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Beastie Boys Book—a memoir of the iconic band that included the late Adam Yauch ’86—is a “brilliant 13-hour radio play.”

“When you walk into that gallery and see the offerings made in a spirit of love and grief and thanks, you know you’re in a place of faith, if not a church,” writes Holland Cotter.

Bard College announces the appointment of world-renowned composer, conductor, and artist Tan Dun as dean of the Bard College Conservatory of Music. As dean, Tan Dun will guide the Conservatory in fulfilling its mission of teaching young musicians both new music and music history, while deepening an understanding of its connection to history, art and culture, and society. He will also help to build the synergy between Eastern and Western studies at the Conservatory, including its recently founded US–China Music Institute.

“We are delighted that Tan Dun, a conductor, composer, and artist whose work bridges cultures and genres and embraces a wide definition of music, will lead Bard’s Conservatory of Music,” said Bard College President Leon Botstein.

“The language of music is universal and can connect all kinds of people from diverse cultures, languages, and with different dreams. I look forward to working with the students of Bard’s Conservatory of Music in imagining and reimagining their careers as artists and helping them become even more connected to our growing world and widening musical soundscape,” said Tan Dun.

Tan Dun will begin his tenure as dean of the Bard College Conservatory of Music on July 1, 2019.

About Tan Dun
Tan Dun has made an indelible mark on the world’s music scene with a creative repertoire that spans the boundaries of classical music, multimedia performance, and Eastern and Western traditions. Now living in New York City, Tan Dun was born and raised in a rural Hunan village in the People’s Republic of China where millennia-old shamanistic cultural traditions still survived before Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution took hold. Following the end of the Cultural Revolution, China reopened its Central Conservatory and Tan Dun was one of only 30 selected to attend among thousands of applicants. By the time he arrived in the United States in 1986 to pursue his Doctorate at Columbia University in musical arts, where he soon immersed himself in the music of John Cage and the New York downtown avant-garde scene, Tan Dun was already famous in China. In these past two decades, Tan Dun has transcended stylistic and cultural boundaries to become one of the world’s most famous and sought-after composers. He has created several new artistic formats, which—like opera—encompass sound, sight, narrative, and ritual. In addition to his contributions to the repertoire of opera and motion pictures scores, Tan’s new formats include: orchestral theater, which recontextualizes the orchestra and the concert-going experience; organic music, which explores new realms of sound through primal elements such as water, paper, and stone; and multimedia extravaganzas, which incorporate a variety of cutting-edge technologies.

A UNESCO Global Goodwill Ambassador and winner of today’s most prestigious honors—including the Grammy Award, Oscar/Academy Award, Grawemeyer Award, Bach Prize, Shostakovich Award, and most recently, Italy’s Golden Lion Award for Lifetime Achievement—Tan Dun makes music that is played throughout the world by leading orchestras in opera houses, at international festivals, and on radio and television. This past year, Tan Dun conducted the grand opening celebration of Disneyland Shanghai, which was broadcast to a record-breaking audience worldwide.

As a conductor of innovative programs around the world, Tan Dun has led the China tours of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and Japan’s NHK Symphony Orchestra. His current season includes leading the Orchestre National de Lyon in a five-city China tour, the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra in a four-city tour of Switzerland and Belgium, as well as engagements with the Rai National Symphony Orchestra in Italy, Oslo Philharmonic, Orchestre National de France, and Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, where he was recently named artistic ambassador. Tan Dun currently serves as the honorary artistic director of the China National Symphony Orchestra. Next season, he will conduct the English Chamber Orchestra in their tour to China. Tan Dun has led the world’s most esteemed orchestras, including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Orchestre National de France, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Filarmonica della Scala, Münchner Philharmoniker, Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, and Sydney Symphony Orchestra, among others.

Tan Dun’s individual voice has been heard widely by international audiences. His first Internet Symphony, which was commissioned by Google/YouTube, has reached over 23 million people online. His Organic Music Trilogy of Water, Paper, and Ceramic has frequented major concert halls and festivals. Paper Concerto was premiered with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the opening of the Walt Disney Hall. His multimedia work The Map, premiered by YoYo Ma and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, has toured more than 30 countries worldwide. Its manuscript has been collected by the Carnegie Hall Composers Gallery. His Orchestral Theatre IV: The Gate was premiered by Japan’s NHK Symphony Orchestra and crosses the cultural boundaries of Peking Opera, Western Opera and puppet theatre traditions. Other important premieres include Four Secret Roads of Marco Polo for the Berlin Philharmonic, and Piano Concerto “The Fire” for Lang Lang and the New York Philharmonic. In recent years, his percussion concerto, The Tears of Nature, for soloist Martin Grubinger premiered in 2012 with the NDR Symphony Orchestra and Nu Shu: The Secret Songs of Women Symphony for 13 Microfilms, Harp and Orchestra was co-commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra, NHK Symphony Orchestra, and Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam. Most recently, Tan Dun conducted the premiere of his new oratorio epic Buddha Passion at the Dresden Festival with the Münchner Philharmoniker; the piece was co-commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, and the Dresden Festival and will go on to have performances in Melbourne, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Hamburg, Singapore, and London in  coming seasons.

For Tan Dun the marriage of composition and inspiration has always culminated in his operatic creations. Marco Polo was commissioned by the Edinburgh Festival and has had four different productions, including, most prominently, with De Nederlandse Opera, directed by Pierre Audi; The First Emperor, with Placido Domingo in the title role, commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera of New York; Tea: A Mirror of Soul, premiered at Japan’s Suntory Hall, has since had new productions with Opera de Lyon, a co-production by Santa Fe Opera and the Opera Company of Philadelphia; and Peony Pavilion, directed by Peter Sellars, which has had over 50 performances at major festivals in Vienna, Paris, London, and Rome.

As a visual artist, Tan Dun’s work has been featured at the opening of the China Pavilion at the 56th Venice Art Biennale. Other solo exhibitions include New York’s Guggenheim Museum and Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Beijing’s Chambers Fine Art Gallery, and the Shanghai Gallery of Art. Most recently, Tan Dun conducted the Juilliard Orchestra in the world premiere of his Symphony of Colors: Terracotta for the opening of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art’s epic exhibition The Age of Empires. 

Tan Dun holds a master’s in composition from the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing and a doctorate from New York’s Columbia University in Musical Arts.
 
Tan Dun records for Sony Classical, Deutsche Grammophon, EMI, Opus Arte, BIS, and Naxos. His recordings have garnered many accolades, including a Grammy Award (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and nominations (The First Emperor; Marco Polo; Pipa Concerto), Japan’s Recording Academy Award for Best Contemporary Music CD (Water Passion after St. Matthew), and the BBC’s Best Orchestral Album (Death and Fire).
 

A glimpse into the varied teaching and performance career of the renowned Stephanie Blythe, who will soon join Bard as the artistic director of the Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Program.

“As an artist, I feel the greatest euphoria when all of a sudden an earlier thing explodes open and makes tons of sense. It’s like a door opening.”

Tsang “is recognized as much for being an innovator in the medium of documentary film ... as she is for being a powerful, searing voice among nonbinary artists.”

Allegra Chapman ’10 and Laura Gaynon are “succeeding against the odds and enriching the [Bay] area with an ambitious new arts event”—Bard Music West.

BGC’s Agents of Faith: Votive Objects in Time and Place demonstrates that “art is alive and interactive.” The exhibition catalogue is among the best art books of the year.

Julia Bullock MM ’11, one of opera’s fastest-rising stars and 2018–19 MetLiveArts artist in residence, is using her artistic platform for social activism, to glorious effect.

Multimedia artist Julia Christensen took video cameras to Lake Erie to document the ice that keeps the lake healthy—and what its absence could mean in the future.

Multiple Grammy Award–winning vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant returns to the Fisher Center for a special winter concert on December 22, accompanied by Franco-American pianist Dan Tepfer.

The New York Times named Pam Tanowitz’s Four Quartets at Bard the best dance production of 2018, calling it “the most sublime new work of dance theater this year.”

An intimately staged and darkly revisionist revival of Oklahoma! that enjoyed a critically acclaimed and sold-out Off Broadway run will transfer to Broadway this season.

The production, which originated in 2015 at Bard College’s SummerScape festival and then was staged this fall at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, will begin previews on March 19 and open on April 7 at Circle in the Square, which is the only theater-in-the-round on Broadway. Read the full story in the New York Times.

Bard's Oklahoma! has been lauded as one of the top theater productions of 2018. Time magazine calls Oklahoma! the best play of the year—a “provocative” new take on the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic. The production also made best theater lists from the New York Times and Vulture. Time writes, “The painfully relevant production lands at the exact right moment in a country where demonization of immigrants and outsiders is on the rise and mass shootings are an everyday occurrence.”
 

Bard SummerScape's production of Oklahoma!, widely acclaimed as one of the year's best, heads to the Circle in the Square Theatre following a highly touted run at St. Ann’s Warehouse.

In this interview, Distinguished Professor of Literature Nuruddin Farah discusses his new novel about a Somali exile living in Norway whose son turns to Islamic extremism.

The Conditions of Being Art: Pat Hearn Gallery and American Fine Arts, Co. (1983-2004) at the Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College is lauded as one of the best exhibitions of the year.

Artforum’s Year in Review highlights The Conditions of Being Art: Pat Hearn Gallery and American Fine Arts, Co. (1983–2004) at the Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College. Art in America publishes a review and an editor’s letter lauding the exhibition. Bookforum lists the exhibition catalogue among the best art books of the season.

Curated by Jeannine Tang, Ann E. Butler, and Lia Gangitano, The Conditions of Being Art is the first exhibition in the United States to examine the shared histories, art, and programming activities of Pat Hearn Gallery and American Fine Arts, Co., Colin de Land Fine Art. The exhibition features works of art shown at or associated with these New York galleries by over 40 artists. The show opened in June and closes this Friday, December 14.

David Rimanelli writes on the Bard exhibition in Artforum’s Year in Review issue, listing it among the Best of 2018. Hearn and de Land were “explorers,” he observes, not professionals, “cosmonauts of the art world and the world of art.” Their influential gallery practices were more focused on bringing important artists to light rather than making a commercial success. Rimanelli concludes, “The two of them were both too much of their time and too singular in themselves for us to ever expect to see their likes again.” View selections from Artforum here (PDF).

In the Artforum Best of 2018 Artists’ Artists section, Alex Carver chooses The Conditions of Being Art for his pick of the year. “In staging this inspiring show,” he observes, “the curators ... have presented a poetic constellation of concept-rich artworks.”

“The shifting sands of the 1980s and ’90s thus make ‘The Conditions of Being Art’ ... an intriguing object of study,” writes Domenick Ammirati in his review for the December issue of Art in America, “with the milieux of the Hearn/de Land scenes unfolding at a peculiar, significant moment of transition in perceptions of the past, present, and future.... The curators, Jeannine Tang, Ann E. Butler, and Lia Gangitano, have let the diversity of works in their subjects’ histories live, even as they tailor the installation to present clear points.”

In the editor’s letter for this month’s Art in America, William S. Smith notes that Hearn’s and de Land’s galleries exhibited work that was “prescient in its critique of American power.”

Bookforum also listed the exhibition catalogue for The Conditions of Being Art among the most outstanding art books of the season in a section called Artful Volumes, in which Bookforum contributors selected their favorite works.
 

These days—despite longstanding clichés about art and excess—the creative impulse can actually be more closely tied to asceticism, Mason writes.

Gaines was awarded the grant for his book Future Ruins: The Art of Abstractive Democracy, which examines the unmooring of representation in early 21st-century America.

Inspired by bodybuilders posing, the video features “a set of four dancers flexing and strutting together” along the garden’s colonnade.