He has led tours with Musicians from Marlboro and regularly performs for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society. Festival appearances include Tanglewood, Marlboro, Mainly Mozart, Music@Menlo, and the Santa Fe, Seattle, and Skaneateles Chamber Music Festivals.

In January 2015, McGill recorded the Nielsen Clarinet Concerto together with Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic, which was released on DaCapo Records. He also recorded an album together with his brother Demarre McGill, principal flute of the Seattle Symphony, and pianist Michael McHale; and one featuring the Mozart and Brahms Clarinet Quintet with the Pacifica Quartet that were both released by Cedille Records.

A dedicated champion of new music, in 2014, McGill premiered a new piece written for him by Richard Danielpour entitled “From the Mountaintop” that was commissioned by the New Jersey Symphony, Kansas City Symphony, and Orchestra 2001. McGill served as the 2015-16 Artist-in-Residence for WQXR and has appeared on Performance Today, MPR’s St. Paul Sunday Morning, and Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood. In 2013, McGill appeared on the NBC Nightly News and on MSNBC, in stories highlighting the McGill brothers’ inspirational story.

A graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, McGill previously served as the principal clarinet of the Metropolitan Opera and associate principal clarinet of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. In-demand as a teacher, he serves on the faculty of the Juilliard School, the Curtis Institute of Music, and Bard College’s Conservatory of Music. He also serves as the Artistic Advisor for the Music Advancement Program at the Juilliard School, on the Board of Directors for both the League of American Orchestra and the Harmony Program, and the advisory council for the InterSchool Orchestras of New York.2/11/21

“The collection offers a rich variety of solo pieces, chamber works and concertos by Beethoven, Berio, Chopin, Mozart, Takemitsu, Stravinsky, Schoenberg and more — in probing, lucid, often exhilarating performances. Some of these recordings I didn’t know; others I’d not listened to in years. The set has rekindled strong memories of Peter — as I came to know him — and his great artistry, and the intersection of our lives and professions,” writes Tommasini.

Continuing its commitment to bring the world’s boldest artists and most exciting projects to audiences beyond the walls of our building, the Fisher Center at Bard announces its spring 2021 season of music and performance. The Fisher Center’s virtual stage, UPSTREAMING, extends its programming into the new year with As Far As Isolation Goes (Online), an interactive, one-on-one performance from live artist Tania El Khoury, cocurator of last season’s Live Arts Bard Biennial, and the new director of the OSUN Center for Human Rights and the Arts, based at Bard; The Future Is Present, a project intended to model community building with a focus on intimacy and discourse; as well as streamed concerts from The Orchestra Now and the Bard Conservatory College Orchestra; The Sound of Spring, a Chinese New Year celebration, from the US-China Music Institute, and a recital of French music with Piers Lane and Danny Driver, commissioned by the Bard Music Festival.

All events are available on UPSTREAMING, the Fisher Center’s virtual stage, adding to an already robust selection of archival HD opera recordings and contextual materials.

Reserve online or call the box office at 845-758-7900. Box office hours: Monday–Friday, 11 a.m. – 4 p.m. EST.

Program information

THE FUTURE IS PRESENT
Ongoing

In late 2020, artists Charlotte Brathwaite, Justin Hicks, Janani Balasubramanian, Sunder Ganglani, June Cross, and Alyssa Simmons initiated The Future Is Present: A Casting the Vote Project, a high-impact, liberatory media project. Across seven weeks, a small community of Black and Indigenous young artists/activists and a small community of young artists from Bard College (Adrian Costa, Megan Lacy, Cam Orr, Anya Petkovich, Taty Rozetta, Hakima SmithStone, Dani Wilder, and Mengchen Zhang) virtually cultivated intimacy and discourse. Over the course of these weeks, the youth cohort created demands on our collective future; now a process of amplifying those demands is underway. Using the youth cohort’s words to inspire scenes, animations, and other moving-image fragments, the Bard artists created a film for the youth cohort, to be released in February, as part of an ongoing collaborative process.

An introductory video, released on UPSTREAMING following the 2021 presidential inauguration, is an invitation for people to participate on terms that make sense in their communities.


TANIA EL KHOURY AND BASEL ZARAA
AS FAR AS ISOLATION GOES (ONLINE)
February 24 – March 21
Very limited availability
ZOOM
$20 ($5 Bard student tickets available through the Passloff Pass)

An online, interactive, one-on-one performance brings audience members into contact with people experiencing inhumane detention centers and a mental health system that disregards their political and emotional humanity. A collaboration between live artist Tania El Khoury and musician and street artist Basel Zaraa, and reimagined for an online context during the coronavirus lockdown, the piece builds on an earlier collaboration, As Far As My Fingertips Take Me, in which El Khoury commissioned Zaraa to record a rap song inspired by the journey his sisters made from Damascus to Sweden.

In As Far As Isolation Goes, Zaraa and El Khoury worked together to create another iteration of their previous piece focused on the mental and physical health experiences of refugees in the United Kingdom. Zaraa created a song inspired by conversations with friends and colleagues who have recently claimed refuge in the UK.


THE ORCHESTRA NOW (TŌN)
The Orchestra Now’s 2021 Season features livestreamed virtual concerts including a world premiere by Sarah Hennies, visiting assistant professor of music at Bard; Popcorn Superhet Receiver by Jonny Greenwood (Radiohead); Maestro Leon Botstein conducting Schoenberg and Bach; and more. All concerts, which are livestreamed from the Sosnoff Theater at the Fisher Center at Bard, are free, but reservations are required.

SCHOENBERG & BACH
Sunday, February 7 at 2 p.m. EST
Leon Botstein conductor

TŌN Music Director Leon Botstein kicks off the spring season with J.S. Bach’s third Brandenburg Concerto and Arnold Schoenberg’s romantic tone poem Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night). Also on the program are works for string orchestra by Venezuelan composer Teresa Carreño and Polish composer Witold Lutosławski.

J.S. Bach Brandenburg Concerto No. 3
Witold Lutosławski Funeral Music
Teresa Carreño Serenade for Strings
Arnold Schoenberg Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night)


NEW & CLASSIC WORKS FOR STRINGS
Sunday, February 21 at 2 p.m. EST
James Bagwell conductor

This concert features the world premiere of a new work by composer Sarah Hennies, visiting assistant professor of music at Bard; and the 2005 piece Popcorn Superhet Receiver by Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood, which was used in the film There Will Be Blood. The program also includes Edvard Grieg’s classic Holberg Suite and a popular work by Vaughan Williams.

Sarah Hennies New Work TBA
Jonny Greenwood Popcorn Superhet Receiver
Ralph Vaughan Williams Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis
Edvard Grieg Holberg Suite


ANDRÉS RIVAS CONDUCTS THE ORCHESTRA NOW
Sunday, March 7 at 2 p.m. EST

TŌN Assistant Conductor Andrés Rivas leads this March concert by The Orchestra Now, livestreamed online for free from the Sosnoff Theater at the Fisher Center at Bard. Music on the program will be announced in the weeks preceding the concert.


ZACHARY SCHWARTZMAN CONDUCTS THE ORCHESTRA NOW
Saturday, March 20 at 8 p.m. EST

TŌN Resident Conductor Zachary Schwartzman leads this March concert by The Orchestra Now, livestreamed online for free from the Sosnoff Theater at the Fisher Center at Bard. Music on the program will be announced in the weeks preceding the concert.


AN APRIL CONCERT WITH LEON BOTSTEIN
Saturday, April 10 at 8 p.m. EST

TŌN Music Director Leon Botstein leads this April concert by The Orchestra Now, livestreamed online for free from the Sosnoff Theater at the Fisher Center at Bard. Music on the program will be announced in the weeks preceding the concert.


A MAY CONCERT WITH LEON BOTSTEIN
Saturday, May 1 at 8 p.m. EST

TŌN Music Director Leon Botstein leads this May concert by The Orchestra Now, livestreamed online for free from the Sosnoff Theater at the Fisher Center at Bard. Music on the program will be announced in the weeks preceding the concert.


THE US-CHINA MUSIC INSTITUTE
THE SOUND OF SPRING
Saturday, February 13 at 8 p.m. EST
Prerecorded concert streamed online
Free; reservations required

A concert of symphonic music to celebrate the Lunar New Year, featuring a new performance by The Orchestra Now conducted by Jindong Cai, along with performances from orchestras in Asia including the China NCPA Orchestra and the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra.

This year’s concert will carry a message of hope, renewal, and new beginnings, in the spirit of the Chinese New Year tradition of the spring festival.


BARD MUSIC FESTIVAL
FRENCH MUSIC RECITAL
Pre-recorded recital streamed on demand February 19–25
$15, $25, $35 ($5 Bard student tickets available through the Passloff Pass)

A recital of French music with Danny Driver and Piers Lane commissioned by the Bard Music Festival, featuring works by César Franck, Lili Boulanger, Gabriel Fauré, and Camille Saint-Saëns.


BARD COLLEGE CONSERVATORY ORCHESTRA
Saturday, March 13 at 8 p.m. EST
Livestreamed from the Sosnoff Theater
Free; reservations required

Leon Botstein and Andrés Rivas lead the Bard College Conservatory of Music in a program with works by Richard Strauss, William Grant Still, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, and Peter Illych Tchaikovsky.


About UPSTREAMING, the Fisher Center’s virtual stage, Archival Discoveries, and New Commissions for the Digital Sphere
UPSTREAMING broadens the Fisher Center’s commitment to reaching audiences far beyond the physical walls of our building, and offers new ways for us to engage with artists. Launched in April 2020, UPSTREAMING has released new content, including digital commissions, virtual events, and beloved performances and rich contextual materials from the archives of the SummerScape Opera, as well as Bard Music Festival’s 30-year history. UPSTREAMING highlights different aspects of the breadth of programming the Fisher Center offers. New releases are announced via the Fisher Center’s weekly newsletter. To receive those updates and stay connected to UPSTREAMING, join the mailing list here.
#UPSTREAMINGFC

ABOUT THE FISHER CENTER AT BARD
The Fisher Center at Bard develops, produces, and presents performing arts across disciplines through new productions and context-rich programs that challenge and inspire. As a premier professional performing arts center and a hub for research and education, the Fisher Center supports artists, students, and audiences in the development and examination of artistic ideas, offering perspectives from the past and present, as well as visions of the future. The Fisher Center demonstrates Bard’s commitment to the performing arts as a cultural and educational necessity. 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. 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 160-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.(2.1.21)

Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman, No. 1 by Joan Tower, Asher B. Edelman Professor in the Arts and faculty member of the Bard College Conservatory of Music, was performed by the Hope & Harmony Ensemble in honor of the upcoming inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. The virtual program begins with Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man, celebrating the president-elect. Tower’s Fanfare is then performed in honor of the vice president-elect. This production by Classical Movements was livestreamed on the afternoon of Tuesday, January 19 and can be viewed on the Bard College Conservatory of Music Facebook page. 

Dedicated to adventurous and risk-taking women, Professor Tower composed Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman under the Fanfare Project. It was commissioned by the Houston Symphony, and premiered on January 10, 1987. This work is dedicated to the conductor Marin Alsop, who conducted the January 19 performance. Classical Movements formed the Hope & Harmony Ensemble for this performance. The ensemble comprises 14 professional musicians from orchestras across the country.
 

“Beethoven is the most well-known western composer in China,” says Jindong Cai, director of the US-China Music Institute of the Bard College Conservatory of Music and coauthor of Beethoven in China. “People relate not only to his music, but to his life's story. . . . In Chinese society, your family tells you that you have to work hard to be successful; you have to go through difficulties and obstacles. Beethoven's life story enhances that kind of thinking in China.”

Award-winning opera diva and Bard Conservatory Vocal Arts Program alumna Julia Bullock MM ’11 talks with host Lara Downes on Amplify, a series highlighting visionary Black musicians who are shaping the art form. In this intimate conversation, Bullock and Downes share common ground. “Our search for self has informed our navigation of the classical music landscape,” says Downes, “driven by a desire to reveal the voices of artists of color who came before us, and to build a more diverse and equitable future for those who will come after. Julia's choices—the music she sings, the places where she sings it and the people she sings it for—are deliberate and courageous.”

Wosner will begin his residency by taking part in the 121st season of the revered Peoples’ Symphony Concerts, which offers performances by some of the best artists in the world for as little as $8.33 a concert. Following an opening night performance with the Dover String Quartet on November 15, Wosner will curate and perform in a two-concert Schubertiade on the weekend of the composer's birthday (January 31). Described as a “Schubertian of unfaltering authority and character” by Gramophone, Wosner conceived these programs as part of a four-recital Schubert series that he is curating for the Bard College Conservatory of Music, where he is on the faculty. Learn more at pscny.org.

Stephanie Blythe is the featured artist on the cover of the November 2020 Diva Issue of Opera News. Blythe is a renowned mezzo-soprano and artistic director of the Graduate Vocal Arts Program in the Bard College Conservatory of Music. “For more than 20 years, Stephanie Blythe’s career has been shaped by her ability to sustain her own definition of herself—as a singer, as an educator and as a woman,” writes F. Paul Driscoll.

The Fisher Center at Bard, long known for its memorable productions of rarely performed operatic works programmed and conducted by Maestro Leon Botstein, commemorates World Opera Day on October 25 with two special releases, adding to an already robust selection of archival HD opera recordings and contextual materials available free of charge on UPSTREAMING, the Fisher Center’s virtual stage.

World Opera Day is an international campaign to raise awareness of the positive impact and value of opera for society. As part of World Opera Day, the Fisher Center will present a lively and wide-ranging virtual conversation about opera today between Maestro Botstein and the acclaimed mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe, who recently assumed the directorship of the Vocal Arts Program at Bard College. Their conversation will be available for streaming here, beginning October 25. Bard Music Festival members will receive early access to the conversation on October 20.

“Opera is immune to technological reproduction and is a unique amalgam of the visual language and sound,” says Botstein. “It is perhaps the most resilient, alluring, and enduring genre of the human imagination.”

Offering one of the most unique opera programs in the country, Bard presents a new, fully staged production of a rarely performed opera each year as part of the renowned SummerScape Festival. The operas are programmed in conjunction with Bard Music Festival, a summer series led by Botstein, which focuses on one composer each summer for an intensive series of concerts, lectures, and panel discussions. “Some of the most important summer opera experiences in the U.S. are … at Bard SummerScape.” —Financial Times

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Fisher Center has been streaming selections from its rich archive of HD video recordings over UPSTREAMING, the Fisher Center’s Virtual Stage. On October 19, Bard SummerScape’s 2016 production of Pietro Mascagni’s Iris joins a robust selection of Bard SummerScape productions of rarely-performed operatic treasures available for viewing. Operas produced in recent years at Bard SummerScape (all currently streaming on UPSTREAMING) include the U.S. premieres of such neglected treasures as Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Das Wunder der Heliane (2019); Richard Strauss’s Die Liebe der Danae (2012); Carl Maria von Weber’s Euryanthe (2014) and Dame Ethel Smyth’s The Wreckers (2015). These perfromances have been made available at no charge to ensure wider access to these rarely seen works. All of these programs can be viewed here.

About UPSTREAMING, the Fisher Center’s virtual stage. Archival Discoveries and New Commissions for the Digital Sphere.
UPSTREAMING broadens the Fisher Center’s commitment to reaching audiences far beyond the physical walls of our building, and offers new ways for us to engage with artists. Launched in April 2020, UPSTREAMING has released new content, including digital commissions, virtual events, and beloved performances and rich contextual materials from the archives of the SummerScape Opera and Bard Music Festival’s 30-year history. UPSTREAMING highlights different aspects of the breadth of programming the Fisher Center offers. New releases are announced via the Fisher Center’s weekly newsletter. To receive those updates and stay connected to UPSTREAMING, join the mailing list here.
#UPSTREAMINGFC

ABOUT THE FISHER CENTER
The Fisher Center develops, produces, and presents performing arts across disciplines through new productions and context-rich programs that challenge and inspire. As a premier professional performing arts center and a hub for research and education, the Fisher Center supports artists, students, and audiences in the development and examination of artistic ideas, offering perspectives from the past and present, as well as visions of the future. The Fisher Center demonstrates Bard’s commitment to the performing arts as a cultural and educational necessity. 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. 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 159-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.(10.19.20)
 

Concerts will Feature the World Premiere of Artist in Residence Erica Lindsay’s Adagio for String Orchestra (2020) and Works by Casals, Vivaldi, Mozart, Mahler, and Elgar

October 24 Event Will Honor Cellist and Faculty Member Luis Garcia-Renart (1936–2020)

The Bard College Conservatory of Music presents a student and faculty showcase weekend, October 24–25, two free, live-streamed concerts featuring the Bard College Conservatory Orchestra, Leon Botstein, conductor, showcasing performances by celebrated violinists and new Conservatory faculty Gil Shaham and Adele Anthony, as well as students and other faculty from the Bard Music Program, Conservatory, and The Orchestra Now. The October 24 concert, at 7:30 p.m., is in honor of cellist and faculty member Luis Garcia-Renart (1936–2020), and features the world premiere of Artist in Residence Erica Lindsay’s Adagio for String Orchestra (2020), as well as works by Casals and Vivaldi. Garcia-Renart, who taught at Bard from 1962 until his death earlier this year, was a former student of Casals. The October 25 concert, at 3 p.m., includes performances of works by Mozart, Mahler, and Elgar. Both concerts are free and will be live streamed from the Fisher Center at Bard’s Sosnoff Theater. Reservations are required. Proceeds support the Conservatory Scholarship Fund. For more information, visit fishercenter.bard.edu.

October 24 at 7:30 p.m.
Bard College Conservatory Orchestra Leon Botstein, Music Director
Concert in honor of cellist and faculty member Luis Garcia-Renart (1936–2020)

Pablo Casals
“The Song of the Birds” (El cant dels Ocells)

La Sardana, Cello choir with faculty members Peter Wiley and Raman Ramakrishnan and cellists from the Conservatory, The Orchestra Now, and the Music Program

Erica Lindsay
Adagio World Premiere
Conservatory Orchestra with Erica Kiesewetter, conductor

Antonio Vivaldi
The Four Seasons
Conservatory Orchestra
with faculty soloists Gil Shaham and Adele Anthony, violinsOctober 25 at 3 p.m.
Bard College Conservatory Orchestra Leon Botstein, Music Director

W. A. Mozart
Serenade No. 6 in D Major, KV 239 “Serenata notturna”

Gustav Mahler
Adagietto from Symphony No. 5

Edward Elgar (1857–1934)
Introduction and Allegro, for string quartet and string orchestra in G Major, Op.47


BARD COLLEGE CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC

Tan Dun, Dean

Frank Corliss, Director

Marka Gustavsson, Associate Director

The Bard College Conservatory of Music expands Bard’s spirit of innovation in arts and education. The Conservatory, which opened in 2005, offers a five-year, double-degree program at the undergraduate level and, at the graduate level, programs in vocal arts and conducting. At the graduate level the Conservatory also offers an Advanced Performance Studies program and a two-year Postgraduate Collaborative Piano Fellowship. The US-China Music Institute of the Bard College Conservatory of Music, established in 2017, offers a unique degree program in Chinese instruments.

For more information, see bard.edu/conservatory.
 
(10.08.20)

 

“Teaching is how I learn,” pianist Ryan McCullough tells host Scott Yoo. “I've studied with wonderful teachers in the past, but no one is ever done learning. And by teaching someone else what you love doing, you are teaching yourself what you care about.” Watch McCullough—a postgraduate collaborative piano fellow in the Conservatory—and Yoo discuss the importance of teaching to Scubert’s development as an artist. Then listen to McCullough play the fourth movement of Franz Schubert’s piano sonata No. 19 before being joined by soprano Lucy Fitz Gibbon MM ’15—alumna and faculty member of the Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Program—for the song “Suleika.” (Segment begins at 17:30)

A native of Port Arthur, Texas, Alexander holds a bachelor of music degree in piano from Prairie View A&M University and a master of music degree in orchestral conducting from the Bard Conservatory of Music. He is currently pursuing a professional studies certificate in orchestral conduction from the Manhattan School of Music. The Project Inclusion Conducting Freeman Fellowship fosters the development of four to six conductors of diverse backgrounds who are on the verge of professional careers.

First-year instrumentalists Sophia Jackson, cello, and Aleksandar Vitanov, trumpet, have launched a new program called the Music Mentorship Initiative (MMI). The program offers tutoring and free private lessons to music students who otherwise cannot afford them, while allowing mentors—current Conservatory students who have completed a pedagogical training seminar—to gain teaching experience.
Become a Mentee