CONDUCTORS INSTITUTE AT BARD COLLEGE ANNOUNCES ITS SUMMER 2005 PROGRAM
“No serious conductor should miss the opportunity to study at the Institute.” —Marin Alsop, Principal Conductor, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.—The Conductors Institute (CI) at Bard is pleased to announce its 2005 summer program, which will take place from June 27 to August 5. The Institute, founded and directed by conductor and composer Harold Farberman, offers programs for professional and student conductors and composers. Participants in the six-week summer program work directly with Maestro Farberman, who anchors the faculty of guest conductors and composers in residence. 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. Farberman founded the Conductors Institute in 1979 to fill a void in the United States for a 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. The 2005 Institute’s visiting maestri include Leon Botstein, Karen Lynne Deal, Raymond Harvey, Apo Hsu, and Sidney Rothstein; visiting composers are Bernard Rands and Joan Tower. The permanent faculty includes Maestro Farberman and Eduardo Navega, director of the Discovery Program. The Institute offers study combinations that enable students to tailor their own programs. Students may enroll in the entire four-week program, or one two-week segment of the Conducting Program for Fellows and Colleagues; in the two-week programs, including the Discovery Program and the Composer-Conductor Program; and in the one-week program in Visual Score Study/Baton Placement and Body Movement Technique. Visual Score Study/Baton Placement and Body Movement Technique is offered from June 27 to July 1. This program unites the study of Institute repertoire, using visual score study/baton placement techniques, with instruction in the Alexander Technique as it relates directly 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 July 4 to July 29. 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. The repertoire includes Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 8, Berlioz’s Roman Carnival Overture, Brahms’s Symphony No. 4, Debussy’s Prélude a l’après-midi d’un faune, Elgar’s Enigma Variations, Mahler’s Songs of a Wayfarer and Kindertotenlieder, Mozart’s Magic Flute Overture, Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5, Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4, and contemporary works by Bernard Rands and Joan Tower. The Discovery Program, offered from July 11 to July 22, is directed by Eduardo Navega and 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. Repertoire includes Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik, Grieg’s Holberg Suite, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1. As a postlude to the Conducting Program, the Composer-Conductor Program is offered from July 25 to August 5. Composers who want to learn the fundamentals of conducting technique are encouraged to apply. Each composer is paired with a conductor who is responsible for learning and preparing the composer’s work for public performance by the Composers’ Chamber Ensemble. The Conductors Institute, now in its third decade of existence and its seventh 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. During the intervening academic year, candidates complete required course work at Bard, including classes in composition, basic orchestral repertoire, languages, a second instrument (string or piano), and solfège, in addition to 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, 2005. 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. # The Faculty Composer and conductor Harold Farberman has written diverse works for orchestra, three operas (most recently The Song of Eddie, which was premiered at The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College in July 2004), numerous chamber works, a score for an Academy Award–winning documentary film, and music for dance companies. Many of his works, which have been performed all over the world, are represented on three CDs devoted to his music, released by Albany Records. An advocate of modern music, Farberman received the Ives Award for his definitive interpretations of the work of Charles Ives. His recordings of Mahler, Michael Haydn, and Irwin Bazelon, as well as of Ives and his own music, have earned worldwide recognition for excellence. Farberman founded the Conductors Guild and is the author of the pioneering work The Art of Conducting Technique: A New Perspective, an innovative approach to the physical placement and movement of the baton. He is also the founder and artistic director of the Conductors Institute and director of Bard’s master of fine arts degree program in conducting. Eduardo Navega, director of the Discovery Program, is a native of Brazil. He began his music studies at an early age in São Paulo. He received his bachelor’s degree in composition and conducting from the University of Campinas and his master’s degree in music from the University of Sheffield. 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 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 named 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. Visiting Maestri Leon Botstein is music director and principal conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra, which performs its main subscription season at Avery Fisher Hall as part of Lincoln Center Presents Great Performers. He also leads the orchestra in the popular Classics Declassified, an educational concert series for adult listeners at Columbia University’s Miller Theatre, as well as in concerts at Bard College. He recently became music director and principal conductor of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra. Botstein is the founder and coartistic director of the Bard Music Festival. Botstein also is the artistic director of the American Russian Young Artists Orchestra. Active as a guest conductor, he has most recently appeared with such orchestras as the London Philharmonic, St. Petersburg Philharmonic, NDR–Hannover, Düsseldorf Symphony, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Jerusalem Symphony, Bern Symphony, and Budapest Festival Orchestra. His most recent recordings include, for Telarc, Popov’s Symphony No. 1 and Shostakovich’s Theme and Variations, with the London Symphony Orchestra; a live recording of Strauss’s opera Die ägyptische Helena with Deborah Voigt and the American Symphony Orchestra; and Glière’s Symphony No. 3, Il’ya Muramets, with the London Symphony Orchestra. Botstein also has led the London Philharmonic in Max Reger’s Böcklin Tone Poems and Romantic Suite, Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra, and music of Karol Szymanowski. His other recordings for Telarc include symphonies of Karl Amadeus Hartmann, Dohnányi’s D Minor Symphony, and Bruckner’s Fifth Symphony (Schalk edition). He also recently recorded music of Ernst Toch with NDR-Hamburg for New World Records. His recordings with the American Symphony also include a highly acclaimed live concert performance of Richard Strauss’s opera Die Liebe der Danae (Telarc) and music of Dohnányi, as well as Brahms’s First Serenade (Vanguard), Franz Schubert: Orchestrated, and orchestrations of Schubert works by Joachim, Mottl, and Webern (Koch). He has recorded a live performance of Max Bruch’s oratorio Odysseus with the NDR–Hannover (Koch); Mendelssohn’s Paulus, with previously unrecorded material (Arabesque); the music of Joseph Joachim with violinist Elmar Oliviera (Carlton Classics); and a series of contemporary works by Richard Wilson, Robert Starer, Richard Wernick, and Meyer Kupferman (CRI). Leon Botstein studied violin with Roman Totenberg and conducting with James Yannatos, Richard Wernick, and Harold Farberman. He is also a prominent writer on music and history; he serves as editor of The Musical Quarterly and is currently working on a book on the history of listening. He has received Harvard’s prestigious Centennial Medal, as well as the Cross of Honour from the Austrian government. Since 1975, he has been president of Bard College, where he is also Leon Levy Professor in the Arts and Humanities. Karen Lynne Deal marks her fifth 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, as well as 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 für 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. (July 11–15, 2005) With an immediately noticeable style that has been described as “elegant, but suffused with energy,” Raymond Harvey has garnered critical acclaim on symphonic podiums throughout the United States. Harvey has been called “one of a welcome new breed of . . . conductors currently enriching our national musical scene,” and is in his fifth season as music director of the Kalamazoo Symphony. He has also been music director of the Fresno Philharmonic and the Springfield Symphony, and associate conductor of the Buffalo Philharmonic. He has appeared as guest conductor with many of the country’s leading orchestras, including Philadelphia, Atlanta, St. Louis, Utah, Indianapolis, Rochester, Buffalo, Detroit, Louisville, New Orleans, and San Antonio, as well as the New York Philharmonic’s Young People’s Concerts and the Boston Pops. Equally at home in the world of opera, Harvey serves as music director of the El Paso Opera and has conducted the company’s productions of Tosca, Carmen, Madama Butterfly, Don Giovanni, La Bohème, and Aida. An excellent pianist and accomplished choral conductor, Harvey holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and a doctor of musical arts degree from the Yale School of Music. He has been featured in Ebony and Symphony magazines, and is profiled in Antoinette Handy’s book Black Conductors. (July 25–29, 2005) Apo Hsu “generates electricity from the podium in two directions: into the orchestra and into the audience,” according to the Oregonian. This year marks her second season as orchestra director at the National Taiwan Normal University. She also made homecoming guest appearances with the National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra at its 58th anniversary celebration concert and spring concert, the Taipei Symphony Orchestra, and Taipei’s Festival Orchestra. This season marks her debut with the Kaohsiung City Symphony Orchestra in Taiwan as well as the Sung Nam and Prime Philharmonic Orchestras in Seoul, Korea. Hsu recently completed her eighth and final season as the music director and conductor of the Springfield Symphony in Missouri. Previously she served as artistic director of the Women’s Philharmonic in San Francisco and as music director and conductor of the Oregon Mozart Players in Eugene, Oregon, after completing a three-year tenure as affiliate artist/NEA assistant conductor of the Oregon Symphony. In September 2001 Avon Women in Concert presented Hsu on tour in Brazil with the Women’s Philharmonic; in spring of 2000 producer Debbie Allen included Hsu with the Women’s Philharmonic in a series entitled “Cool Women,” which was broadcast on cable television. Hsu and the Women’s Philharmonic recorded their first CD together featuring the symphonic music of African American composer Florence Price, released on the Koch International Classics label. Hsu and the Women’s Philharmonic received four consecutive Awards for Adventurous Programming from ASCAP and the American Symphony Orchestra League. Guest appearances take Hsu all over the United States as well as Russia and the Far East. She has served on the faculty of both the American Symphony Orchestra League Conducting Workshops and National Youth Orchestra Festival 2000. (July 18–22, 2005) Sidney Rothstein, who is known for his expertise in audience development and programming for orchestras, is entering his 29th season as music director of the Reading Symphony Orchestra (Pennsylvania) and his ninth at the Ridgefield Symphony Orchestra (Connecticut). A native of Pennsylvania, he began his career as music director of the Orchestra Society of Philadelphia, conducting Mahler’s Eighth Symphony, broadcast on National Public Radio, during Philadelphia’s bicentennial celebration. Rothstein has also served as music director of the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra and the Florida Symphony Orchestra, and as associate conductor of the Honolulu Symphony. He taught conducting at the New School of Music in Philadelphia, then under the direction of Max Aronoff. (July 4–8, 2005) Composers in Residence Through more than a hundred published works and many recordings, Bernard Rands is established as a major figure in contemporary music. Canti del Sole, premiered by Paul Sperry with Zubin Mehta and the New York Philharmonic, won the 1984 Pulitzer Prize in Music. His large orchestral suite Le Tambourin won the 1986 Kennedy Center Freidheim Award. Conductors including Barenboim, Boulez, Marriner, Mehta, Muti, Ozawa, Rilling, Salonen, Slatkin, von Dohnanyi, and Zinman, among others, have programmed his music. Composer in residence with the Philadelphia Orchestra from 1989 to 1995, Rands has made a dedicated contribution to the music of our time. His works are widely performed and commercially recorded. His Canti D'Amor, recorded by Chanticleer, won a Grammy Award in 2000. Born in England in 1934, Rands emigrated to the United States in 1975 and became an American citizen in 1983. He has been honored by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters; BMI; the Guggenheim Foundation; the National Endowment for the Arts; Meet the Composer; and the Barlow, Fromm, and Koussevitzky Foundations, among many others. Recent commissions have come from Suntory Hall in Tokyo, New York Philharmonic, Carnegie Hall, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Cincinnati Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, BBC Symphony, National Symphony Orchestra, Eastman Wind Ensemble, and Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Many chamber works have resulted from commissions from major ensembles and festivals around the world. His chamber opera Belladonna was commissioned and premiered by the Aspen Festival for its 50th anniversary in 1999. Upcoming projects include commissions from the Institute for American Music for the Ying String Quartet; Meet the Composer consortium to compose a guitar concerto for Eliot Fisk and three chamber orchestras; and, for Robert Levin, a solo piano work. Rands has been guest composer at many international festivals and composer in residence at the Aspen and Tanglewood festivals. He is the Walter Bigelow Rosen Professor of Music at Harvard University, and was elected into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2004. (July 11–15, 2005) Hailed as “one of the most successful woman composers of all time” in the New Yorker magazine, Joan Tower was inducted into the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1998. She was the first woman ever to receive the Grawemeyer Award in Composition, in 1990, and she was inducted into the Academy of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University in the fall of 2004. She is the Asher B. Edelman Professor of Music at Bard College, where she has taught since 1972. In January 2004, Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall featured a retrospective of Tower’s work; the event showcased numerous artists who regularly perform her music, including the Tokyo String Quartet, pianists Melvin Chen and Ursula Oppens, violist Paul Neubauer, oboist Richard Woodhams, and the New England Conservatory Percussion Ensemble. For Daniel, written for the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, was premiered at the 2004 Tucson Winter Festival. A viola concerto, Purple Fantasy, commissioned for Paul Neubauer by an orchestral consortium led by the Omaha Symphony, will premiere in 2005; and a commission by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra will premiere at Carnegie Hall in 2006. Joan Tower is the first composer chosen for the new “Made in America” commissioning program, a collaboration of the American Symphony Orchestra League and Meet the Composer. The project will feature a new orchestral work by Tower performed by 40 community orchestras around the U.S., the first of which will be given in 2005. The 2004–05 season will see Tower in numerous residencies, at Vanderbilt, Eastman, California State University at Fullerton, and the Royal College of Music, and well as at the Park City, Aspen and Tanglewood Festivals. Tower has served as a guest conductor with the American Symphony Chamber Orchestra, Hudson Valley Philharmonic, Scotia Festival Orchestra, Anchorage Symphony, and Kalisto Chamber Orchestra, among others. She is composer in residence with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. Other awards include the Delaware Symphony’s 1988 Alfred I. DuPont Award for Distinguished American Composers and the 2002 Annual Composer’s Award from the Lancaster (PA) Symphony. Other recent works include DNA, a percussion quintet commissioned for Frank Epstein and his New England Conservatory Percussion Ensemble; In Memory, premiered by the Tokyo String Quartet, a highlight of the ensemble’s recent tour of three continents; Incandescent, for the Emerson String Quartet, which was performed at the opening of the new Frank Gehry–designed Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College and has been on tour with the Emerson in over 30 concerts. Her percussion concerto, Strike Zones, was performed by Evelyn Glennie with the National Symphony Orchestra under Leonard Slatkin at Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center. From 1969–84, Tower was pianist and founding member of the Naumburg Award–winning Da Capo Chamber Players (in residence at Bard College) which commissioned and premiered many of her most popular works. She has been the subject of television documentaries on PBS’s WGBH in Boston, on CBS’s program, Sunday Morning, and in England. # # # (1/21/05)Recent Press Releases:
- Bard Academy and Bard College at Simon’s Rock Announce Relocation to Bard College in New York’s Hudson Valley
- Bard College Institute for Writing and Thinking and Master of Arts in Teaching Program Receive Library of Congress Grant Award
- Bard College Institute for Writing and Thinking Resumes Dynamic Partnership with Cooke Foundation’s Young Scholars Program in 2025
- Bard College to Host Memorial Hall Dedication Event on Veterans Day