Bard Baroque Ensemble Presents Concert in Memory of Frederick Fisher Hammond on April 19

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.—The Bard Baroque Ensemble, under the direction of Renée Anne Louprette, presents a concert dedicated to the memory of Frederick Fisher Hammond (1937-2023), Professor Emeritus, Irma Brandeis Chair of Romance Cultures and Music History at Bard College. Presented with the Bard Chamber Singers, Bard Preparatory Division Chorus, and the Graduate Vocal Arts Program, the program includes works by Bach, Handel, and Mozart and features the rededication of Frederick Hammond’s two restored William Dowd harpsichords. The performance will be held on Saturday, April 19 at 7 pm in the Fisher Center’s Sosnoff Theater. This is the Bard Baroque Ensemble’s debut concert in the Sosnoff Theater. The concert is free and open to the public. For tickets and information visit fishercenter.bard.edu/events/bard-baroque-ensemble/ or call 845-758-7900 (Mon-Fri 10am-5pm).

The evening’s program celebrates the restoration of Professor Hammond's French double-manual and Italian single-manual harpsichords—now a part of Bard College’s collection of early keyboard instruments—featuring them in the Concerto for Two Harpsichords, Strings, and Continuo in C Minor, BWV 1060 by Johann Sebastian Bach, with Sophia Cornicello and Raymond Erickson as harpsichord soloists. One of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's most popular and enduring works, Symphony No. 40 in G Minor, K. 550, opens the program, interpreted by the Ensemble with a Baroque sensibility. Bard faculty member and distinguished tenor Rufus Müller presents the ravishing opening aria from Handel’s Serse: Ombra mai fu (Never was a shade). The program concludes with Bach's Cantata No. 1: Wie schön leuchtet Der Morgenstern (How brightly shines the Morningstar), featuring the Bard Chamber Singers, Preparatory Division Children's Chorus, and soloists from the Graduate Vocal Arts Program. This luminous chorale-cantata—originally conceived for the Feast of the Annunciation—is presented here in the context of transition from darkness to light, on the date of Holy Saturday within the Christian Church. Valentina Grasso, assistant professor of history at Bard, will present a reading from Dante’s Divine Comedy—in lieu of the traditional Lutheran sermon—at the center of Bach’s 1724 masterpiece.  Bios
Frederick Fisher Hammond (1937-2023), Professor Emeritus, Irma Brandeis Chair of Romance Cultures and Music History, Bard College, was a distinguished scholar of Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque music and a renowned authority on the music of Girolamo Frescobaldi, an Italian composer of the late Renaissance and early Baroque periods. Frederick Hammond was an expert and connoisseur of Italian history, literature, and language, and an esteemed harpsichordist, organist, and continuo player. He served as continuo player of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and directed the E. Nakamichi Festival of Baroque Music in Los Angeles and the Clarion Music Society in New York. His range of expertise as a keyboard player and historian was vast, spanning music from the 16^th through the 20^th centuries, and he was an influential mentor to many students at UCLA, Bard College, and within the Bard Prison Initiative.

Harpsichord builder William Dowd (1922-2008) was a pioneer of the historical harpsichord movement of the mid-20^th century, founding a workshop with colleague Frank Hubbard in Boston in 1949 but eventually establishing his own workshops in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1958 and in Paris in 1971. His research and incorporation of engineering techniques modeled after the two-manual French harpsichords of Blanchet and Taskin influenced future generations of harpsichord builders by establishing reliable new standards of structural and tuning stability and efficacy of construction. Among the renowned harpsichordists who performed and recorded on Dowd’s instruments was the eminent harpsichordist and early music scholar Ralph Kirkpatrick, with whom Frederick Hammond studied at Yale University. Frederick Hammond’s one-manual Italian-style and two-manual French-style harpsichords were acquired by Bard College in 2023 and restored by Masayuki Maki in 2025, incorporating new, hand-made cherry and teak hardwood jacks and Canadian goose-quill plectra.

Renée Anne Louprette, director of the Bard Baroque Ensemble, maintains an international career as organ recitalist, conductor, teacher, and collaborative artist. She is Assistant Professor of Music and College Organist at Bard College and has led the organ programs at Rutgers University, The Hartt School of the University of Hartford, and Montclair State University. In New York City she served as Associate Director of Music at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola, Trinity Wall Street, and the Unitarian Church of All Souls. She has performed throughout Europe and North America and appeared as concerto soloist with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra in Australia, the Auburn Symphony Orchestra in Seattle, and The Orchestra Now and Musica Viva in New York. Collaborations have included the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, Piffaro, American Brass Quintet, Da Capo Chamber Ensemble, and the Los Angeles Dance Project, among others. She a U.S.-Romanian Fulbright Scholar who spent the Fall 2022 season surveying historic pipe organs in Transylvania. She has released several solo recordings—including the music of J. S. Bach and French symphonic organ repertoire—to critical acclaim.

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About the Bard Baroque Ensemble
The Bard Baroque Ensemble provides Bard College and Bard Conservatory musicians the opportunity to explore early repertoire from the Medieval through the late Baroque and early Classical periods. The ensemble takes a leading role in an annual series of Bach cantata presentations in the Chapel of the Holy Innocents at Bard College and other venues on the Bard campus and in the Hudson Valley region, including the Old Dutch Church in Kingston and Troy Savings Bank Music Hall. The Baroque Ensemble collaborates with other Bard programs, including the Chamber Singers, Preparatory Division Chorus, Graduate Vocal Arts Program, The Orchestra Now, the Graduate Conducting Program, and faculty from other branches of the College in bringing dynamic and engaging early music performances to the wider community. The Ensemble welcomes students from both the College and Conservatory, challenging them at their own individual level while fostering a spirit of collaboration centered around the study and practice of ancient music.

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 and Massena properties, Bard’s campus consists of more than 1,200 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; advanced degrees through 13 graduate programs; nine early colleges; and numerous dual-degree programs nationally and internationally. Building on its 165-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 the 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.

This event was last updated on 03-27-2025

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