CONDUCTORS INSTITUTE AT BARD COLLEGE PRESENTS A "PASS-THE-BATON" CONCERT ON FRIDAY, JULY 13 Works to be performed by the Institute Orchestra and Institute conductors include the world premiere of Anthony Korf's Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, Dvorák's
ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.-"Pass-the-Baton" will be the activity during a special concert presented by the Conductors Institute at Bard College on Friday, July 13, at 1:00 p.m. in Olin Hall. This concert, free and open to the public, will feature the Institute Orchestra, conducted by Institute conductors, performing works by Dvorák, Tchaikovsky, and Debussy, and the world premiere of a concerto by composer-in-residence Anthony Korf.
The "Pass-the-Baton" concert will feature a special preview of the 2001 Bard Music Festival "Debussy and His World," with a performance of the composer's La Mer. Also featured will be Dvorák's Symphony No. 9 and Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6, movements 3 and 4. The concert will conclude with two renditions of the world premiere performance of Anthony Korf's Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, with pianist Stephen Gosling. The first performance will be conducted by the Institute conductors, the second by its composer and conductor-in-residence George Rothman.
Twenty-two years ago, Harold Farberman founded the Conductors Institute (CI) at the University of West Virginia in Morgantown, seeking to fill a void in the United States with a summer training program for conductors. "I hit on a formula that remains the same to this day-vigorous technical training and promotion of American music in a cooperative atmosphere," he said. This is the third year that the CI will be held at Bard College and also marks the first year that the master of fine arts degree in conducting is offered. The Institute is designed so that there are new instructors and new repertoire each week, assuring the participants exposure to a variety of expert opinions. The visiting faculty include maestri Leon Botstein, Apo Hsu, and George Rothman, and composer Anthony Korf. Michelle Basile directs the Discovery Program, designed for beginning conductors.
During a "Pass the Baton" concert, the audience is given a seamless rendition of each work as the conductors pass the baton from one to another after completing their assigned section, without missing a beat. This is the second year that the Conductors Institute at Bard has offered these public concerts. The next will be held on Friday, July 27, at 1:00 p.m. in Olin Hall. For further information, call 845-758-7425.
Harold Farberman, founder and artistic director, is a noted conductor, composer, and musician. Born into a family of klezmer musicians, he graduated from The Juilliard School and became the youngest member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) when he joined its percussion section. He received a master's degree from the New England Conservatory of Music. His earliest composition, Evolution, has been recorded four times, once by Leopold Stokowski. Aaron Copland invited Farberman to study composition with him at Tanglewood after hearing Evolution. Farberman also studied conducting at Tanglewood under Maestro Eleazar DeCarvalho and in 1963 left the BSO to pursue a conducting career. He was music director of the Colorado Springs and Oakland Symphony Orchestras, and principal guest conductor of the Denver Symphony Orchestra and the Bournemouth (Great Britain) Sinfonietta. He has been a frequent guest conductor and recording artist with orchestras including the London Symphony, the Royal Philharmonic, BBC Symphony, and Stockholm Philharmonic. A prolific composer of music for orchestra, ballet, film, chamber ensemble, and opera, he was awarded the Ives Medal for his dedication to the music of Charles Ives. His cello concerto was premiered by the American Symphony Orchestra in November 2000 at Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall. Farberman founded the Conductors Guild and is the author of The Art of Conducting Technique (book and video).
Anthony Korf, composer-in-residence, is an active conductor who has championed the music of living composers and 20th-century masters. Since 1975, he has led Parnassus, the New York-based new music ensemble, which he founded. He is also the cofounder and artistic director of Riverside Symphony. As a composer, Korf has been awarded commissions for the Koussevitsky Music Foundation, San Francisco Symphony, and American Composers Orchestra. In 1988, he was honored with a Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1987, he received a grant from the Astral Foundation to record his Symphony No. 2 for New World Records, and in 1979, won the first prize in the inaugural ASCAP Awards to Young Composers. Korf has received commissions and/or recording grants from the Jerome Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and New York State Council on the Arts.
George Rothman, conductor-in-residence, has been the music director of the Riverside Symphony since its inception in 1981. He is in increasing demand as a guest conductor, having made recent appearances in Shanghai, Brazil, and throughout the United States. In the fall of 1998, he made his Japanese conducting debut with the New Century Orchestra (Osaka) and his European debut conducting Denmark's South Jutland Symphony Orchestra in Denmark and Germany. His passion for discovery is reflected in his premiere performances of well over 100 new orchestral compositions. He has introduced to New York audiences seldom-heard works by composers as diverse as Biber, Haydn, and Sibelius, and led local premieres of works by Prokofiev and Ravel. A native New Yorker, he trained at the Manhattan School of Music and The Juilliard School and as a scholarship student at Tanglewood Music Center, where he studied with Leonard Bernstein and Seiji Ozawa.
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(7.11.01)