THE CONDUCTORS INSTITUTE AT BARD COLLEGE ANNOUNCES ITS SUMMER 2003 PROGRAM AND FACULTY "No serious conductor should miss the opportunity to study at the Institute." -Marin Alsop, music director, Colorado Symphony Orchestra

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.—The Conductors Institute (CI) at Bard is pleased to announce the dates and faculty for its 2003 summer program, which will take place from June 23 to August 1. The Institute, founded and directed by conductor and composer Harold Farberman, offers programs for professional and semiprofessional conductors and composers.

Twenty-four years ago, seeking to fill a void in the United States with a summer training program for conductors, Farberman founded the Conductors Institute. "I hit on a successful formula that remains the same to this day—vigorous technical training and promotion of American music in a cooperative atmosphere," he says. Participants in the six-week summer program work directly with Maestro Farberman, who anchors the faculty of conductors and composers. New visiting faculty and new repertoire each week assure all Institute participants of exposure to a variety of expert opinions. In addition, there are evening lectures with internationally known scholars, composers, and conductors.

Visiting maestri of the 2003 Institute include Leon Botstein, Karen Lynn Deal, Guillermo Figueroa, Apo Hsu, and Eduardo Navega; and composer in residence Jennifer Higdon.

The Institute offers study combinations that enable students to tailor their own programs. These include Visual Score Study/Baton Placement and Body Movement Technique, offered from June 23 to 27, which, using Maestro Farberman's innovative system, unites the study of Institute repertoire with instruction in the Alexander Technique as it relates to the enhancement of performance skills and expression. Maestro Farberman teaches visual score study and baton placement; Alexander Farkas teaches the Alexander Technique.

The Conducting Program for Fellows and Colleagues will be offered from June 30 to July 25. Fellows work with the Institute orchestra during morning sessions, while colleagues work with the Institute string quintet during afternoon sessions and with the Institute orchestra on Fridays. Repertoire includes Beethoven's Leonore Overture, no. 3 and Symphony no. 7; Copland's Appalachian Spring; Janácek's Taras Bulba; Mozart's Magic Flute Overture; Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé Suite no. 2; Shostakovich's Symphony no. 5; Stravinsky's Firebird Suite; Tchaikovsky's Symphony no. 5; arias from Verdi's La traviata; and contemporary works, including the world premiere of Farberman's opera A Song for Eddie and a work by Jennifer Higdon.

The Discovery Program, offered from July 7 to 18, is directed by Eduardo Navega and is designed for conductors with limited experience who wish to improve their skills. Participants work with a string quartet in afternoon sessions for two weeks and attend all morning and evening sessions of the Conducting Program.

As a coda to the main program, the Composer-Conductor Program is offered from July 21 to August 1. Each composer is paired with a conductor who is responsible for learning and preparing the composer's work for public performance by the Composer's Chamber Ensemble. The program is supervised by Maestro Farberman. Eduardo Navega teaches composers conducting techniques that apply to their works.

The Conductors Institute, now in its third decade of existence and its fifth year at Bard College, also offers a 15-month program leading to a master of fine arts degree in conducting. For two consecutive summers, M.F.A. candidates participate in the Institute's six-week program and serve as fellows with the Bard Music Festival. Candidates also complete required course work at Bard during the intervening academic year, including classes in composition, basic orchestral repertoire, languages, a second instrument (string or piano), and solfège. Participants in the 15-month program undertake master classes in technical score study and analysis with Maestro Farberman. The program also offers podium time, including conducting opportunities with orchestra and chorus during the academic year, and culminates in a completion concert with the Institute Orchestra.

Merit-based scholarships are available for a limited number of qualified applicants. The deadline for application to both the six-week Conductors Institute and the M.F.A. program in conducting is
April 1, 2003. Bard College is located in New York's Hudson River Valley, 90 miles north of New York City and one hour from Tanglewood. For further information and an application, call the Conductors Institute at 845-758-7425, e-mail [email protected], or visit the website, www.bard.edu/ci.

Harold Farberman is a noted conductor, composer, and musician. His first composition, Evolution, has been recorded four times, once by Leopold Stokowski. After hearing Evolution, Aaron Copland invited Farberman to study composition with him at Tanglewood. Farberman was music director of the Colorado Springs Symphony and Oakland Symphony Orchestra, 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 the London Symphony, Royal Philharmonic, BBC Symphony, and Stockholm Philharmonic orchestras. 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. In November 2000, his cello concerto was premiered by the American Symphony Orchestra at Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall. Farberman founded the Conductors Guild and is the author of The Art of Conducting Technique: A New Perspective.

Leon Botstein, music director and principal conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra (ASO), conducts the orchestra's subscription season at Avery Fisher Hall as part of Lincoln Center Presents Great Performers. He also conducts seasons in New York and the Hudson Valley with the American Symphony Chamber Orchestra, and Classics Declassified, an educational series for adult listeners at Miller Theater. In 1994 he took the ASO to Japan and Korea on a tour sponsored by Toshiba, and in 1998 he led the ASO on a tour to Brazil to inaugurate a new concert hall in São Paulo. In January of 2000 at Avery Fisher Hall, he recorded a live performance for Telarc International of Richard Strauss's opera Die Liebe der Danae, with soprano Lauren Flanigan and the ASO. His other recordings with the ASO include Brahms's First Serenade (Vanguard) and Franz Schubert: Orchestrated, orchestrations of Schubert works by Joachim, Mottl, and Webern (Koch). He also conducted the ASO in the Harp Concertino of Dohnányi for an Arabesque recording. Botstein is the founder and coartistic director of the Bard Music Festival. Each year this internationally acclaimed festival explores the musical world of a single composer, reviving forgotten masterpieces and rediscovering works in their historical and cultural context. The 2003 festival will explore the world of Janácek. Every autumn the Bard Music Festival brings highlights from its summer programs to Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center. Botstein is also artistic director of the American Russian Young Artists Orchestra. Active as a guest conductor, Botstein has led the London Philharmonic, London Philharmonia, NDR–Hannover, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Bochum Symphony, Israel Sinfonietta, Düsseldorf Symphony, Jerusalem Symphony, Bern Symphony, and the Budapest Festival orchestras. In a series of prestigious recordings, Botstein has led the London Philharmonic most recently in Max Reger's Four Böcklin Tone Poems and A Romantic Suite, Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra, and music of Karol Szymanowski. Other recordings with Telarc include symphonies of Karl Amadeus Hartmann, Dohnányi's D Minor Symphony, and Bruckner's Fifth Symphony (Schalk edition). Botstein has also recorded a live performance of Max Bruch's oratorio Odysseus with NDR–Hannover (Koch); Mendelssohn's Paulus (Arabesque); the music of Joseph Joachim with violinist Elmar Oliveira (Carlton Classics); and a series of contemporary works by Richard Wilson, Robert Starer, Richard Wernick, and Meyer Kupferman (CRI). He studied violin with Roman Totenberg and conducting with James Yannatos, Richard Wernick, and Harold Farberman. Since 1975 he has been the president of Bard College, where he is also Leon Levy Professor in the Arts and Humanities. He is a prominent writer on music and history, and in 1996 received Harvard's prestigious Centennial Medal for his scholarly work. Botstein has published extensively on music and culture for numerous collections and journals. He is the editor of The Musical Quarterly and a contributor to the second edition of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. His edited volume, The Compleat Brahms, was published by Norton in 1999. He is currently working on a book on the history of listening.

Karen Lynn Deal marks her third season as music director and conductor of the Illinois Symphony Orchestra and the Illinois Chamber Orchestra. The Tennessean notes that Deal "has been extremely effective in creating symphony programs that draw in new audiences . . . making the symphony accessible to thousands." She was the associate conductor of the Nashville Symphony, music director and conductor of the Nashville Ballet, and associate conductor of the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra. Deal was the founding music director of Sinfonia Concertante, a professional chamber orchestra noted for its commitment to living composers. She pursued her doctoral studies at the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore, and postgraduate studies in Vienna at the Hochschule Fur Musik und Darstellende Kunst. While in Vienna, Deal made her European debut with the Pro Arte Orchestra in 1984. At home in a wide variety of styles and concert formats, she has conducted orchestral performances with soloists Itzhak Perlman; Sir James Galway; William Warfield; and Donald Peck; as well as Chet Atkins; Kathy Mattea; Mercedes Ellington; and Peter, Paul, and Mary.

Guillermo Figueroa is a member of one of Puerto Rico's most distinguished musical families. "An instinctive musical aristocrat, he gives a polished turn to every phrase," writes Joanne Sheehy Hoover in the Albuquerque Journal. Both a conductor and violinist, Figueroa is the director of the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra and in 2001, he was also named the 10th music director of the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra, becoming the first Puerto Rican-born conductor to lead an important orchestra in the United States. In 1994, he made his Lincoln Center conducting debut with the New York City Ballet, where he was also the concertmaster for 10 years, appearing in over a hundred performances of violin concerti by Stravinsky, Berg, Prokofiev, Brahms, Barber, Adams, and Glass. Figueroa, in his dual role as soloist and conductor, has also appeared with the Kansas City, Colorado, and Iceland symphonies. He has been a guest conductor of the New Jersey, Memphis, and El Salvador symphonies, as well as the Orquesta del Teatro Municipal de Rio de Janeiro, and Ballet Memphis, and Ballets de San Juan, and has performed with such distinguished soloists as Janos Starker, Hilary Hahn, Ruth Laredo, Gary Graffman, Carol Wincenc, Marcelo Alvarez, Florence Quivar, Pepe Romero, Vladimir Feltsman, Horacio Gutierrez, Barry Douglas, Glen Dicterow, and Paul Neubauer, and will, this season, perform with Itzhak Perlman, Jennifer Larmore, Justino Diaz, and Elmar Oliveira. A founding member of the world-renowned conductorless Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Figueroa has served as concertmaster and soloist in acclaimed performances with the orchestra throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. With the New Mexico Symphony, Figueroa has created the most comprehensive Berlioz Festival in the United States, this year commemorating the 200th anniversary of the birth of that passionate musician. Committed to the music of his native Puerto Rico, he has given the world premiere of works by such composers as Ernesto Cordero, Raymond Torres, Carlos Vazquez, Mariano Morales, and Roberto Sierra, the composer-in-residence at the Philadelphia Orchestra. Figueroa began violin studies with his father, Guillermo, and later with his uncle, José, at the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico, where he also worked with Pablo Casals. He attended The Juilliard School, where his teachers were Oscar Shumsky and Felix Galimar. His conducting studies were with Harold Farberman in New York.

Apo Hsu is the music director of the Springfield Symphony. She has served as artistic director of the Women’s Philharmonic in San Francisco and the Oregon Mozart Players in Eugene, Oregon. "Avon Women in Concert 2001" presented Hsu on tour in Brazil with the Women’s Philharmonic, performing bossa nova programs. In spring 2000, producer Debbie Allen included Hsu with the Women’s Philharmonic in a series entitled "Cool Women," which was broadcast on cable TV during the 2000–01 season. Hsu's first CD with the orchestra, which was released on the Koch International Classics label in spring 2001, featured the symphonic music of African American composer Florence Price. Hsu has served on the faculty of the American Symphony Orchestra League Conducting Workshops and the National Youth Orchestra Festival 2000 and has been a music review panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts. Hsu and the Women’s Philharmonic received ASCAP's Award for Adventurous Programming four consecutive times.

Eduardo Navega, director of the Discovery Program and a native of Brazil, began his music studies at an early age in São Paulo. He received his bachelor's degree in composition and conducting from the State University of Campinas and his master's degree in music from the University of Sheffield (England). He is currently completing his doctor of musical arts degree in conducting at the Hartt School of Music. He has studied with Benito Juarez, Henrique Gregori, and Harold Farberman. From 1978 to 1989, he was conductor of the University of São Paulo choir. During this time he wrote a number of arrangements of Brazilian popular songs, most of which are still in the repertoire of choirs throughout Brazil. Navega was assistant conductor of the Campinas Symphony Orchestra and was an assistant professor of choral and orchestral conducting at the University of Campinas. From 1992 to 1993, he was the conductor of the University of Sheffield Chamber Orchestra and received public and critical acclaim for his performances. Navega was awarded the prize of Up-and-Coming Conductor of the Year in 1995 by the APCA, a prestigious critics association in the state of São Paulo. He is a visiting assistant professor and director of orchestral activities at Vassar College.

Jennifer Higdon has been called a Renaissance woman of music. Donald Rosenberg of the Cleveland Plain Dealer described Higdon as "a composer with a powerful command of creative resources." Higdon frequently performs as a flutist and is active as a conductor. USA Today's Classical Picks of the Year named her the composer of the Best New Piece of 1996. Her works have been performed extensively throughout the United States, including performances at the White House, Weill Recital Hall, Merkin Hall, Alice Tully Hall, and Carnegie Hall. Higdon's work has been performed by flutists Carol Wincenc and Jeffrey Khaner, pianist Marc-André Hamelin, the Cassatt String Quartet, the Lark Quartet, Pacifica String Quartet, the Louisville Orchestra, Knoxville Symphony, and Cincinnati Symphony, among others. Deal's Concerto for Orchestra was commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra in 2002, with support of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Philadelphia Music Project. This work received its premiere at the American Symphony Orchestra League's Annual National Conference. In 1999, Deal was named a Pew Fellow in the Arts and composer in residence with the Continental Harmony Project, presented by the American Composers Forum and the National Endowment for the Arts. She is a recipient of awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the International League of Women Composers, Composers Inc., the Louisville Orchestra, and ASCAP. She is also the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Meet-the-Composer, the American Composers Forum, and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. She holds both a Ph.D. and master's degree in composition form the University of Pennsylvania, a bachelors of music degree in flute performance from Bowling Green State University, and an artist diploma from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Higdon is on the composition faculty at the Curtis Institute. She has served as conductor of the University of Pennsylvania Orchestra and as visiting assistant professor at Bard College.

(01.06.02)

This event was last updated on 01-08-2003

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