BARD COLLEGE CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC’S FALL CONCERT AND LECTURE SERIES CONTINUES WITH FOUR FREE PROGRAMS IN NOVEMBER AND DECEMBER

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.—The Conservatory Concerts and Lectures Series, presented by the Bard College Conservatory of Music (BCCM), offers four programs in November and December. All performances are free and open to the public. No reservations are necessary. On Sunday, November 13, at 3:00 p.m. in Olin Hall, the world-renowned pianist Simone Dinnerstein will perform Bach’s Goldberg Variations. Dinnerstein’s playing “bursts with . . . emotional and intellectual life,” according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. She has given recitals and appeared as a concerto soloist across the United States and in Europe and South America. Highlights of this season include solo and chamber music performances at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum; New York’s Weill Recital Hall and Bargemusic; the La Jolla Music Society, and the Bard Music Festival. Artists with whom she has recently collaborated include cellists Zuill Bailey and Jan Vogler, the Chiara Quartet, clarinetist Jose Franch-Ballester, and violinists Anne Akiko Myers and Mira Wang. Dinnerstein’s recordings include Mendelssohn’s complete works for cello and piano and Beethoven’s complete sonatas for cello and piano, both recorded with Simca Heled and issued on the Danish label Classico. In March she recorded Bach’s Goldberg Variations (release forthcoming). In 2006 she will record the complete Beethoven works for piano and cello with Zuill Bailey. Dinnerstein is the winner of the Astral Artistic Services’ National Auditions and the 2006 Classical Recording Foundation Award. (On November 28, Dinnerstein will perform this program at Carnegie Hall.) On Sunday, November 20, at 3:00 p.m. in the Sosnoff Theater of the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, guest conductor Fabio Mechetti will direct the Conservatory Chamber Orchestra. The program includes Villa-Lobos’s Bachianas brasileiras No. 9, Mozart’s Symphonies 31 (“Paris”) and 35 (“Haffner”), and Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme, for cello and orchestra, with guest artist Sophie Shao. Music director of the Jacksonville Symphony, Brazilian-born Mechetti has appeared as guest conductor with the Utah Symphony, Rochester Philharmonic, Buffalo Philharmonic, New Jersey Symphony (at Carnegie Hall), Seattle Symphony, San Antonio Symphony, Colorado Symphony, Phoenix Symphony, Charlotte Symphony, North Carolina Symphony, and various orchestras in Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, and Spain. The winner of the 1989 Malko Conducting Competition in Denmark, Mechetti has served as music director of both the Syracuse Symphony and Spokane Symphony as well as associate conductor of the National Symphony in Washington, D.C. Cellist Shao has won top prizes at the 2001 Rostropovich International Violoncello Competition and the XII International Tchaikovsky Competition in 2002, and is the recipient of a 1996 Avery Fisher Career Grant. She has performed with the Houston Symphony, L’Orchestre de Paris, Russian State Academic Symphony Cappella, and Cayuga Chamber Orchestra, among others. Her many festival appearances include Marlboro, Caramoor, Bridgehampton, Sarasota, Music from Angel Fire, Saratoga, Ravinia, and Bard. In addition to serving on the faculty of the Bard Conservatory, Shao teaches cello at Princeton University and Vassar College. On Sunday, December 4, at 3:00 p.m., in Olin Hall, pianist Melvin Chen and violinist Arnold Steinhardt will perform Beethoven’s Sonata No. 6 for violin and piano, and sonatas by Janáček and Richard Strauss. Chen, associate director of the Conservatory, has performed at major venues in the United States, including Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Merkin Concert Hall, Weill Rectital Hall, the Frick Collection, and the Kennedy Center, in addition to other appearances throughout the country, Canada, and Asia. He has collaborated with Ida Kavafian, Steven Tenenbom, David Shifrin, Robert White, Pamela Frank, Peter Wiley, and members of the St. Lawrence, Mendelssohn, Miami, Orion, Borromeo, and Arditti Quartets. He was selected to be a member of Lincoln Center’s Chamber Music Society Two, and has performed at Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival, Chautauqua, Music from Angel Fire, and Bard Music Festival, among others. He can be heard on Discover, Nices, and KBS label compact discs with violinist Juliette Kang. Since 1964, Steinhardt has been the first violinist of the internationally acclaimed Guarneri String Quartet. He has recorded extensively for RCA Victor, Philips, Arabesque, and Sheffield Lab, among other labels. He has appeared throughout America and Europe as a recitalist and soloist with various orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic and the Cleveland Orchestra. He serves on the faculty of the Conservatory. A recital on Sunday, December 11, at 3:00 p.m. in Olin Hall, will feature chamber music performed by Conservatory students and faculty. For further information about the Conservatory Concerts and Lectures, call 845-758-7425. # Building on its distinguished history of innovation in the arts and education, Bard College has launched the Bard College Conservatory of Music. This innovative, five-year double-degree program is guided by the principle that musicians should be broadly educated in the liberal arts and sciences to achieve their greatest potential. While training and studying for the bachelor of music degree with world-class musicians and teachers and performing in state-of-the-art facilities, such as the Frank Gehry–designed Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, Bard Conservatory students will also pursue a bachelor of arts degree at Bard, one of the nation’s leading liberal arts colleges. The Bard College Conservatory of Music’s instrumental and composition faculty includes world-class musicians and composers, including violinists Ani Kavafian, Ida Kavafian, Weigang Li, Laurie Smukler, and Arnold Steinhardt; violists Steven Tenenbom, Michael Tree, and Ira Weller; cellists Sophie Shao and Peter Wiley; double bassist Marji Danilow; pianists Melvin Chen, Jeremy Denk, Peter Serkin, and piano master classes with Richard Goode; oboist Laura Ahlbeck; flutist Tara Helen O’Connor; clarinetists Laura Flax and David Krakauer; bassoonist Marc Goldberg; horn players Julie Landsman and Jeffrey Lang; and trombonist John Rojak. The Colorado Quartet and Da Capo Chamber Players are in residence. Members and principals of the American Symphony Orchestra are also available for instruction, coaching, and leading of sectional rehearsals in the Conservatory Orchestra. In 2006–07, the Conservatory will introduce three additional programs: the Vocal Arts Graduate Program, directed by Dawn Upshaw; The Conductors Institute and its graduate program in conducting, directed by Harold Farberman; and the Composition Program, directed by Joan Tower and George Tsontakis. “The mission of the Conservatory at Bard is to provide the best possible preparation for a person dedicated to a life immersed in the creation and performance of music,” says Robert Martin, director of the Conservatory and vice president for academic affairs at Bard College. “We believe deeply in the value of an education in the liberal arts and sciences, not as a luxury, but as the best preparation for functioning competitively and creatively.” According to Chen, associate director of the Conservatory and professor of music and science at Bard College, “Music, like all art, engages the mind and the heart. It redefines boundaries and questions limits in order to make a meaningful statement about the human condition. The education of the mind is therefore as important as the education of the fingers or voice. The greatest musicians not only have the technical mastery to communicate effectively, but also are deeply curious and equally adept at analytical and emotional modes of thought.” For more information about the Bard College Conservatory of Music, call 845-758-7196, e-mail [email protected], or log onto the program’s website, www.bard.edu/conservatory. # # # (10/17/05)

This event was last updated on 11-29-2005

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