News

Lola Kirke talks about her new movie and new album, staying grounded as a performer, and how film roles for women have regressed—with a nod to Bard and her experience volunteering in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

In the annals of dance history, 2019 may go down as the year Bard Choreographer in Residence Pam Tanowitz got the attention she deserved. In the past six months she has brought her imaginative formalism to the Martha Graham Dance Company, New York City Ballet, the Paul Taylor Dance Company, and the Kennedy Center’s Ballet Across America festival. The recent recipient of an Alpert Award in the Arts, Tanowitz is not slowing down, with new works on deck for Vail Dance Festival this month and the Royal Ballet’s Merce Cunningham celebration in October.

Conservatory Advanced Performance Studies alumnus Tomoki Park and second-year Vocal Arts Program student Margaret Tigue recently performed at Tanglewood in Lenox, Massachusetts, as part of the Tanglewood Music Center's Festival of Contemporary Music. In a concert dedicated to former Tanglewood Music Center director of contemporary music Oliver Knussen, Tomoki Park's "sensitive" performance of Knussen's distinctive "Prayer Bell Sketch" was one of the highlights of the program. Margaret Tigue offered a very fine performance as a soprano soloist in Knussen's "Whitman Settings."

His melodic gift rivaled Puccini’s—but his reputation suffered when he began writing movie scores. Now Bard is giving him a fresh listen. Weekend Two: August 16–18.

Bardians Abby Bender and Anna Luckey cofounded the Built on Stilts dance festival on Martha’s Vineyard not long after graduation. It has evolved into an all-inclusive, grassroots performance venue for local and visiting artists, featuring more than 50 original works and dance workshops for both children and adults.

“For Johns, factual certainties, such as the American flag or a plaster cast of a body part, enable him to dwell in ‘uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts,’ and not reach after ‘fact,’ which would be redundant,” writes Yau in this two-part essay. “This is the pleasure that Johns gives us. He does not tell us what to see or think. He shows what seeing and thinking can be.”

Globally recognized modern dancer and Bard alumnus Ainesh Madan ’15 observes that art comes to the rescue of the mundane. In this interview, he talks about the importance of a daily artistic practice, his most recent work focusing on his return to India after eight years in New York, and pieces he choreographed at Bard now coming to fruition. “Once I went to Bard College,” he tells the Hindu. “I started discovering my artistic side. I dedicated the majority of my day in the studio, even when I was not in class. I made (choreographed/composed) a lot of work. Once the studios were closed, I would come back to my room and work on music.”

In honor of the 30th anniversary of their Paul’s Boutique album, Beastie Boys (inspired by the late member Adam Yauch ’86, who went vegan after being diagnosed with cancer) have collaborated with Adidas on a vegan shoe.
 

Titled After Preparing the Altar, the Ghosts Feast Feverishly, the exhibition is based on a series of poems by Wong on hunger, food, silence, and family. Wong, a first-generation Chinese American, talks to KUOW Public Radio producer Adwoa Gyimah-Brempong about the meal she imagines her ancestors might have today.
 

President Botstein talks about the U.S. premiere of Erich Korngold’s The Miracle of Heliane, and why Bard is the perfect place to revive overlooked works.
 

"Bard is a great place because we are not interested in commercial performance. We want to make a contribution to knowledge and scholarship. We are interested in the future of music both in new music but also in the past.

If the past is only about 20 operas, then the future of the art form is going to be condemned. The way you tell the story of the past influences the way you tell the future. Our mission is not to compete with anyone but to show different repertoire." —Leon Botstein

The Bard Music Festival turns its focus on Erich Wolfgang Korngold, the preeminent film composer of the 1930s and ’40s whose art music long went overlooked. August 9–11 and 16–18 at the Fisher Center.

By Barrymore Laurence Scherer

Now that film music enjoys an unequivocal presence on contemporary orchestral programs, it’s no surprise that the Bard Music Festival, that bastion of imaginative programming, is marking its 30th anniversary season by turning to a figure somewhat unfamiliar as a “serious” composer: Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897–1957). Korngold was arguably the pre-eminent film composer during Hollywood’s “Golden Age.” Yet, by the time he died, his work there during the 1930s and ’40s had effectively obliterated the exceptional stature he had achieved in Europe’s concert halls and opera houses.