Bard Conservatory of Music News Archive

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.

Founded at Bard in 2010 and led by alumni/ae, Contemporaneous now makes its home in New York City. The ensemble plays Murray's in Tivoli on February 2.

The Fisher Center for the Performing Arts presents the Bard College Conservatory Orchestra in concert at the Sosnoff Theater on Sunday, December 6 at 3 p.m. Guest conductor JoAnn Falletta, music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and Virginia Symphony Orchestra, will lead the orchestra in a performance of Ernest Bloch’s Suite for Viola and Orchestra, with 2015 Conservatory Concerto Competition winner Ye Zi ’16, viola soloist; Vítězslav Novák’s V Tratách (In the Tatras); and the Brahms Symphony No. 2 in D Major.  

"Earnest and all-American, she radiates fireside-chat warmth," writes Zachary Woolfe of Professor Upshaw's set at the Resonant Bodies Festival.

The Bard College Conservatory of Music is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, featuring three special anniversary concerts in September. On September 3 the Conservatory will celebrate the gift of seven historic pianos with a concert featuring pianists Peter Serkin and Julia Hsu, with commentary by President Leon Botstein. Then, on September 22, Conservatory faculty and students will perform the works of Joseph Haydn in the opening concert of the three-part Haydn Project. Finally, singer-songwriter Natalie Merchant will perform with her band and the Conservatory Orchestra on September 26 in a concert to benefit the Conservatory.

Soprano Clarissa Lyons ’11, alumna of the Bard College Conservatory of Music Graduate Vocal Arts Program (VAP), has been invited to join the Metropolitan Opera Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, capping an exciting year in which she was named the Grand Prize Winner at Florida Grand Opera’s Young Patronesses of the Opera Competition and the Glenn & Ginger Flournay Award Winner at Shreveport Opera’s Mary Jacobs Smith Singer of the Year Competition. In January, Lyons participated in The Song Continues series at Carnegie Hall, where she performed in a master class led by Warren Jones. She will return to Carnegie Hall in January 2016 to present a Spotlight Recital in Weill Hall as part of The Song Continues series alongside tenor Miles Mykkanen and pianist Ken Noda.

On May 1, the Bard Conservatory Orchestra directed by Leon Botstein showcased music that for the larger general audience may stray from expected fare, yet was exciting and thrilling. 

"Considered one of the most successful female composers of all time," Tower is recognized as one of “the classy ladies of classical music throughout history."

Bard College's Fisher Center and the Longy School's Zabriskie House made the list of the most beautiful music education buildings by College Degree Search.