Bard Conservatory of Music News Archive

The winners of the 2019 Concerto Competition were announced on Sunday, February 17, at the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts. Students in the Bard College Conservatory of Music competed for the honor in two rounds of performances over the course of the weekend. This year&srquo;s winners are: Xinran Li ’20 (Barber Violin Concerto), Jingyu Mao ’19 (Weber Clarinet Concerto No. 1), and Paulina Swierczek ’19 (Strauss Vier Lieder Op. 27). The winners will perform with the Conservatory Orchestra, The Orchestra Now, or the American Symphony Orchestra during the 2019–2020 season.

“I believe it is important for all students—of all instruments and from all countries—to open their ears and minds to the sounds and traditions and musical ideas of other cultures.”

“This isn’t a gender issue, but rather an issue of the current classification system’s inability to handle change,” writes Feltkamp.

Bard College announces the appointment of world-renowned composer, conductor, and artist Tan Dun as dean of the Bard College Conservatory of Music. As dean, Tan Dun will guide the Conservatory in fulfilling its mission of teaching young musicians both new music and music history, while deepening an understanding of its connection to history, art and culture, and society. He will also help to build the synergy between Eastern and Western studies at the Conservatory, including its recently founded US–China Music Institute.

“We are delighted that Tan Dun, a conductor, composer, and artist whose work bridges cultures and genres and embraces a wide definition of music, will lead Bard’s Conservatory of Music,” said Bard College President Leon Botstein.

“The language of music is universal and can connect all kinds of people from diverse cultures, languages, and with different dreams. I look forward to working with the students of Bard’s Conservatory of Music in imagining and reimagining their careers as artists and helping them become even more connected to our growing world and widening musical soundscape,” said Tan Dun.

Tan Dun will begin his tenure as dean of the Bard College Conservatory of Music on July 1, 2019.

About Tan Dun
Tan Dun has made an indelible mark on the world’s music scene with a creative repertoire that spans the boundaries of classical music, multimedia performance, and Eastern and Western traditions. Now living in New York City, Tan Dun was born and raised in a rural Hunan village in the People’s Republic of China where millennia-old shamanistic cultural traditions still survived before Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution took hold. Following the end of the Cultural Revolution, China reopened its Central Conservatory and Tan Dun was one of only 30 selected to attend among thousands of applicants. By the time he arrived in the United States in 1986 to pursue his Doctorate at Columbia University in musical arts, where he soon immersed himself in the music of John Cage and the New York downtown avant-garde scene, Tan Dun was already famous in China. In these past two decades, Tan Dun has transcended stylistic and cultural boundaries to become one of the world’s most famous and sought-after composers. He has created several new artistic formats, which—like opera—encompass sound, sight, narrative, and ritual. In addition to his contributions to the repertoire of opera and motion pictures scores, Tan’s new formats include: orchestral theater, which recontextualizes the orchestra and the concert-going experience; organic music, which explores new realms of sound through primal elements such as water, paper, and stone; and multimedia extravaganzas, which incorporate a variety of cutting-edge technologies.

A UNESCO Global Goodwill Ambassador and winner of today’s most prestigious honors—including the Grammy Award, Oscar/Academy Award, Grawemeyer Award, Bach Prize, Shostakovich Award, and most recently, Italy’s Golden Lion Award for Lifetime Achievement—Tan Dun makes music that is played throughout the world by leading orchestras in opera houses, at international festivals, and on radio and television. This past year, Tan Dun conducted the grand opening celebration of Disneyland Shanghai, which was broadcast to a record-breaking audience worldwide.

As a conductor of innovative programs around the world, Tan Dun has led the China tours of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and Japan’s NHK Symphony Orchestra. His current season includes leading the Orchestre National de Lyon in a five-city China tour, the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra in a four-city tour of Switzerland and Belgium, as well as engagements with the Rai National Symphony Orchestra in Italy, Oslo Philharmonic, Orchestre National de France, and Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, where he was recently named artistic ambassador. Tan Dun currently serves as the honorary artistic director of the China National Symphony Orchestra. Next season, he will conduct the English Chamber Orchestra in their tour to China. Tan Dun has led the world’s most esteemed orchestras, including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Orchestre National de France, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Filarmonica della Scala, Münchner Philharmoniker, Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, and Sydney Symphony Orchestra, among others.

Tan Dun’s individual voice has been heard widely by international audiences. His first Internet Symphony, which was commissioned by Google/YouTube, has reached over 23 million people online. His Organic Music Trilogy of Water, Paper, and Ceramic has frequented major concert halls and festivals. Paper Concerto was premiered with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the opening of the Walt Disney Hall. His multimedia work The Map, premiered by YoYo Ma and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, has toured more than 30 countries worldwide. Its manuscript has been collected by the Carnegie Hall Composers Gallery. His Orchestral Theatre IV: The Gate was premiered by Japan’s NHK Symphony Orchestra and crosses the cultural boundaries of Peking Opera, Western Opera and puppet theatre traditions. Other important premieres include Four Secret Roads of Marco Polo for the Berlin Philharmonic, and Piano Concerto “The Fire” for Lang Lang and the New York Philharmonic. In recent years, his percussion concerto, The Tears of Nature, for soloist Martin Grubinger premiered in 2012 with the NDR Symphony Orchestra and Nu Shu: The Secret Songs of Women Symphony for 13 Microfilms, Harp and Orchestra was co-commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra, NHK Symphony Orchestra, and Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam. Most recently, Tan Dun conducted the premiere of his new oratorio epic Buddha Passion at the Dresden Festival with the Münchner Philharmoniker; the piece was co-commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, and the Dresden Festival and will go on to have performances in Melbourne, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Hamburg, Singapore, and London in  coming seasons.

For Tan Dun the marriage of composition and inspiration has always culminated in his operatic creations. Marco Polo was commissioned by the Edinburgh Festival and has had four different productions, including, most prominently, with De Nederlandse Opera, directed by Pierre Audi; The First Emperor, with Placido Domingo in the title role, commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera of New York; Tea: A Mirror of Soul, premiered at Japan’s Suntory Hall, has since had new productions with Opera de Lyon, a co-production by Santa Fe Opera and the Opera Company of Philadelphia; and Peony Pavilion, directed by Peter Sellars, which has had over 50 performances at major festivals in Vienna, Paris, London, and Rome.

As a visual artist, Tan Dun’s work has been featured at the opening of the China Pavilion at the 56th Venice Art Biennale. Other solo exhibitions include New York’s Guggenheim Museum and Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Beijing’s Chambers Fine Art Gallery, and the Shanghai Gallery of Art. Most recently, Tan Dun conducted the Juilliard Orchestra in the world premiere of his Symphony of Colors: Terracotta for the opening of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art’s epic exhibition The Age of Empires. 

Tan Dun holds a master’s in composition from the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing and a doctorate from New York’s Columbia University in Musical Arts.
 
Tan Dun records for Sony Classical, Deutsche Grammophon, EMI, Opus Arte, BIS, and Naxos. His recordings have garnered many accolades, including a Grammy Award (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and nominations (The First Emperor; Marco Polo; Pipa Concerto), Japan’s Recording Academy Award for Best Contemporary Music CD (Water Passion after St. Matthew), and the BBC’s Best Orchestral Album (Death and Fire).
 

A glimpse into the varied teaching and performance career of the renowned Stephanie Blythe, who will soon join Bard as the artistic director of the Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Program.

Julia Bullock MM ’11, one of opera’s fastest-rising stars and 2018–19 MetLiveArts artist in residence, is using her artistic platform for social activism, to glorious effect.

Celebrated opera singer and recitalist Stephanie Blythe has been appointed artistic director of the Bard Conservatory of Music Graduate Vocal Arts Program effective July 2019. 

When the composer Joan Tower went to Bennington College to study music, her teachers told her she needed to compose something.

“So I wrote a piece,” she recalled recently, laughing, “and it was a disaster from beginning to end. I said, ‘I know I can do better than that.’ So I did that for the next 40 years, trying to create a piece that wasn’t a disaster.”

Read the full article from the New York Times

Joan Tower, Asher B. Edelman Professor in the Arts, talks with the New York Times about her more than 50-year career as a composer and educator, and the milestone of turning 80 this fall.

The China Now Music Festival concluded at Carnegie Hall with world-premiere compositions by faculty of the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing.

Bard professor and composer Joan Tower recently celebrated her 80th birthday with concerts at Bard and in New York City. She talks about her action-packed career.

Bernard Herrmann’s spine-tingling score will be performed in the Sosnoff Theater by the Bard College Conservatory of Music Orchestra, conducted by James Bagwell.

The concert program, featuring world premieres of Tower’s recent compositions, will be performed at Bard’s Fisher Center.

The Bard Youth China Orchestra presented free concerts as part of the US-China Music Institute’s summer academy on the Bard campus.

Presented by the US-China Music Institute of the Bard College Conservatory of Music, in partnership with the Central Conservatory of Music, Beijing, the free concerts will feature more than 50 musicians, aged 13–22, who have come together for a two-week summer academy on the Bard campus. 
 

The mezzo-soprano performs the lead in PATH New Music Theater’s multimedia opera Simulacrum in New York City this weekend.

A luminous triple bill of operatic rarities, exploring the rites and rituals of marriage: Stravinsky’s Pulcinella, Harbison’s Full Moon in March, and Sokolovic’s Svadba.

The Graduate Vocal Arts Program of the Bard College Conservatory of Music presents a luminous triple bill of operatic rarities exploring the rites and rituals of marriage. The program features three fully staged operas: Pulcinella, by Igor Stravinsky, and Full Moon in March, by John Harbison, James Bagwell, conductor; and Svadba, by Ana Sokolovic, Jackson McKinnon ’16, conductor. The triple bill will be performed by singers from the Graduate Vocal Arts Program accompanied by The Bard College Conservatory Orchestra on Friday, March 9 at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, March 11 at 3 p.m. in the Sosnoff Theater of the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts. 

January 28 Concert at Bard’s Fisher Center Celebrates New Collaboration between Bard Conservatory and Central Conservatory (China)

On Sunday, January 28, Bard’s Fisher Center for the Performing Arts hosted a celebratory concert to launch the Chinese Music Development Initiative, a groundbreaking new collaboration between the US-China Music Institute of the Bard College Conservatory of Music and the Central Conservatory of Music (in Beijing, China).

The Orchestra Now, conducted by Jindong Cai, collaborated with the Chamber Orchestra of the Central Conservatory, conducted by Chen Bing, in Music from China: East Meets West—Contemporary Works for Chinese and Western Instruments. The sold-out concert in the Sosnoff Theater featured six new works by Chinese composers Chen Xinruo, Tang Jianping, Guo Wenjing, Chen Danbu, Zhou Yanjia, and Liu Wenjin, all using a combination of Chinese and Western instruments, with renowned soloists Yu Hongmei (erhu), Zhou Wang (guzheng), and Zhang Qiang (pipa).

In a letter of welcome in the concert program, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo wrote, "This innovative collaboration will give both the East and the West new opportunities to learn, understand, and appreciate each other through the power of music."

In her speech at the concert, Zhang Qiyue, China's consul general in New York, remarked on how education in Western music has flourished in China, and yet very few students in the United States are familiar with traditional Chinese music. "That's why the partnership is so important as a milestone of the US-China exchanges in the culture and music fields," she said.

The Chinese Music Development Initiative was formally established at a signing ceremony in Beijing in December. This new initiative, managed by the US-China Music Institute of the Bard Conservatory, offers the first comprehensive program for the study and performance of Chinese music in the United States, consisting of several components: a degree program for Chinese instruments, an annual Chinese Music Festival, a program of scholarly conferences, and a summer academy for high school age students.

"This agreement is a milestone in Bard College’s international engagement," said Bard President Leon Botstein. "Our partnership with the Central Conservatory will result in deeper connections with China’s vibrant musical life and rich heritage."

"The Central Conservatory of Music and Bard Conservatory have taken the lead in opening the Chinese culture in foreign conservatories," said Central Conservatory President Yu Feng. "This innovative step has historical significance in the development of Chinese music in the West. Our cooperation with Bard College, one of the finest liberal arts colleges in America, with a rich history of 157 years, sends out a clear Chinese voice to the world that we have entered into a new cooperation mode and a new stage through the integration of music and culture exchanges," Yu added.

Bard Conservatory Director Robert Martin noted, "This is the culmination of years of work building relationships with the music world of China, including a tour of the Conservatory Orchestra to China in 2012. This agreement is a major achievement of our new US-China Music Institute, led by the distinguished conductor, author, and educator Jindong Cai, and a wonderful enrichment of the life of the Bard community."

Institute director Jindong Cai commented, "More than 400 years ago, the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci presented a Ming Dynasty emperor with a Western musical instrument, planting the seeds of Western music in China. Now we at Bard hope to make a similar contribution, deepening the development of Chinese music in the West. I am sure it will not take four centuries!"

The collaboration between the Central Conservatory and the Bard Conservatory will be overseen by President Yu Feng of the Central Conservatory and Director Robert Martin of the Bard Conservatory of Music. The partnership will be strengthened by bilateral faculty appointments: President Yu Feng will have a faculty appointment at the Bard Conservatory, and Bard President Leon Botstein will have a faculty appointment in the Central Conservatory. Hongmei Yu, chair of the Traditional Music Department of the Central Conservatory, will have a faculty appointment in the Bard Conservatory, and Jindong Cai will have a faculty appointment in the Central Conservatory.

The Initiative will be managed by a committee led by Jindong Cai and Hongmei Yu, with Hongzhu Liu, director of the Central Conservatory’s Office of Foreign Affairs, and Associate Director Frank Corliss of the Bard College Conservatory.

More Information

US-China Music Institute of the Bard College Conservatory of Music

Press Coverage

Traditional Chinese Music Hits Right Note in US College Program (China Daily)

US College Program Includes Chinese Music for First Time (China Daily)

Photography from World Journal (in Chinese)

Video from Sinovision (in Chinese)

On Sunday, January 28, Bard’s Fisher Center for the Performing Arts hosted a celebratory concert to launch the Chinese Music Development Initiative, a groundbreaking new collaboration between the US-China Music Institute of the Bard College Conservatory of Music and the Central Conservatory of Music (in Beijing, China).

Irish-born pianist Isabelle O’Connell describes her journey from Rathgar in Dublin to performing at Carnegie Hall and teaching at Bard.

Boston Modern Orchestra Project will honor Professor Joan Tower in a concert on February 9 championing five of her orchestral works.

The Bard College Conservatory Orchestra recently performed at Eastern Correctional Facility in Napanoch, New York, in a concert conducted by Bard College President Leon Botstein. The event featured compositions by Johann Nepomuk Hummel and Ludwig van Beethoven, and was enthusiastically received by an audience of several hundred inmates, as well as Bard College faculty and supporters. Officials of the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision also attended, including Acting Deputy Commissioner for Correctional Facilities James O’Gorman and Assistant Commissioner Linda Hollmen. Bard College has a regular presence at Eastern through the Bard Prison Initiative, which enrolls incarcerated students in two- and four-year degree programs.

The Bard College Conservatory of Music will teach an undergraduate program in Chinese musical instrument performance starting next fall.

President Botstein "drew rich, expressive playing" from The Orchestra Now at the Met, and Professor Dawn Upshaw sang "compellingly" with the Brentano String Quartet at the 92nd Street Y.

Julia Bullock MM '11 speaks about her life as an opera singer and her role as Dame Shirley in the world premiere of John Adams’s Girls of the Golden West.

Conducted by Leon Botstein, music director, the Bard College Conservatory Orchestra will perform Hummel’s Trumpet Concerto in E flat with soloist Szabolcs Koczur, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, and Mahler’s Symphony No. 1, "Titan."

Star soprano and Bard professor Dawn Upshaw performs in San Francisco with Sō Percussion, a group comprising Bard faculty members Eric Cha-Beach, Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski, and Jason Treuting.

The winners of the 2017 Concerto Competition were announced on Saturday, October 14, at the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts. Students in the Bard College Conservatory of Music competed for the honor in two rounds of performances over the course of the weekend. This year's winners are: Eric Carey, voice (Benjamin Britten, Les illumination); Zhen Liu, violin (Brahms, Violin Concerto); and Emily Munstedt, cello (Kabalevsky, Cello Concerto). The winners will perform with the Conservatory Orchestra, The Orchestra Now, or the American Symphony Orchestra during the 2018–2019 season.

Bard Conservatory alumnus Christopher Carroll is among the young movers and shakers of New York City, in his role as political director of the Associated Musicians of Greater New York.

Described as a doyenne of American orchestral composers, Asher B. Edelman Professor in the Arts Joan Tower is one of the top 35 female composers of the recorded music era.

The Bard College Conservatory of Music presents a Bard Conservatory Orchestra concert. Conducted by Leon Botstein, the concert includes Karl Amadeus Hartmann’s Symphony No. 6, Josef Suk’s Symphony No. 2 Asrael, and the world premiere of Thurman Barker’s South Side Suite with jazz quintet Thurman Barker and Time Factor featuring Paavo Cary, clarinet; James Emery, guitar; Noah Barker, piano; Dean Torrey, double bass; and Thurman Barker, percussion. The concert will be held on Sunday, May 7 at 3p.m. in the Sosnoff Theater of The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College. Tickets are a $15–$20 suggested donation and free to the Bard community. For tickets, call the box office at 845-758-7900, or go to: https://fishercentertickets.bard.edu.
 
“In this piece, the jazz quintet represents the vocabulary that I learned in [my] early years of combo playing . . . The first movement centers on a theme that shifts around from section to individual instrument to section. The second movement sets up a repeated vamp while sections play a cat and mouse game with each other until reaching a finale on a repeated ostinato pattern from the strings,” says Barker.  ­
 
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Thurman Barker began his professional career at the age of 16 playing for blues singer Mighty Joe Young. Classically trained at the American Conservatory of Music, he quickly established a reputation as a professional drummer. He has played backup for Billy Eckstein, Marvin Gaye, Bette Midler and Vicki Carr. He was the house drummer at the Schubert Theatre in Chicago for 10 years where he played for national touring companies in Hair, The Wiz, The Me Nobody Knows, Promises, Promises, 1776, Bubblin’ Brown Sugar, A Raisin in the Sun, Grease, One Mo' Time, and Ain’t Misbehavin’. A charter member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), Barker has performed worldwide and recorded with Cecil Taylor, Muhal Richard Abrams, Amina Claudine Meyers, Anthony Braxton, Roscoe Mitchell, Sam Rivers, Billy Bang, Joseph Jarman, and Henry Threadgill. He has produced five recordings under his own record label, Uptee Productions.  In 1994, his composition, "Dialogue," commissioned by Mutable Music, premiered at Merkin Concert Hall in New York City. He has since completed a second commission for Mutable Music as well as two commissions for the Delaware Valley Chamber Orchestra in Sullivan County, New York. The Woodstock Chamber Orchestra premiered his chamber piece, "Expansions," in May 1999. He has developed and taught in the jazz program at Bard College since 1993.
 
In addition to leading the Bard College Conservatory Orchestra, Leon Botstein is in his 25th year as music director and principal conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra. He has been hailed for his visionary approach to creating unique concert programs and reviving rarely performed works. His programming gives audiences opportunities to hear live performances of works that are often neglected in the standard repertory, often broadening the experience with preconcert talks, while bringing his distinctive style to core repertory works. He is artistic codirector of Bard SummerScape and the Bard Music Festival, which take place at The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College, where he has been president since 1975, and is conductor laureate of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, where he served as music director from 2003–11. Botstein leads an active schedule as a guest conductor all over the world, and can be heard on numerous recordings with the London Symphony (including its Grammy- nominated recording of Popov’s First Symphony), the London Philharmonic, NDR Hamburg, and the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra. Many of his live performances with the American Symphony Orchestra are available online, where they have cumulatively sold more than a quarter of a million downloads. In recent seasons he has conducted the Royal Philharmonic, Simón Bolivar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela, Aspen Music Festival, the Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden, Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Russian National Orchestra in Moscow, Taipei Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, and Sinfónica Juvenil de Caracas in Venezuela. Highly regarded as a music historian, Botstein’s most recent book is Von Beethoven zu Berg: Das Gedächtnis der Moderne (2013). He is the editor of The Musical Quarterly and the author of numerous articles and books. For his contributions to music he has most recently received an honorary Doctor of Music from Sewanee: The University of the South, and before that he received the award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters; Harvard University’s prestigious Centennial Award, as well as the Cross of Honor, First Class, from the government of Austria.
 
Members of Time Factor
Pianist Noah Barker, a multi-instrumentalist and composer from Jeffersonville, New York, is the son of the avant-garde jazz drummer, Thurman Barker. He started classical piano studies at age seven and moved on to jazz as a teenager. After undergraduate studies at the University of Louisville,  he received a master of arts degree in music composition and production from SUNY Purchase in 2014. Barker relocated to Brooklyn and started Never Forever Records. He fronts the group Noisebody, in addition to playing with Jerry Paper, Joanna Teters, Murals, and Purr.
 
Clarinetist Paavo Carey enjoys a versatile career as a music director, arranger, composer, conductor, saxophonist, and educator.  Noted for his energetic and passionate performances, he currently serves as music director at Madison Memorial High School, in Madison, Maine, and has taught jazz master classes at Colby College.  He was the founding band director at the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in Queens.  As a saxophonist, Mr. Carey performs in clubs and concert halls throughout the tri-state and New England areas as well as internationally.  He is a long time member of the critically acclaimed Me We and Them Orchestra.
 
Guitarist and composer James Emery has been active on the international jazz and contemporary music scene since 1975. He has recorded 26 CDs and performed in more than 25 countries. In addition to international critical acclaim as a leader of his own ensembles, he is recognized for his work with the String Trio of New York, which he co-founded in 1977. Emery has performed and recorded with Henry Threadgill, Joe Lovano, Anthony Braxton, Steve Reich, and Leroy Jenkins. He has received numerous grants and commissions, including a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship.
 
Dean Torrey is a double bassist and composer from Fairfield, Connecticut, currently residing in Brooklyn. He attended the Jazz Studies Program at SUNY Purchase, where he studied with Doug Weiss and Scott Colley. Since graduating and moving to New York in 2014, Torrey has worked with many great musicians including NEA Jazz Master Muhal Richard Abrams, Hal Galper, Ray Gallon, Tim Green, Thurman Barker, Alex Hoffman, and many others.
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See www.bard.edu/conservatory for the full concert calendar.
 
ABOUT THE BARD COLLEGE CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC ORCHESTRA
The unique undergraduate curriculum of the Bard College Conservatory of Music is guided by the principle that musicians should be broadly educated in the liberal arts and sciences to achieve their greatest potential. 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 (B.Mus.) and a bachelor of arts in a field other than music (B.A.). At the Bard Conservatory the serious study of music goes hand in hand with the education of the whole person.

The Orchestra Now and musicians from the Bard College Conservatory Orchestra perform Elgar’s masterful choral work, conducted by Leon Botstein, April 8–9.

The Bard College Conservatory of Music presents the Conservatory Orchestra in concert in the acoustically superb Sosnoff Theater. Conducted by Leon Botstein, the program includes Schumann’s Cello Concerto in A Minor with Peter Wiley on cello, Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No.4, and features soloist Obadiah Wright ’17 playing Paloma.

Internationally acclaimed, award-winning composer and Bard professor George Tsontakis talks about why continuing to play the viola is important to his work as a composer.

Sō Percussion's Gun Show dissects America's obsession with firearms. The group's members make up the faculty of the Bard Conservatory's percussion program.

The Fisher Center presents the Bard College Conservatory Orchestra in concert at the Sosnoff Theater on Saturday, November 5 at 7 p.m. Music director Leon Botstein will lead the orchestra in a performance of a selection of classic pieces, including Ludwig van Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 2, Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony 5 in D minor, op. 47, and Béla Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra.

Sō Percussion, made up of Bard faculty members Eric Cha-Beach, Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski, and Jason Treuting, has won a Bessie Award for outstanding musical composition and sound design.

The Place of Music: Essays from the First Decade of the Bard College Conservatory of Music celebrates 10 years since the Conservatory's founding and marks the importance of Bard as the only conservatory requiring completion of a bachelor of arts degree in a field other than music concurrently with the awarding of the bachelor of music degree. The collection includes essays by Bard faculty members Robert Martin, Dawn Upshaw, and Robert Kelly, as well as alumni/ae Rylan Gajek-Leonard '16 and Allegra Chapman '10.

The Bard College Conservatory of Music celebrates its 10th Anniversary with one of America’s foremost pianists. Jeremy Denk, whose playing was lauded by the New York Times as “bracing, effortlessly virtuosic and utterly joyous,” will create a time-lapse through seven centuries of Western music, from the 1300s to the present day. Denk describes the program saying, “In a series of 25 short pieces, it will trace the evolution of the musical language, the soundscape—an epic story of human thought and ideals, of what we have found important to express in tones.” The matinee program will be held on Sunday, September 11 at 3 p.m. in the Sosnoff Theater of the Richard B. Fisher Center of the Performing Arts at Bard College.

The work-in-progress Stranger Love will appear in The Industry's FIRST TAKE series in Los Angeles, a biennial West Coast workshop for new American operas.

From June 3 to 10, The Bard Conservatory Orchestra will embark on a one-week visit to Cuba to foster cultural exchange. The project includes formal concerts conducted by Leon Botstein in Cienfuegos (June 4), Santa Clara (June 6), and Havana (June 7-9), with pianist Peter Serkin as soloist in Havana (June 9). Collaborations with Cuban artists, in the form of shared concerts, side-by-side performances, and chamber music workshops, are another important component of this concert tour. 

Professor Tower on the newest in her Fanfare series, and why she embraces the term "woman composer" after joining Nancy B. Reich's Women in Music course at Bard.

The Bard College Conservatory of Music presents a Mother’s Day side-by-side performance with Bard Conservatory Orchestra and The Orchestra Now (TŌN). Conducted by Leon Botstein, the concert includes Alban Berg’s Seven Early Songs featuring soprano Dawn Upshaw and Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 6. The concert will be held on Sunday, May 8 at 3 p.m. in the Sosnoff Theater of The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College. Tickets are a $15–$20 suggested donation and free to the Bard community. Ticket sales benefit the Bard Conservatory of Music’s Scholarship Fund. For tickets, call the box office at 845-758-7900, or go to fishercenter.bard.edu.

Tamzin Elliott discusses her Daughters Concerto, which had its world premiere last weekend at The Orchestra Now's Fisher Center season finale.

Asher B. Edelman Professor in the Arts Joan Tower has released new recordings on the Naxos label. Performed by the Nashville Symphony, her third album with Naxos presents a concerto and two orchestral works—one of which, "Stroke," was nominated for a 2016 Grammy Award. Last week, a fourth Naxos recording was released, featured three string quartets and a piano quintet with Bard professor Blair McMillen on piano, performed by the Daedalus and Miami quartets. The fifth Naxos recording will be released next year, with the Albany Symphony presenting concertos, and solos performed by percussionist Evelyn Glennie and pianist Blair McMillen.

Conductor David Bloom '13, M.M. '15 offers tips on leading youth orchestras and reveals what it’s like to work with Courtney Love.

​George Tsontakis, distinguished composer in residence at Bard, was commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra to compose multiple sonnet-themed tone poems for a concert series commemorating the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. Sonnets was "a complete success" at last week's premiere, writes Susan Miron, adding that Tsontakis, "has written a piece that is not just eloquent for the English horn, but also for the whole orchestra." Read more below.

Themed Programs? Play On!
BSO and Bard Full with Feasting
Concert Preview: English Horn Soloist Robert Sheena on Sonnets

The Success of "Three Songs for Soprano and Orchestra" is owed largely to Upshaw’s fealty to the work and her way with a narrative line, composer Osvaldo Golijov said recently.

Joan Tower, Asher B. Edelman Professor in the Arts, has been nominated for a GRAMMY Award for her composition Stroke.