Bard Center Evenings

Bard Center Evenings give trustees and friends of the College opportunities to meet distinguished experts during a series of thought-provoking panel discussions. These evenings are held at least three times a year and explore issues of intellectual, cultural, and social concern. Recent topics have included "The Promise, Practices of 'Alternative' or Complementary Medicine," "The Rise of the Image, the Fall of the Word," "Violent Behavior: Causes and Potential Remedies," "Grand Synthesis? The Rapprochement between Science and the Arts and Humanities," and "Foreign and Humanitarian Aid: Paradoxes and Perspectives."

The Bard Center Performance Series

The Bard Center brings to campus outstanding men and women in many fields-the humanities, the arts, science, business, media, government, and education-to present public lectures, readings, and performances.

Among the musicians who have performed recently at Bard are pianists Alan Gampel and Joan Tower, in a two-piano lecture-recital featuring Tower's Stepping Stones, as well as works by Ravel, Debussy, and Stravinsky-composers whose work has influenced Tower's own. Other performances have included the world premieres of works by Richard Teitelbaum and Benjamin Boretz by the Woodstock Chamber Orchestra; the Da Capo Chamber Players' presentation of Peter Maxwell Davies' chamber opera Le jongleur de Notre Dame; violinist Sanford Allen, cellist Robert Martin, and harpsichordist Edward Brewer on an all-Bach program; and an evening of jazz with the Thurman Barker Quintet, featuring Grammy-nominated Sam Rivers on tenor sax and guitarist James Emery.

American Symphony Chamber Orchestra

The long tradition of a chamber orchestra series connected with the music faculties of Bard and Vassar colleges continues under the auspices of the American Symphony Orchestra, founded in 1962 by Leopold Stokowski and based in New York City. The Bard-Vassar Concerts include several performances a year of superlative chamber music featuring works of contemporary composers together with classics of the chamber repertoire. In recent years the series has premiered works by such contemporary composers as Joan Tower, Richard Wilson, Harold Farberman, Annea Lockwood, and Nicholas Maw and has presented classics by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Liszt, Strauss, Schoenberg, and Dvor k. Soloists in 1999-2000 included horn player Jeffrey Lang, pianist and composer Richard Wilson, cellist Robert Martin, and violinist Eric Wyrick. Performances are conducted by Leon Botstein, music director of the American Symphony Orchestra, and are held in Bard's Olin Hall and Vassar's Skinner Hall. Informative talks accompany each program.

The Conductors Institute at Bard

This internationally acclaimed, premiere teaching institute, founded and directed by Maestro Harold Farberman, is now in its third decade and second year in its new home at Bard College. The Institute's basic goals are to promote technical clarity and precision in baton movement in a positive working atmosphere; to disarm the competitive learning process and encourage conductors to assist and support one another; and to encourage American conductors to become advocates of American composers. The six-week program, held during the summer months, offers a variety of combinations of study, enabling students at every level to tailor their own programs. The Conducting Program for Fellows and Colleagues is offered in four- or two-week sessions, during which participants work with the Institute orchestra on repertoire that ranges from Beethoven's First Symphony to Mahler's Fifth and new works by visiting guest composers. The two-week Discovery Program is designed for conductors with limited experience who desire to improve their skills. The week-long Composer-Conductor Program offers the opportunity for composers to learn conducting techniques that apply to their own works. "A New Way to Study a Score": Visual Score Study/Baton Placement and Body Movement Technique is a week-long program that 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 anchors a faculty of distinguished guest conductors and composers. New instructors and new repertoire each week ensure all Institute participants exposure to a variety of expert opinions, and regularly scheduled evening lectures by world-renowned scholars, composers, and conductors provide additional program enhancement. Participants may earn graduate or undergraduate credits for their work in the Institute.

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Bard Music Festival

The Bard Music Festival entered its thirteenth season in 2002. Since 1990 the festival has been presented on the Bard campus each summer over two consecutive weekends in mid-August and, since 1993, on a fall weekend at New York City's Lincoln Center as part of the Great Performers series. The festival is known as the Rediscoveries series because each year it undertakes a fresh exploration, or rediscovery, of a single composer's life and work. Programs held in the 370-seat Olin Hall explore the intimate communication of recital and chamber music, while the excitement of full orchestral and choral sound is experienced in an 800-seat acoustical tent on the Ward Manor lawn. Musicians gather at Bard up to two weeks in advance to prepare for the festival. The week of the festival is filled with open rehearsals throughout the campus. Orchestral musicians are often invited to perform in chamber groups. Special events are arranged to complement the performances.

Through a series of preconcert talks and panel discussions by eminent music scholars, all programs are examined within the cultural and political context of the festival's theme of rediscovery. In 2001 Claude Debussy was the featured composer; Bela Bartok, Charles Ives, Joseph Haydn, Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky, Ludwig van Beethoven and Arnold Schoenberg are among the other recent festival composers. Related articles and essays are published by Princeton University Press in a special book edited by a major music scholar. The combination of innovative programs built around a specific theme and an outstanding level of professional musicianship has brought the festival international critical acclaim from publications such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Financial Times.

Aston Magna

The Aston Magna Foundation for Music and the Humanities is dedicated to the performance and study of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century music. Founded in 1972, the Aston Magna Festival-the oldest summer festival in America devoted to music performed on period instruments-has been held in the Berkshires every year since its inception and at Bard since 1984. Under the artistic direction of Daniel Stepner, Aston Magna's performances aim to interpret as accurately as possible the music of the past as the composer imagined it. The performance style for these concerts has been developed through interpretation by internationally recognized specialists, and the instruments played are originals from the period or historically accurate reproductions. Among the highlights of Aston Magna's pioneering history are the first performances of the complete Bach Brandenburg Concertos and the first performance in the United States of Mozart symphonies on original instruments.

Hudson Valley Chamber Music Circle:

Each June The Bard Center presents a series of chamber music concerts by world-recognized professional musicians. Founded in 1950, the Hudson Valley Chamber Music Circle has been under the artistic guidance of Margaret Creal Shafer since 1980. In 2000 she will be succeeded as artistic director by codirectors Jaime Laredo and Sharon Robinson, violinist and cellist of the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio. Over the years the Chamber Music Circle has attracted a large and loyal regional following that has enjoyed performances by such artists as the Tokyo, Muir, and Emerson string quartets; the Opus One piano quartet; the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio; pianists Rudolph Firkusny, Todd Crow, Blanca Uribe, and Ursula Oppens; violinists Ani and Ida Kavafian and Rolf Schulte; violist Walter Trampler; clarinetist David Shifrin; flutist Gary Schocker; and the Tango Project.

American Russian Young Artists Orchestra

The collaboration between the American Russian Young Artists Orchestra (ARYO) and Bard College began in 1995 with the College providing artistic direction and institutional resources and the independent ARYO board and its executive staff generating the financial support to underwrite the project costs. In summer 1997, after auditions in Russia and the United States, eighty young musicians from both countries came together on the Bard campus to rehearse for a tour that included Ozawa Hall in Tanglewood, Carnegie Hall in New York, War Memorial Hall in Nashville, Tchaikovsky Hall in Moscow, Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, and selected venues at ports of call during a boat tour of the Volga River. The partnership continued with the appearance of the orchestra at the summer youth Olympics in Moscow in July 1998. "World Tour 1999: Millennium Muzika" took ARYO to twelve cities across the United States, Russia, and Central Europe, under the batons of Leon Botstein, ARYO music director, and Dmitri Liss. Guest conductor Valery Gergiev led the orchestra in a joint concert with the Kirov Orchestra. In the winter of 2000, selected ARYO musicians went on a special chamber ensemble tour to Bermuda and major cities in the United States.


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For information, please call 845-758-7250