Bard College Conservatory of Music Orchestra to Tour Cuba in June

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.—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. A side-by-side chamber concert in Havana (June 8) features world-renowned Camerata Romeu, the first all-female string orchestra in Latin America, conducted by Zenaida Romeu. The Bard Conservatory Orchestra will also hold chamber music reading sessions with young musicians at Cuban arts high schools, community music groups, and music schools in these cities. The primary objective of this Cuba tour is to initiate a continuing collaboration, to learn from each other, and to foster student and faculty exchange.
 
The Bard College Conservatory believes in the power of music and the power of young people to create bonds that will endure and open doors for long-term understanding and collaboration. This summer concert tour combines music and youth as a powerful way to build positive and lasting relationships between the two countries. “With the recent opening up of the United States to Cuba, we see this as an exciting opportunity to establish new ties between our students and the young people of that country,” says Director of the Bard Conservatory of Music Robert Martin. “The tour is happening now, as the pace of relations with Cuba quickens, because we feel we can play a positive role, through music, in affecting the way that the relationship between our counties develops.” Over the past ten years, the Bard Conservatory has established close connections for student exchange and concert tours with China, Venezuela, and Hungary, and aims to foster similar collaborations in Cuba and other Latin American countries, building new ties among Bard Conservatory students, who come from 16 different countries, with the young people of Cuba and Latin America.
 
Classical Movements, which is a leader in taking the finest ensembles to Cuba for the last 19 years, secured the invitation for the Bard Conservatory to make a multiple city concert tour and play at the same hall in Havana they arranged for the Minnesota Orchestra in their ground-breaking tour to Cuba in May 2015. Says Neeta Helms, president of Classical Movements “The Bard Conservatory and their acclaimed Music Director, Leon Botstein, making a visit to Cuba with the celebrated American pianist Peter Serkin was of huge interest to the Cuban cultural and educational officials. The collaborations are of special importance.”
 
Collaborative music projects in Cuba have been made possible with a grant from the Open Society Foundations.
 
 
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2016 CUBA TOUR PROGRAM
The Bard Conservatory Orchestra Cuba Tour
June 3–10
 
Saturday June 4
Cienfuegos, Teatro Tomas Terry (400 seats)
 
Concert
 
Gioachino Rossini
Guillaume Tell (William Tell) Overture
 
Paul Hindemith
Mathis der Maler (Symphony)
 
Intermission
 
Johannes Brahms 
Symphony No. 2, op. 73, D major
 
 
Monday June 6
Santa Clara, Teatro La Caridad (450 seats)
 
Concert
 
Gioachino Rossini
Guillaume Tell (William Tell) Overture
 
Paul Hindemith
Mathis der Maler (Symphony)
 
Intermission
 
Johannes Brahms
Symphony No. 2, op. 73, D major
 
 
Tuesday June 7
Havana, Sala Covarrubias at the Teatro Nacional de Cuba
Evening rehearsal for strings with Camarata Romeo
 
 
Wednesday June 8
Havana, Sala Covarrubias at the Teatro Nacional de Cuba (850 seats)
Chamber Concert side-by-side with Camerata Romeu
 
 
Program includes
Mendelssohn Octet (Bard Conservatory Orchestra)
Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings (conducted by Zenaida Romeu)
 
 
Thursday June 9
Havana, Sala Covarrubias at the Teatro Nacional de Cuba (850 seats)
Concert
 
Gioachino Rossini
Guillaume Tell (William Tell) Overture
Béla Bartók
Concerto for Piano No. 3, BB127
(with soloist Peter Serkin)
 
Johannes Brahms
Symphony No. 2, op. 73, D major  
 
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ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Leon Botstein, music director, Bard College Conservatory Orchestra
In addition to leading the Bard College Conservatory Orchestra, Leon Botstein is in his 24th year as music director and principal conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra. He established, and is the music director of, The Orchestra Now, an innovative training
 orchestra and master’s degree program designed to prepare young musicians for 
the challenges facing the modern symphony orchestra. Botstein has been hailed as a visionary 
for his programming, creating concerts that give audiences once-in-a-lifetime chances to hear rarely performed works, and inviting music lovers to participate, through talks and discussions, in the creative experience. He is
 also artistic director of Bard SummerScape and the Bard Music Festival, now in its 27th year, both taking place in the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard 
College, where he has been president since 1975. He is conductor laureate 
of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, where he served as music director from 
2003 to 2011.
 
Botstein leads an active schedule as a guest conductor worldwide, 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. Highly
 regarded as a music historian, Botstein’s most recent book is Von Beethoven zu Berg: Das Gedäächtnis der Moderne (2013). He is the editor of The
Musical Quarterly and the author of numerous articles and books.
 
Peter Serkin, piano
Recognized as an artist of passion and integrity, the distinguished American pianist Peter Serkin has successfully conveyed the essence of five centuries of repertoire. His inspired performances with symphony orchestras, in recital appearances, chamber music collaborations and on recordings are equally valued worldwide.
 
Peter Serkin’s rich musical heritage extends back several generations: his grandfather was violinist and composer Adolf Busch and his father pianist Rudolf Serkin. He has performed with the world's major symphony orchestras with such eminent conductors as Seiji Ozawa, Pierre Boulez, Alexander Schneider, Daniel Barenboim, George Szell, Eugene Ormandy, Claudio Abbado, Simon Rattle, James Levine, Herbert Blomstedt, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos and George Cleve. A dedicated chamber musician, Mr. Serkin has collaborated with Alexander Schneider, Pamela Frank, Yo-Yo Ma, the Budapest, Guarneri, Orion and Shanghai String Quartets and TASHI, of which he was a founding member.  He has recently performed a duo-piano team with Julia Hsu. They are devoting themselves to both one-piano, four-hands, as well as to two-piano music.
 
An avid exponent of the music of many of the 20th and 21st century’s most important composers, Mr. Serkin has been instrumental in bringing to life the music of Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, Stravinsky, Wolpe, Messiaen, Takemitsu, Henze, Berio, Wuorinen, Goehr, Knussen and Lieberson and others to audiences around the world. He has performed many important world premieres of works written specifically for him, in particular by Toru Takemitsu, Hans Werner Henze, Luciano Berio, Leon Kirchner, Alexander Goehr, Oliver Knussen, Charles Wuorinen and Peter Lieberson.  Mr. Serkin has recently made several arrangements of four-hands music by Mozart, Schumann and his grandfather, Adolf Busch, for various chamber ensembles and for full orchestra.  He has also arranged all of Brahms’s organ Chorale-Preludes, transcribed for one piano, four-hands.
 
The 2015 summer season featured engagements at the Tanglewood, Ravinia and La Jolla Chamber Music Festivals in performances of concertos, chamber music, and duo piano programs with pianist Julia Hsu. He travels to Japan to perform with the Tokyo Metropolitan Orchestra and the Osaka Symphony and will give recitals in Tokyo and Shizuoka. Mr. Serkin appears with David Robertson and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in China following an Australian tour last season.  Within the United States he is soloist with the orchestras of Atlanta, San Antonio and the Traverse Symphony and will perform the Reger Concerto in Carnegie Hall with the American Symphony Orchestra in celebration of the centenary of the composer’s death. European tours bring him to Cologne and Homburg in recital with programs of Josquin, John Bull, Dowland, Byrd, Nielsen, Mozart, Max Reger and Beethoven, as well as the Reger Piano Concerto with the Leipzig Gewandhaus and Dresden Staatskapelle orchestras conducted by Herbert Blomstedt.
 
Orchestral highlights of recent seasons have included the Boston, Chicago and Saint Louis Symphonies, New York Philharmonic and Scottish Chamber Orchestra, while recital tours have taken Mr. Serkin to Philadelphia, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Santa Monica, Princeton and New York’s 92nd Street Y. Recent summer festival appearances have included BBC London Proms, Tanglewood, Aldeburgh, Chautauqua and Denmark’s Oremandsgaard Festival. Mr. Serkin currently teaches at Bard College Conservatory of Music.
 
Zenaida Romeu, director, Camerata Romeu
Zenaida C. Romeu represents the third generation of a family of notable Cuban musicians. She learned piano from her mother, Zenaida Romeu, an accomplished concert pianist and teacher, and orchestral conducting from her famous cousin Gonzalo Romeu. She studied choral direction with the prominent Hungarian professor Agnes Kralovszky. In 1983, she was the first Cuban woman to graduate with a degree in orchestral direction, and she received a second degree in choral direction from the Superior Institute of Art of Cuba. She took master classes with prestigious Professors Olaf Koch and Gert Frishmuth in Cuba and Germany.
 
Ms. Romeu extends her artistic abilities though outstanding pedagogic skills. She teaches at the Superior Institute of Art in Havana and has taught master classes in choral direction, orchestral conducting, chamber music, and Cuban music in Spain, Mexico, and the United States. She is also a popular television host; her weekly program features the best of Cuban musical styles, and her interviews with well-established and up-and-coming Cuban musicians are lessons in cultural and musical history.
 
In 1982, Ms. Romeu founded the chamber choir Cohesión, introducing innovations, such as physical gestures and vocal replication of instrumental music, that were later adopted by other choirs. In 1989, she founded the choir Estudio Lírico and became assistant orchestral director to Gonzalo Romeu, who revived Cuban lyrical music and is recognized in Cuba and abroad for zarzuelas and operettas. Ms. Romeu directed operetta seasons for the Teatro Bellini of Naples, touring all of Italy. She has directed every Cuban orchestra, including the National Philharmonic. She has conducted and performed with important Cuban soloists and such international figures as French composer and pianist Michel Legrand, Brazilian composer, guitarist, and pianist Egberto Gismonti, and Mexican flautist and recorder player Horacio Franco.
 
In 1993, under the auspices of the Pablo Milanés Foundation, Ms. Romeu founded the Camerata Romeu, the first all-woman string orchestra in Latin America, and unique in the world for its repertoire, musical excellence, and stage presence. It performs and records the works of Latin American, Cuban, and North American composers. It has toured internationally; performed at the following US universities: Duke, California State at Northridge, Baltimore, Southern Florida, Wake Forest, and American; and at the California Institute of Arts, Los Angeles County Museum, and Museum of Santa Barbara.
 
Its recordings of Cuban and Latin American music include La Bella Cubana (Chamber Music and Critics Award); Cuba Mía; Danza de las Brujas; Tampa-Habana-Oslo; Raigal (Cuba Disco Award); Non Divisi; and a monograph of Roberto Valera’s work on the Bis Music label, Colibrí, was nominated for a Latin Grammy award. Sertoes Veredas, a monograph of works by the Brazilian composer Egberto Gismonti, is the first recording by a Latin American all-woman orchestra produced by the German label ECM.

The Camerata Romeu has appeared in various documentaries: Amor y Magia (1997) by Eva Maura Díaz; Cuerdas de mi Ciudad (1998) by Mayra Vilasís; and Cuba Mía: Retrato de una orquestra de mujeres (2002) by Cecilia Domeyko. Cuba Mía earned awards from the Cine Golden Eagle, Chicago Film Festival, and World Media Festival in Hamburg, Germany. PBS and several art channels around the world have featured it.
 
In addition, Ms. Romeu was orchestral director on Sueños de Ida y Vuelta with flamenco musician Victor Monge (Serranito), which was nominated for a Latin Grammy; Habanas de Cádiz with Carlos Cano; La Rumba soy yo  (vol. 2); Cervantes Cuatro Pianos (Cuba Disco Award); Músicas del Mundo; and La Isla de la Música, among others. She served as musical director for the following films: La Anunciación by Enrique Pineda Barnet; El Premio Flaco and Chamaco by Juan Carlos Cremata; and the animated films Lo Feo and La Luna en el Jardin by Yemely Cruz and Adanoe Lima. Romeu and the Camerata have been nominated for Latin Grammys and have won various Cuba Disco awards, the Marsella Medal, the Philadelphia Bell, Illustrious Guest of the City of Los Angeles, the Giraldilla Award, and the Order of Cuba.
 
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ABOUT THE BARD COLLEGE CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC ORCHESTRA
The Bard Conservatory Orchestra consists of 90 gifted students drawn from around the world. With its music director Leon Botstein it has performed twice at Lincoln Center in New York, at Sanders Theater at Harvard, and in Taipei, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjing, Guangzhou, and Wuhan during a three-week concert tour of Asia. The Bard College Conservatory of Music, founded in 2005 as a special five-year double-degree program within Bard College, has a world-class faculty that includes soprano Dawn Upshaw, pianist Peter Serkin, and violinists Weigang Li and Ida Kavafian, to name just a few.
 
Students are recruited from the United States and from all over the world, including Australia, Canada, China, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Palestine, Poland, Slovakia, South Korea, Ukraine, and Venezuela.
 
Following the Bard Conservatory Orchestra’s performance at Harvard University’s Sanders Theater in May 2011, critic David Griesinger wrote: “From the first notes it was obvious that these young players understood what was to come…This was easily the most moving performance of this amazing piece [Shostakovich Symphony No. 5] that I have heard. Special credit goes, of course, to Botstein, but he had the help of some magnificent playing…”

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Updated May 31, 2016
 

This event was last updated on 05-31-2016

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