The Bard College campus is awash in music; by all accounts, that fact is one of the school’s most distinctive features. The Music Program, one of the largest programs on campus, provides a wide range of musical concentrations, from classical composition and performance to jazz, electronic music, musicology, ethnomusicology, and music theory. The music faculty all maintain highly visible careers outside academia, many of us nationally or internationally. Many of our most active music students are majoring in something other than music, and all are welcome.
Photo by Karl Rabe
The Bard Conservatory
The Music Program is separate from the Bard College Conservatory of Music, which has a double-degree program and various graduate programs. The Conservatory's primary differences are as follows: focus on classical music performance and composition; secondary major required; five-year program; and audition required to apply. Despite the separation, many performance opportunities involve both Conservatory students and Music Program students.
The Bard Baroque Ensemble
The Bard Baroque Ensemble welcomes students from both the College and Conservatory. At the start of the semester, students from the College or Conservatory wishing to join should contact director Renée Anne Louprette at [email protected] to express their interest in joining. Watch a livestreamed concert by the Bard Baroque Ensemble in collaboration with Bard Chamber Singers, Preparatory Chorus, Graduate Vocal Arts Program, performing works by Bach in Olin Hall.
Applying to the Program
Upcoming Events
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4/19Saturday7:00 pm – 8:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Fisher Center, Sosnoff Theater
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4/22Tuesday6:30 pm – 7:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
Olin 104
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4/24Thursday7:00 pm – 8:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Meditation Garden near Fisher Studio Arts
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4/26Saturday7:30 pm – 8:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
Fisher Center, Sosnoff Theater
Assassins: Music and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
Saturday, April 26, 2025 – Sunday, April 27, 2025 | 7:30 pm – 8:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 | Fisher Center, Sosnoff Theater
A play performed, directed, and designed by students of the Musical Theater Performance Workshop. Runtime is approximately 105 minutes with no intermission.
Link for tickets.
This show contains material that might be triggering for some audience members. For more information, please contact [email protected].
Sponsored by: Music Program
Contact: David Sytkowskoi
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/assassins-tickets-1323649323759?aff=oddtdtcreator
NEWSROOM
Two Bard College Faculty Members Named 2025 Guggenheim Fellows
The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has awarded 2025 Guggenheim Fellowships to Bard College Assistant Professor of Photography Lucas Blalock ’02 and Bard College Visiting Artist in Residence Gwen Laster.
Two Bard College Faculty Members Named 2025 Guggenheim Fellows
L–R: Gwen Laster; Lucas Blalock ’02 (photo by Gertraud Presenhuber, courtesy of the artist and Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich/New York)
“At a time when intellectual life is under attack, the Guggenheim Fellowship celebrates a century of support for the lives and work of visionary scientists, scholars, writers, and artists,” said Edward Hirsch, award-winning poet and president of the Guggenheim Foundation. “We believe that these creative thinkers can take on the challenges we all face today and guide our society towards a better and more hopeful future.”
In all, 53 scholarly disciplines and artistic fields, 83 academic institutions, 32 US states and the District of Columbia, and two Canadian provinces are represented in the 2025 class, who range in age from 32 to 79. More than a third of the 100th class of fellows do not hold a full-time affiliation with a college or university. Many fellows’ projects directly respond to timely themes and issues such as climate change, Indigenous studies, identity, democracy and politics, incarceration, and the evolving purpose of community. Since its founding in 1925, the Guggenheim Foundation has awarded over $400 million in fellowships to more than 19,000 fellows. The 100th class of Fellows is part of the Guggenheim Foundation’s yearlong celebration marking a century of transformative impact on American intellectual and cultural life.
Lucas Blalock is a Brooklyn-based photographer whose work is in the collections of the Dallas Museum of Art, Guggenheim Museum, Hammer Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Portland Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among many others. Recent solo exhibitions include Florida, 1989, at Galerie Eva Presenhuber, New York; Insoluble Pancakes, Galerie Rodolphe Janssen, Brussels; and An Enormous Oar, Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; recent group exhibitions include venues in Oslo, Miami, Moscow, Berlin, Beirut, Minneapolis, and New York, where his work was selected for the Whitney Biennial 2019. He and his art have been profiled in publications including Arforum, the New York Times, New Yorker, Art in America, Brooklyn Rail, BOMB Magazine, W Magazine, British Journal of Photography, and Time. He has published essays and interviews as author in the journal Objectiv, IMA Magazine, BOMB, Foam, and Mousse, among others. He previously taught at the School of Visual Arts; Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, New York University; Sarah Lawrence College; and the MFA Program at Ithaca College. He also served as visiting lecturer on visual and environmental studies at Harvard University. He received his BA from Bard College and MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Gwen Laster is a nationally acclaimed musician who has been the recipient of awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Jubilation Foundation, Puffin Foundation, Arts Mid Hudson, Lila Wallace, and the Cognac Hennessey 1st place Jazz Search. A native Detroiter, her creative influences come from the Motor City’s exciting urban and classical music culture. Laster started improvising and composing because of her parents’ love of jazz, blues, soul, and classical music, and her inspiring music teachers from Detroit’s public schools. Laster relocated to New York City after earning two music degrees from the University of Michigan. Laster is many things: A virtuoso violinist with exquisite taste. An adventurous composer, arranger and orchestrator. A classically-trained artist with a deep appreciation for America's musical history, and a scholar of African-American musical heritage. A socially conscious activist and educator who understands the power of music to reach and touch everyday people.
Post Date: 04-15-2025
Bard Baroque Ensemble Presents Concert in Memory of Frederick Fisher Hammond on April 19
The Bard Baroque Ensemble, under the direction of Renée Anne Louprette, presents a concert in the Fisher Center’s Sosnoff Theater with works by Bach, Handel, and Mozart.
Bard Baroque Ensemble Presents Concert in Memory of Frederick Fisher Hammond on April 19
Bard Baroque Ensemble. Photo by Christopher Kayden
The evening’s program celebrates the restoration of Professor Hammond's French double-manual and Italian single-manual harpsichords—now a part of Bard College’s collection of early keyboard instruments—featuring them in the Concerto for Two Harpsichords, Strings, and Continuo in C Minor, BWV 1060 by Johann Sebastian Bach, with Sophia Cornicello and Raymond Erickson as harpsichord soloists. One of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's most popular and enduring works, Symphony No. 40 in G Minor, K. 550, opens the program, interpreted by the Ensemble with a Baroque sensibility. Bard faculty member and distinguished tenor Rufus Müller presents the ravishing opening aria from Handel’s Serse: Ombra mai fu (Never was a shade). The program concludes with Bach's Cantata No. 1: Wie schön leuchtet Der Morgenstern (How brightly shines the Morningstar), featuring the Bard Chamber Singers, Preparatory Division Children's Chorus, and soloists from the Graduate Vocal Arts Program. This luminous chorale-cantata—originally conceived for the Feast of the Annunciation—is presented here in the context of transition from darkness to light, on the date of Holy Saturday within the Christian Church. Valentina Grasso, assistant professor of history at Bard, will present a reading from Dante’s Divine Comedy—in lieu of the traditional Lutheran sermon—at the center of Bach’s 1724 masterpiece.
Post Date: 03-27-2025
Book by Franz Nicolay One of the “Best Music Books of 2024” by Rolling Stone
Nicolay’s Band People: Life and Work In Popular Music offers a close look at the lives of working musicians, like backup singers and support musicians, whose creative collaboration plays an irreplaceable role in popular music.
Book by Franz Nicolay One of the “Best Music Books of 2024” by Rolling Stone
Franz Nicolay, visiting instructor of music at Bard College.
Post Date: 01-28-2025