Image Credit: Steve J. Sherman

The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts Presents the 2011–12 Season of the American Symphony Orchestra Series

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y. — The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College presents the opening concert of the 2011–12 season of the popular American Symphony Orchestra (ASO) series on Friday, October 28 and Saturday, October 29, at 8:00 p.m. The concert will be conducted by Leon Botstein, music director, with a preconcert talk by Christopher Gibbs, James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Music, beginning at 6:45 p.m. Individual tickets are $25, $35, and $40. Call 845-758-7900 or visit the Fisher Center website at fishercenter.bard.edu to purchase tickets or for further information.

The program features Godfrey Winham’s Sonata for Orchestra, and Gustav Mahler’s Rückert Lieder and Symphony No. 1 in D Major (“Titan”). Featured soloists include Bard College Conservatory of Music Vocal Arts Program students Hannah Goldshlack and Matthew Morris.

The season continues on Friday February 24 and Saturday, February 25, 2012, with Maurice Ravel’s La valse, Sergei Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2, and Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. Stravinsky’s life and musical legacy will be the subject of the 2013 Bard Music Festival. Featured soloists include Jiazhi Wang, violin.

On Friday, April 27 and Saturday, April 28, the program for the final concert of the 2011-12 season features Witold Lutosławski’s Concerto for Orchestra, Christopher Brubeck’s Prague Concerto for Bass Trombone, Howard Shore’s Mythic Gardens, Concerto for Cello and Orchestra (world premiere), and Béla Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra. Featured soloists include Sophie Shao, cello, and Tamas Markovics, trombone.

Season subscriptions are available. For more information, contact the box office at
845-758-7900.

About the Performers: 

Leon Botstein is music director and principal conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra and conductor laureate of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra. He is founder and coartistic director of the Bard Music Festival, which celebrated its 22nd season this year at Bard College, the institution he has served as president since 1975. Botstein has guest conducted major orchestras throughout the world. Among his recordings are operas by Strauss, Dukas, and Chausson, as well as works by Shostakovich, Dohnányi, Liszt, Bruckner, Bartók, Hartmann, Reger, Glière, Szymanowski, Brahms, Copland, Sessions, Perle, and Rands. He is the editor of The Musical Quarterly and the author of many articles and books. For his contributions to music he has received the Award for Distinguished Service to the Arts from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Centennial Medal of the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art. He is a recipient of the Carnegie Foundation’s Academic Leadership Award and a member of the American Philosophical Society.

Founded in 1962 by legendary conductor Leopold Stokowski, the American Symphony Orchestra continues its mission to demystify orchestral music, and make it accessible and affordable to everyone. Under music director Leon Botstein, the ASO has pioneered what The Wall Street Journal called “a new concept in orchestras,” presenting concerts curated around various themes drawn from the visual arts, literature, politics, and history, and unearthing rarely performed masterworks for well-deserved revival. These concerts are performed in the Vanguard Series at Carnegie Hall. 

The orchestra also performs in the celebrated concert series Classics Declassified at Peter Norton Symphony Space, and is the resident orchestra of The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College, where it appears in a winter subscription series as well as Bard’s annual SummerScape festival and the Bard Music Festival. In 2010, the American Symphony became the resident orchestra of The Collegiate Chorale, performing regularly in the Chorale’s New York concert series. The orchestra has made several tours of Asia and Europe, and has performed in countless benefits for organizations including the Jerusalem Foundation and PBS.

ASO’s award-winning music education program, Music Notes, integrates symphonic music into core humanities classes in high schools across the tristate area.

In addition to many albums released on the Telarc, New World, Bridge, Koch, and Vanguard labels, many live performances by the American Symphony are now available for digital download. In many cases, these are the only existing recordings of some of the rare works that have been rediscovered in ASO performances.  

To download high- resolution photographs, go to http://www.fishercenter.bard.edu/press,
scroll down the page, and click on the desired photo to link to a 300-dpi downloadable image.

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October 5, 2011

This event was last updated on 10-06-2011

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