All Bard News by Date
March 2019
03-19-2019
Artist Tschabalala Self ’12 explores the iconography, interiority, and subject status of black women in her multimedia portraits. She discusses her exhibition at Seattle’s Frye Art Museum in this interview.
03-13-2019
The Orchestra Now (TŌN) continues its season at Bard Fisher Center on April 6 and 7 with Verdi’s celebrated Requiem, led by TŌN’s music director, Leon Botstein. The immense work is set for double choir and orchestra, and will feature soprano Margaret Tigue, mezzo-soprano Chloë Schaaf, and bass Wei Wu.
03-12-2019
Led by The Boston Globe’s “bona fide b-girl,” Ephrat Asherie makes her Fisher Center debut with Odeon, a high-energy, hybrid hip-hop dance work set to and inspired by the music of early 20th-century Brazilian composer Ernesto Nazareth, played live. Odeon will be performed in the Fisher Center’s LUMA Theater on Saturday, April 13 at 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, April 14 at 2 p.m. Tickets are $25 and can be purchased at fishercenter.bard.edu or by calling 845-758-7900.
Odeon delves into what happens when you bring together the extended family of street and club dances—including breaking, hip hop, house and vogue—remix them, pick them apart, and push them in new choreographic directions. An original dance work for seven dancers and four musicians, Odeon is the second collaboration between sister and brother team Ephrat and Ehud Asherie, choreographer and musical director, respectively.
Ephrat “Bounce” Asherie, a 2016 Bessie Award winner for Innovative Achievement in Dance, creates work for the dynamic group of multifaceted dancers in her company Ephrat Asherie Dance. The company embodies many different street and club dance styles including breaking, hip hop, house and vogue and is dedicated to revealing the inherently complex and dynamic qualities of these forms, “paving the way for something new” (The New York Times).
While in residence at the Fisher Center, Asherie will also be developing a new work, which will be presented to the public in an open rehearsal on Friday, April 12 at 7 p.m. also in the LUMA Theater. This work-in-progress showing will be free and open to the public.
Odeon is presented through the Bard College Dance Program’s partnership with the American Dance Festival. Presentation support is provided by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
EPHRAT “BOUNCE” ASHERIE, a 2016 Bessie Award Winner for Innovative Achievement in Dance, is a New York City–based B-girl, dancer, and choreographer. As artistic director of Ephrat Asherie Dance (EAD) she has presented work at the Apollo Theater, FiraTarrega, Jacob’s Pillow, New York Live Arts, Summerstage, and the Yard, among others. Ephrat has received numerous awards to support her work, including a Mondo Cane! commission from Dixon Place, a Creative Development Residency from Jacob’s Pillow, Workspace and Extended Life Residencies from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, a Travel and Study Grant from the Jerome Foundation, and two residencies through the CUNY Dance Initiative. Her first evening-length work, A Single Ride, received two Bessie nominations in 2012 for Outstanding Emerging Choreographer and for Outstanding Sound Design by Marty Beller. Most recently, Ephrat received a National Dance Project award to support the development and touring of her newest work, Odeon. Set to premiere in the summer of 2018, Odeon was also made possible by Jacob's Pillow Dance, Mass MoCA, Works & Process at the Guggenheim, and the Jacob's Pillow Fellowship at the Tilles Center for the Performing Arts at LIU Post. Ephrat is a regular guest artist with Dorrance Dance and has worked and collaborated with Doug Elkins, Rennie Harris, Bill Irwin, David Parsons, Gus Solomons Jr., and Buddha Stretch, among others.
Ephrat has been on faculty at Wesleyan University and set pieces for students at Smith College, SUNY Brockport, Alvin Ailey Dance Center, University of Texas Rio Grande and Texas Tech University. Ephrat teaches at Broadway Dance Center and is a founding member of the all-female house dance collective, MAWU. She earned her BA from Barnard College, Columbia University in Italian and her MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee where she researched the vernacular jazz dance roots of contemporary street and club dances.
Ehud Asherie, “a master of swing and stride" (The New Yorker), is a jazz pianist who integrates the venerable New York piano tradition into his inventive style. He has toured clubs and festivals around the world, including South America, Europe and Asia. Asherie’s playing can be heard on countless recordings, including the 2010 Grammy Award winning soundtrack of HBO’s ‘Boardwalk Empire.’ He recently released his twelfth album entitled ‘Shuffle Along’ (Blue Heron Records), a solo piano performance of Eubie Blake songs from the musical ‘Shuffle Along.’
Odeon delves into what happens when you bring together the extended family of street and club dances—including breaking, hip hop, house and vogue—remix them, pick them apart, and push them in new choreographic directions. An original dance work for seven dancers and four musicians, Odeon is the second collaboration between sister and brother team Ephrat and Ehud Asherie, choreographer and musical director, respectively.
Ephrat “Bounce” Asherie, a 2016 Bessie Award winner for Innovative Achievement in Dance, creates work for the dynamic group of multifaceted dancers in her company Ephrat Asherie Dance. The company embodies many different street and club dance styles including breaking, hip hop, house and vogue and is dedicated to revealing the inherently complex and dynamic qualities of these forms, “paving the way for something new” (The New York Times).
While in residence at the Fisher Center, Asherie will also be developing a new work, which will be presented to the public in an open rehearsal on Friday, April 12 at 7 p.m. also in the LUMA Theater. This work-in-progress showing will be free and open to the public.
Odeon is presented through the Bard College Dance Program’s partnership with the American Dance Festival. Presentation support is provided by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
EPHRAT “BOUNCE” ASHERIE, a 2016 Bessie Award Winner for Innovative Achievement in Dance, is a New York City–based B-girl, dancer, and choreographer. As artistic director of Ephrat Asherie Dance (EAD) she has presented work at the Apollo Theater, FiraTarrega, Jacob’s Pillow, New York Live Arts, Summerstage, and the Yard, among others. Ephrat has received numerous awards to support her work, including a Mondo Cane! commission from Dixon Place, a Creative Development Residency from Jacob’s Pillow, Workspace and Extended Life Residencies from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, a Travel and Study Grant from the Jerome Foundation, and two residencies through the CUNY Dance Initiative. Her first evening-length work, A Single Ride, received two Bessie nominations in 2012 for Outstanding Emerging Choreographer and for Outstanding Sound Design by Marty Beller. Most recently, Ephrat received a National Dance Project award to support the development and touring of her newest work, Odeon. Set to premiere in the summer of 2018, Odeon was also made possible by Jacob's Pillow Dance, Mass MoCA, Works & Process at the Guggenheim, and the Jacob's Pillow Fellowship at the Tilles Center for the Performing Arts at LIU Post. Ephrat is a regular guest artist with Dorrance Dance and has worked and collaborated with Doug Elkins, Rennie Harris, Bill Irwin, David Parsons, Gus Solomons Jr., and Buddha Stretch, among others.
Ephrat has been on faculty at Wesleyan University and set pieces for students at Smith College, SUNY Brockport, Alvin Ailey Dance Center, University of Texas Rio Grande and Texas Tech University. Ephrat teaches at Broadway Dance Center and is a founding member of the all-female house dance collective, MAWU. She earned her BA from Barnard College, Columbia University in Italian and her MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee where she researched the vernacular jazz dance roots of contemporary street and club dances.
Ehud Asherie, “a master of swing and stride" (The New Yorker), is a jazz pianist who integrates the venerable New York piano tradition into his inventive style. He has toured clubs and festivals around the world, including South America, Europe and Asia. Asherie’s playing can be heard on countless recordings, including the 2010 Grammy Award winning soundtrack of HBO’s ‘Boardwalk Empire.’ He recently released his twelfth album entitled ‘Shuffle Along’ (Blue Heron Records), a solo piano performance of Eubie Blake songs from the musical ‘Shuffle Along.’
03-12-2019
Rosenbaum, one of America’s most outspoken film critics, weighs in on Steven Spielberg, Elaine May, the Coen brothers, and Yiddishkeit.
03-12-2019
In Seismic Belt, “Boshnack writes with purpose and passion, with an uncanny way of expressing a narrative. She is a musician, a composer, a feminist, an activist, and most certainly, a storyteller.”
03-12-2019
The exhibition of more than 65 works includes abstract geometric paintings, punching bags, sculptures, and video.
03-05-2019
Several Bardians are among the 75 artists whose work was chosen for this year’s Whitney Biennial. Congratulations to Jeffrey Gibson, artist in residence, and Tiona McClodden, Keith Haring Fellow in Art and Activism, as well as Bard College alumni/ae Adam Khalil ’14, Zack Khalil ’11, Carolyn Lazard ’10, and Lucas Blalock ’02; and Bard MFA alumni/ae Kyle Thurman ‘16, Christine Sun Kim ‘13, Martine Syms ‘18 and Madeline Hollander ‘19.
03-01-2019
The two-day conference, “Tradition and Discovery: Teaching Chinese Music in the West,” includes guest speakers and concerts featuring performances by celebrated pipa virtuoso Wu Man and the Chinese instrument majors of the Bard College Conservatory of Music.
February 2019
02-27-2019
Bard College: The Montgomery Place Campus announces three spring series of events celebrating the history and arts of one of the Hudson Valley’s esteemed historic estates. Toward an Ethical Imagination: Gilsonfest, Spring Salon Series on Music of the Gilded Age, and The Gilded Garden: Historic Ornament in the Landscape at Montgomery Place are presented at Montgomery Place and locations in Red Hook, New York, beginning on Sunday, March 10 and culminating on Memorial Day weekend, May 24–27. Most of the events are free and open to the public. For reservations and more information go to bard.edu/montgomeryplace.
Toward an Ethical Imagination: Gilsonfest
Toward an Ethical Imagination: Gilsonfest is a collaboration between Bard College, Historic Red Hook, Dutchess County Historical Society, and Red Hook Quilters focusing on the life of Montgomery Place gardener Alexander Gilson, an African American slave, who after being freed stayed on as head gardener and eventually opened his own nursery business.The program kicks off on Sunday, March 10 at 3 p.m. with a lecture, “A People’s History: Oral Histories and Inclusion,” by Susan Merriam, Associate Professor of Art History at Bard College, at the Elmendorph Inn, Red Hook, New York.
On Friday, May 24 at 11:30 am the program continues with the opening of an exhibition, Alexander Gilson: From Property to Property Owner, at the Historic Red Hook Annex, Cherry Street, Red Hook. It includes an exhibition by students in a Bard College class about Alexander Gilson, a quilting presentation by the Red Hook Quilters, and a presentation on historic garden artifacts and plants.
There will be a public signage dedication in honor of the life of Alexander Gilson on Friday, May 24 at 1 pm at the Montgomery Place Visitor Center. Following the dedication, there will be a gathering at the Montgomery Place Greenhouse tool room to celebrate an adjunct exhibition on Alexander Gilson.
The program concludes on Sunday, May 26, at 2 pm with the lecture “History of Memorial Day” by Myra Young Armstead, Lyford Paterson Edwards and Helen Gray Edwards Professor of Historical Studies at Bard College. This will be presented at the Montgomery Place Coach House, followed by refreshments on the Mansion House north porch.
Events are free and open to the public and no registration is required. For more information, go to bard.edu/montgomeryplace.
Funding for Toward an Ethical Imagination: Gilsonfest is provided by The Lumina Foundation.
Spring Salon Series on Music of the Gilded Age
Hosted in partnership with Hudson River Heritage and coproduced and curated by Christopher Brellochs.Saturday, May 11, 3 pm
Concert: “The Musical Life of Cora Livingston Barton and Her Husband Thomas Barton at Montgomery Place,” a recital with Christopher Brellochs, saxophone and Rita Costanzi, harp
Montgomery Place Mansion House Parlor. Admission: $25, limited to 40 seats. For more information and to purchase tickets for this event, please go to hudsonriverheritage.org.
Cora Livingston Barton and her husband Thomas Barton expanded the Montgomery Place estate to better capture the Romantic sensibilities of the time; music filled the house and the farming operations become more separated from the “pleasure gardens.” It was 1860 and the beginning of the Gilded Age; relatives such as Major General Richard Delafield, who was stationed at West Point, inspired the dedication of musical compositions such as “Florida March” and “Manassas March.” This performance will be a unique opportunity to hear these forgotten gems and experience music at Montgomery Place like Cora and Thomas did more than 150 years ago.
PROGRAM
Florida March
Manassas March
Berceuse, Op. 16 (1879) Gabriel FAURÉ (1845–1924)
The Carnival of the Animals: The Swan (1886) Camille SAINT-SAËNS (1835–1921)
Hommage a Bellini Antonio PASCULLI (1842–1924)
Meditation, Op.18 (1898) Gabriel VERDALLE (1845–1915)
Introduction, Theme, and Variations (1879) Caryl FLORIO (1843–1920)
Saturday, May 18, 3 pm
Lecture: “Music of the Gilded Age in the Hudson Valley”
Montgomery Place Mansion House Parlor; tickets are $25. The concert is limited to 40 seats. For more information and to purchase tickets for this event, please go to hudsonriverheritage.org.
Dutchess Community College Associate Professor Christopher Brellochs, who has been presenting this beautiful music in authentic historical settings, will discuss the role and importance of music during the Hudson Valley Gilded Age.
Sunday, May 26 at 4 pm
“The Gardener of Montgomery Place and the Composer of Newburgh, New York,” an outdoor saxophone quartet performance
Montgomery Place North Porch; free and open to the public. Attendees are requested to bring their own lawn chairs and/or blankets. In the event of rain, the concert will take place in the historic Montgomery Place Coach House, and be limited to the first 50 attendees.
During the early 19th century, the gardener at Montgomery Place was an African American slave named Alexander Gilson, who, after being freed, stayed on to continue as head gardener. He eventually opened his own nursery business. Downriver in Newburgh, New York, composer Ulysses J. Alsdorf, whose grandfather was freed by the Manumission Act of New York State on July 4, 1827, had a similar life journey. The Alsdorfs were entrepreneurs, involved in everything from catering to dance schools, and became prominent citizens of the thriving Hudson Valley City of Newburgh. Ulysses J. Alsdorf’s music was used to celebrate the Newburgh portion of the 1909 Henry Hudson–Robert Fulton Celebration, when a steamboat traveled from Manhattan to Albany, stopping in Newburgh. His music will do the same for this event, 110 years later.
Christopher Brellochs, soprano saxophone
Eric Aweh, alto saxophone
Joe North, tenor saxophone
Wayne Tice, baritone saxophone
PROGRAM
Selections by Ulysses J. Alsdorf (1872-1952) will include:
Ramsdell Park March (1897)
In College Colors (1900)
Dear Hudson-Fulton Days (1908)
Boom, Boom, Boom It Up! (1908)
Additional selections by:
Quatuor pour saxophones (1861) Jean-Baptiste MOHR (1823–1891)
Quatuor pour saxophones (1863) Léon KREUTZER (1817–1868)
Premier Quatuor (published 1888) Louis MAYEUR (1837–1894)
Quartette (Allegro de Concert) (1879) Caryl FLORIO (1843–1920)
Funding for the Montgomery Place 2019 Spring Salon Series on Music of the Gilded Age is provided by Charles and Valerie Jacob.
The Gilded Garden: Historic Ornament in the Landscape at Montgomery Place
A Garden Party Exhibition OpeningProduced in partnership with and curated by Barbara Israel and her staff from Barbara Israel Garden Antiques.
Friday, May 24, 4 pm
Opening will take place in the Ellipse Garden, located in front of the Greenhouse
The gardens at Montgomery Place once featured decorative garden ornaments and furniture alongside the living plants. During the mid-1800s, renowned architect Alexander Jackson Davis was hired to redesign the mansion as well as consult on the surrounding grounds. He introduced the property owners, Louise Livingston and her daughter Cora and son-in-law Thomas Barton, to landscape designer and writer Andrew Jackson Downing, who designed the gardens surrounding the jewel box–like conservatory directly across from the mansion. It was the style of the time to adorn the grounds with a lavish display of garden ornaments, including cast iron, terra-cotta, and marble objects. Displaying a wide-ranging mix of styles, these pieces were acquired from European and American manufacturers. Elaborate arbors and columnar supports of wirework held up climbing vines. Urns as large as 15 feet wide served as centerpieces for flower beds edged by elaborate rococo revival border tiles of terra-cotta. Many of the garden ornaments pictured in early photographs of the conservatory survive in the museum’s collection. The garden was considered a domestic space, allowing the confines of the home to extend into the landscape. The interior decoration of conservatories followed suit. Designed to be beautiful inside as well as outside, these glasshouses typically featured statuary, furniture, urns, potted plants, and hanging baskets. Program is free and open to the public.
Funding provided by the A. C. Israel Foundation and Plymouth Hill Foundation.
In conjunction with the above programs and Commencement activities, the Montgomery Place Mansion House will be open for viewing on Saturday, May 25 from 10:30 am to 1 pm and on Sunday, May 26 from 1:30 to 4 pm. For more information go to: bard.edu/montgomeryplace.
Bard College: The Montgomery Place Campus, a 380-acre estate adjacent to the main Bard College campus and overlooking the Hudson River, is a designated National Historic Landmark set amid rolling lawns, woodlands, and gardens, against the spectacular backdrop of the Catskill Mountains. Renowned architects, landscape designers, and horticulturists worked to create an elegant and inspiring country estate consisting of a mansion, farm, orchards, farmhouse, and other smaller buildings. The Montgomery Place estate was owned by members of the Livingston family from 1802 until the 1980s. In 1986, Livingston heir John Dennis Delafield transferred the estate to Historic Hudson Valley, in whose hands it remained until 2016, when Bard College acquired the property.
02-26-2019
Revereza’s first feature documentary tracks his journey by train from his home in Los Angeles to Rhinecliff, New York, and ultimately grad school at Bard.
02-26-2019
Joan Tower, Asher B. Edelman Professor in the Arts, and one of America’s most significant living composers, will receive the award at the League’s 74th National Conference in Nashville, June 3–5, 2019.
02-26-2019
The Times interviews Damon Daunno and Amber Gray, stars of the original Bard SummerScape production. Daunno is reprising his role as Curly for the play’s Broadway run.
02-26-2019
The Bard College Conservatory Orchestra performs at The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts’s Sosnoff Theater on Saturday, March 9. The performance features Mark Russell Smith, guest conductor, and five-time Grammy Award–winner soprano Dawn Upshaw in a program that includes Samuel Barber’s Symphony in One Movement, Op. 9; Oliver Knussen’s Requiem—Songs for Sue; and Mussorgsky/Ravel’s Pictures at an Exhibition. The Conservatory Orchestra performs Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 at the Fisher Center on May 10 and May 12, conducted by Leon Botstein, music director, with Eve Gigliotti, mezzo-soprano, the Bard College Chamber Singers, and the Bard Festival Chorale.
02-26-2019
BGC is one of 10 NYC institutions hosting the event, in which attendees create Wikipedia entries for female and nonbinary artists.
02-26-2019
Erich Wolfgang Korngold—a Viennese prodigy who fled the Nazis and moved to Hollywood, where his lush film scores provided the soundtracks for Errol Flynn’s finest swashbuckling—will be the focus of the 2019 Bard Music Festival.
02-26-2019
Artist Pfaff discusses the importance of iconography, the inspiration she draws from New York’s Chinatown, and the role of being a woman in a “macho” space.
02-25-2019
02-25-2019
Includes Bard Music Festival’s 30th anniversary season, “Korngold and His World,” American premiere of Korngold’s grand opera The Miracle of Heliane, Daniel Fish’s lauded staging of Michael Gordon’s Acquanetta, and the world premiere of Grace and Mercy by choreographer Ronald K. Brown, with live music from Meshell Ndegeocello and others
This summer’s 16th annual Bard SummerScape festival comprises more than seven weeks of music, opera, theater, dance, film, and cabaret, centered around the 30th anniversary season of the Bard Music Festival, “Korngold and His World.” This intensive examination of the life and times of Erich Wolfgang Korngold – the Viennese prodigy whose lush Romanticism would come to define the quintessential Hollywood sound – features themed concerts and panel discussions, together with a film series exploring “Korngold and the Poetry of Cinema,” and the long overdue American premiere of the grand opera that the composer considered his masterpiece, The Miracle of Heliane (“Das Wunder der Heliane”), in a fully staged new production by German director Christian Räth. To complement these offerings, Daniel Fish’s acclaimed staging of Michael Gordon’s Acquanetta provides an alternative look at Hollywood’s Golden Age, and Evidence, A Dance Company makes its festival debut with the world premiere of Grace and Mercy, a new SummerScape commission from choreographer and company founder Ronald K. Brown, with live music from Meshell Ndegeocello, Peven Everett, and Gordon Chambers. Cabaret and jazz highlight a generous program of events in Bard’s authentic and sensationally popular Belgian Spiegeltent. Taking place between June 29 and August 18 in the Frank Gehry-designed Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts and other venues on Bard College’s picturesque Hudson Valley campus, SummerScape 2019 once again makes for a full “seven weeks of cultural delight” (International Herald Tribune). London’s Times Literary Supplement lauds Bard SummerScape as “the most intellectually ambitious of America’s summer music festivals,” while Bloomberg News calls it “the smartest mix of events within driving distance of New York.” Travel and Leisure reports, “Gehry’s acclaimed concert hall provides a spectacular venue for innovative fare.” The New York Times calls SummerScape “a hotbed of intellectual and aesthetic adventure,” Newsday finds it “brave and brainy,” Musical America judges it “awesomely intensive,” and the New York Post observes, “It’s hard not to find something to like, and it’s even harder to beat the setting.” Time Out New York, naming the festival one of “New York’s 20 coolest out-of-town spots,” declares: “The experience of entering the Fisher Center and encountering something totally new is unforgettable and enriching.”
This summer’s 16th annual Bard SummerScape festival comprises more than seven weeks of music, opera, theater, dance, film, and cabaret, centered around the 30th anniversary season of the Bard Music Festival, “Korngold and His World.” This intensive examination of the life and times of Erich Wolfgang Korngold – the Viennese prodigy whose lush Romanticism would come to define the quintessential Hollywood sound – features themed concerts and panel discussions, together with a film series exploring “Korngold and the Poetry of Cinema,” and the long overdue American premiere of the grand opera that the composer considered his masterpiece, The Miracle of Heliane (“Das Wunder der Heliane”), in a fully staged new production by German director Christian Räth. To complement these offerings, Daniel Fish’s acclaimed staging of Michael Gordon’s Acquanetta provides an alternative look at Hollywood’s Golden Age, and Evidence, A Dance Company makes its festival debut with the world premiere of Grace and Mercy, a new SummerScape commission from choreographer and company founder Ronald K. Brown, with live music from Meshell Ndegeocello, Peven Everett, and Gordon Chambers. Cabaret and jazz highlight a generous program of events in Bard’s authentic and sensationally popular Belgian Spiegeltent. Taking place between June 29 and August 18 in the Frank Gehry-designed Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts and other venues on Bard College’s picturesque Hudson Valley campus, SummerScape 2019 once again makes for a full “seven weeks of cultural delight” (International Herald Tribune). London’s Times Literary Supplement lauds Bard SummerScape as “the most intellectually ambitious of America’s summer music festivals,” while Bloomberg News calls it “the smartest mix of events within driving distance of New York.” Travel and Leisure reports, “Gehry’s acclaimed concert hall provides a spectacular venue for innovative fare.” The New York Times calls SummerScape “a hotbed of intellectual and aesthetic adventure,” Newsday finds it “brave and brainy,” Musical America judges it “awesomely intensive,” and the New York Post observes, “It’s hard not to find something to like, and it’s even harder to beat the setting.” Time Out New York, naming the festival one of “New York’s 20 coolest out-of-town spots,” declares: “The experience of entering the Fisher Center and encountering something totally new is unforgettable and enriching.”
02-19-2019
The exhibition, on view through July 7, features materials collected by designer Jan Tschichold and created by the movement’s many members, including El Lissitzky, Kurt Schwitters, and László Moholy-Nagy.
02-19-2019
“I believe it is important for all students—of all instruments and from all countries—to open their ears and minds to the sounds and traditions and musical ideas of other cultures.”
02-14-2019
CCS Bard presents 14 exhibitions with more than 40 artists, offering a wide-ranging museum presentation organized by the graduating class of the Masters of Arts Curatorial Program. On view April 7–May 26.
02-07-2019
The Lab for Teen Thinkers is a public humanities program that prepares rising juniors and seniors for future academic and professional success through civic development, mentoring, and internships.
02-06-2019
Bard Graduate Center’s Lab for Teen Thinkers, which launched in the summer of 2017, is a public humanities program that prepares rising juniors and seniors for future academic and professional success through civic development, mentoring, and internship opportunities. During the five-week summer course, participants have access to the BGC study collection and its library with over 55,000 volumes. Offering a behind-the-scenes look at how New York City museums function, the program gives teens the unique opportunity to study objects and artifacts with a variety of scholars, curators, and graduate students working in the fields of material culture, decorative arts, and design history. The teens’ research culminates with an object biography, oral presentations, and dynamic digital projects created in the Media Lab, that are shared with the BGC community.
In the summer of 2018, Teen Thinkers conducted independent research projects on the theme, Votive Objects and the Everyday. Their research was informed by the exhibition Agents of Faith: Votive Objects in Time and Place, which explored the things that humans choose to offer in their votive transactions.
BGC talked with two of this year’s participants, Alex Szyperek, a junior at Bard High School Early College Queens, and Sergio Maldonado, a senior at DreamYard Preparatory High School, who offered their thoughts on the program.
Read the full story on the BGC website
In the summer of 2018, Teen Thinkers conducted independent research projects on the theme, Votive Objects and the Everyday. Their research was informed by the exhibition Agents of Faith: Votive Objects in Time and Place, which explored the things that humans choose to offer in their votive transactions.
BGC talked with two of this year’s participants, Alex Szyperek, a junior at Bard High School Early College Queens, and Sergio Maldonado, a senior at DreamYard Preparatory High School, who offered their thoughts on the program.
Read the full story on the BGC website
02-05-2019
Teaching artists are Quilan “Cue” Arnold, Ephrat “Bounce” Asherie, Beth Gill, and Nia Love.
The Bard College Dance Program and the American Dance Festival have begun a new partnership that seeks to challenge the way dance is taught in higher education. Uniting critical inquiry and professional practice, the new program contextualizes students’ training with an annual focus on a pressing contemporary topic.
The partnership’s first year examines how two influential roots of modern dance—the African diaspora and Western European dance traditions—operate within contemporary practice and in particular how the education of dancers at American colleges and universities can be reimagined.
Leah Cox, dean of the American Dance Festival and Term Associate Professor of Dance at Bard, leads the partnership. Cox selected ADF faculty that seek to decolonize their classrooms by challenging the way that dance is traditionally taught. Each ADF faculty member represents a unique area of expertise and presents students with ways to overcome divisions within the dance field or between the field and the world at large.
“One of the most pressing issues we are dealing with as educators is the way that whiteness has structured the academy,” stated Leah Cox, who was a longtime member of the Bill T. Jones / Arnie Zane Company. “In dance, the influence of whiteness appears in content, pedagogy, and the way we create and organize courses. Western European–based forms are usually prioritized as foundational, and the way courses are structured—separating technique, composition, and improvisation, for instance—reflects a Western understanding of dance. The Bard-ADF partnership courses challenge these norms.”
This new partnership builds on the Bard Dance Program’s two previous professional partnerships, which began with the Bill T. Jones / Arnie Zane Company (2009–15), then followed with the Trisha Brown Dance Company (2015–18). Maria Simpson, Bard College Dance Program director, states, “The Program was keen to pursue the next professional partnership with an entity that not only cultivates multiple artistic voices but also prioritizes the contemporary education of the dancer—an education that cannot lean exclusively in a Eurocentric direction.”
In the last five years, Bard’s Dance Program has expanded its curriculum to offer dance forms such as Palestininan Dabkeh and Contemporary West African Dance. The ADF partnership continues to build on Bard’s efforts to diversify the curriculum by creating courses that put different dance forms in conversation with one another. Working together, Cox and ADF faculty members designed partnership courses to provoke critical reflection among students through innovative pedagogy and collaborative teaching. Partnership activities in 2018–19 include:
- In the fall, choreographer and performer Nia Love cotaught two levels of contemporary movement practice with Cox exploring alignments with African diasporic and Western European dance forms.
- This spring hip-hop artist Quilan “Cue” Arnold teaches a movement course investigating the practical and pedagogical through-lines and differences between hip-hop and postmodern dance forms. Arnold also teaches a seminar in American popular dance and culture studies.
- “Bessie” Award–winning choreographer Beth Gill will engage students in physical research toward the development of her next creative project. Gill’s repertory class will ask students to examine how they currently locate an idea of themselves within various frameworks of politics, culture, psychology, family, race, gender, and sexuality. The class will culminate in an informal performance on May 15.
- B-girl, choreographer, and performer Ephrat “Bounce” Asherie will be the partnership artist in residence. Asherie will develop a new solo, work with students, and present her latest work, Odeon, at Bard’s Fisher Center on April 13 and 14, 2019.
“I’m thrilled to be working at Bard again,” stated Beth Gill, an ADF faculty member. “My past experience with Bard students was rich and inspiring and led to a whole new phase of working inside of my creative process.”
The partnership reflects the vision of the ADF School, which is known for its Summer Dance Intensive, Pre-Professional Dance Intensive, and Dance Professionals Workshop. “The School must be responsive and adaptable,” Cox said. “Today’s dance artists want their dance practice to reflect their identities and causes, and they want to challenge binaries that isolate us from each other.”
The ADF family of artists and faculty has grown to include newer members who engage these contemporary concerns, such as E. Moncell Durden, Gesel Mason, Michelle Gibson, and Abby Zbikowski, in addition to legends in the field like “Baba Chuck” Davis, Gerri Houlihan, Dianne MacIntyre, and Donald McKayle. The School has extended its curriculum to offer a weekly meeting group to discuss race, as well as regular discussions and reading groups on gender, sexuality, and social justice in the arts. In conjunction with its unwavering emphasis on professional training and contact with an international roster of companies and choreographers, these new offerings continue to make ADF an essential destination for dance artists worldwide.
More about the American Dance Festival
More about the Bard College Dance Program
02-05-2019
The Oklahoma! revival that began at Bard SummerScape in 2015 will head to Broadway in March. For every visible gun onstage, a donation will be made to a nonprofit working to end gun violence.
02-05-2019
“Despite the uncertainty that rising seas and coastal erosion bring to the region,” Hanusik writes, “hope persists.”
January 2019
01-31-2019
Having Produced and Premiered Tanowitz’s Immensely Acclaimed Four Quartets, Bard Fisher Center Will Commission Three New Works by the Choreographer, Including a Collaboration with Sara Mearns, and Will Develop a Digital Archive of Her Body of Work
Bard Fisher Center announced today that it has selected Pam Tanowitz as its first Choreographer in Residence. Her residency is underwritten by a $1.2 million gift from dance philanthropists Jay Franke and David Herro. The appointment follows the success of Tanowitz’s Four Quartets, which was produced by and premiered at the Fisher Center last summer. The New York Times hailed the production as “the most sublime dance-theater creation this century: a dance for the soul.”
In an era when many contemporary choreographers are working on an independent basis outside of traditional dance company structures, the Franke/Herro grant provides stability, generous funding, and optimal working conditions to Tanowitz and her collaborators. The three-year residency, which begins this month and concludes in December 2021, includes salaries and benefits for Tanowitz and select collaborators, administrative and touring support, rehearsal space, and professional development. In committing its space and staff resources to this full-service residency for three years, the Center is reimagining how it might support the creation of large-scale and ambitious art on a college campus, and piloting a development and research model that it hopes will prove scalable and replicable elsewhere in the field of American dance.
Bard Fisher Center will commission three new Tanowitz dances, beginning with a new work created in collaboration with New York City Ballet principal dancer Sara Mearns. Tanowitz’s second work, which she envisions as the concluding part of a trilogy that began with New Work for Goldberg Variations and Four Quartets, will premiere in the Center’s 2021 SummerScape Festival. The third commissioned work will be Tanowitz’s first performance to be sited in a museum or gallery space.
A major component of the residency will be the development of a digital archive of Tanowitz’s oeuvre, including the remounting and documentation of several of her performances. These archival initiatives will make her body of work more widely accessible to dance scholars, students, and the general public.
Finally, Tanowitz and her collaborators will engage broadly with Bard’s undergraduate programs through teaching, showings and performances, student access to rehearsals, and campuswide dialogue about the creative process.
As a creative research institution embedded on the campus of a premiere liberal arts college, the Fisher Center endeavors to pioneer a new and future-facing model of partnership between independent artists and arts organizations, on university campuses and beyond. In recent years the Center has created extended residencies for such artists as Sarah Michelson, Justin Vivian Bond, Will Rawls, Tania El Khoury, and Daniel Fish. Often this commitment includes a high level of production, financial, and administrative support for the artists. These efforts reflect the Fisher Center’s commitment to providing extended support for leading artists by shepherding projects from their initial development to their premiere, and beyond through management of the project’s touring, field advocacy, and career development for the artist.
Through this first-time gift to the Bard, Jay Franke and David Herro’s visionary leadership allows the Fisher Center to realize its commitment to new models of support at an unprecedented level. Gideon Lester, the Fisher Center’s Artistic Director for Theater and Dance, noted: “Pam Tanowitz’s appointment as Choreographer in Residence is a remarkable intervention in her creative life. The infrastructural and producing support she will receive at the Center will allow her the time and resources to develop her most ambitious productions, and the Fisher Center is reimagining its own practices as a site for the documentation, archiving, study, teaching, and dissemination of her choreographic work. Pam is one of our country’s greatest contemporary artists, who has already changed the landscape of American dance. Her choreographic works combine formal sophistication and invention, a curiosity about the possibilities of the body in motion, intellectual rigor, philosophical inquiry, a deep awareness of dance history that paradoxically points to the future, and staggering beauty. It’s thrilling to welcome her to the Fisher Center as a colleague, and to deepen our creative partnership over the next three years.”
In making the grant, Jay Franke said: “We are honored to make this gift in support of Pam’s voice, and to help elevate her work to new heights with the Fisher Center. It’s so exciting when an idea as bold and courageous as this program makes its way to the dance field. We hope our support inspires other major gifts that will create new possibilities for other American choreographers.”
“We are grateful for Jay and David’s inspired philanthropy, which demonstrates their long-term commitment to supporting transformative change in the field of dance” stated Bob Bursey, the Fisher Center’s Executive Director. “We look forward to deepening our relationship with Pam, which began with a commission and presentation in 2015, and continued with the three-year development of Four Quartets. We hope to demonstrate the possibilities for arts centers to work creatively with artists to address the evermore pressing challenges they face.”
In beginning her residency, Pam Tanowitz said: “I’m blown away by the forward-thinking minds of Jay Franke, David Herro, and the leaders of Bard Fisher Center. With this generous and unprecedented support, the company can continue our momentum after the success of Four Quartets. Simply put—it will give me the freedom to keep going.”
High-resolution images of Pam Tanowitz are available here. High-resolution images of Four Quartets are available here.
About Bard Fisher Center
Bard Fisher Center develops, produces, and presents performing arts across disciplines through new productions and context-rich programs. At once a premiere professional performing arts center and a hub for research and education, Bard Fisher Center supports artists, students, and audiences in the development and examination of artistic ideas and perspectives from the past, present, and future.
The organization’s home is the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, designed by Frank Gehry and located on the campus of Bard College in New York’s Hudson Valley. Bard Fisher Center offers outstanding programs to many communities, including the students and faculty of Bard, and audiences in the Hudson Valley, New York City, across the country, and around the world. Productions developed by the Fisher Center have been presented at venues including Lincoln Center, BAM, St. Ann’s Warehouse, Walker Arts Center, and Barbican (London). fishercenter.bard.edu
The Fisher Center illustrates Bard’s commitment to the performing arts as a cultural and educational necessity. Building on a 150-year history as a competitive and innovative undergraduate institution, Bard is committed to enriching culture, public life, and democratic discourse by training tomorrow's thought leaders. bard.edu
About Pam Tanowitz
Pam Tanowitz is a celebrated New York–based choreographer and collaborator known for her unflinchingly postmodern treatment of classical dance vocabulary. In 2000, she founded Pam Tanowitz Dance to explore dance making with a consistent community of dancers.
In 2016, Tanowitz was presented with the Juried Bessie Award for “using form and structure as a vehicle for challenging audiences to think, to feel, to experience movement; for pursuing her uniquely poetic and theatrical vision with astounding rigor and focus.” Other honors include an Outstanding Production Bessie award in 2009 for her dance Be In the Gray with Me, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts award in 2010, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2011, the Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University in 2013–14, a fall 2016 fellowship at the Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU, and named a 2016–17 City Center Choreography Fellow. Her work was selected by the New York Times Best of Dance series in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2017, and 2018.
When awarding Ms. Tanowitz the 2017 Baryshnikov Arts Center Cage Cunningham Fellowship, Mikhail Baryshnikov, the center’s artistic director, said in a statement that “her work is not an imitation of dance history, but is a distinct intellectual journey.” Her 2017 dance New Work for Goldberg Variations, created for her company in collaboration with pianist Simone Dinnerstein, was called a “rare achievement” (The New York Times). Her most recent work, the 2018 creation Four Quartets, inspired by T. S. Eliot’s literary masterpiece and set to music by Kaija Saariaho, was called "the greatest creation of dance theater so far this century” (The New York Times).
She has been commissioned by The Joyce Theater, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Bard Fisher Center, Vail International Dance Festival, New York Live Arts, The Guggenheim Museum’s Works & Process series, Danspace Project, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, Chicago Dancing Festival, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, Duke Performances, Peak Performances, FSU's Opening Nights Series, and the Institute for Contemporary Art/Boston.
Tanowitz has created or set work for City Center’s Fall for Dance Festival, The Juilliard School, Ballet Austin, New York Theater Ballet and Saint Louis Ballet; and has been a guest choreographer at Barnard College, Princeton University, Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, Marymount Manhattan College and Purchase College.
Originally from New Rochelle, New York, Tanowitz holds degrees from The Ohio State University and Sarah Lawrence College, and is currently a visiting guest artist at Rutgers University. Upcoming commissions from Paul Taylor American Dance, The Graham Company, and The Kennedy Center’s Ballet Across America will expose new audiences to her work.
Bard Fisher Center announced today that it has selected Pam Tanowitz as its first Choreographer in Residence. Her residency is underwritten by a $1.2 million gift from dance philanthropists Jay Franke and David Herro. The appointment follows the success of Tanowitz’s Four Quartets, which was produced by and premiered at the Fisher Center last summer. The New York Times hailed the production as “the most sublime dance-theater creation this century: a dance for the soul.”
In an era when many contemporary choreographers are working on an independent basis outside of traditional dance company structures, the Franke/Herro grant provides stability, generous funding, and optimal working conditions to Tanowitz and her collaborators. The three-year residency, which begins this month and concludes in December 2021, includes salaries and benefits for Tanowitz and select collaborators, administrative and touring support, rehearsal space, and professional development. In committing its space and staff resources to this full-service residency for three years, the Center is reimagining how it might support the creation of large-scale and ambitious art on a college campus, and piloting a development and research model that it hopes will prove scalable and replicable elsewhere in the field of American dance.
Bard Fisher Center will commission three new Tanowitz dances, beginning with a new work created in collaboration with New York City Ballet principal dancer Sara Mearns. Tanowitz’s second work, which she envisions as the concluding part of a trilogy that began with New Work for Goldberg Variations and Four Quartets, will premiere in the Center’s 2021 SummerScape Festival. The third commissioned work will be Tanowitz’s first performance to be sited in a museum or gallery space.
A major component of the residency will be the development of a digital archive of Tanowitz’s oeuvre, including the remounting and documentation of several of her performances. These archival initiatives will make her body of work more widely accessible to dance scholars, students, and the general public.
Finally, Tanowitz and her collaborators will engage broadly with Bard’s undergraduate programs through teaching, showings and performances, student access to rehearsals, and campuswide dialogue about the creative process.
As a creative research institution embedded on the campus of a premiere liberal arts college, the Fisher Center endeavors to pioneer a new and future-facing model of partnership between independent artists and arts organizations, on university campuses and beyond. In recent years the Center has created extended residencies for such artists as Sarah Michelson, Justin Vivian Bond, Will Rawls, Tania El Khoury, and Daniel Fish. Often this commitment includes a high level of production, financial, and administrative support for the artists. These efforts reflect the Fisher Center’s commitment to providing extended support for leading artists by shepherding projects from their initial development to their premiere, and beyond through management of the project’s touring, field advocacy, and career development for the artist.
Through this first-time gift to the Bard, Jay Franke and David Herro’s visionary leadership allows the Fisher Center to realize its commitment to new models of support at an unprecedented level. Gideon Lester, the Fisher Center’s Artistic Director for Theater and Dance, noted: “Pam Tanowitz’s appointment as Choreographer in Residence is a remarkable intervention in her creative life. The infrastructural and producing support she will receive at the Center will allow her the time and resources to develop her most ambitious productions, and the Fisher Center is reimagining its own practices as a site for the documentation, archiving, study, teaching, and dissemination of her choreographic work. Pam is one of our country’s greatest contemporary artists, who has already changed the landscape of American dance. Her choreographic works combine formal sophistication and invention, a curiosity about the possibilities of the body in motion, intellectual rigor, philosophical inquiry, a deep awareness of dance history that paradoxically points to the future, and staggering beauty. It’s thrilling to welcome her to the Fisher Center as a colleague, and to deepen our creative partnership over the next three years.”
In making the grant, Jay Franke said: “We are honored to make this gift in support of Pam’s voice, and to help elevate her work to new heights with the Fisher Center. It’s so exciting when an idea as bold and courageous as this program makes its way to the dance field. We hope our support inspires other major gifts that will create new possibilities for other American choreographers.”
“We are grateful for Jay and David’s inspired philanthropy, which demonstrates their long-term commitment to supporting transformative change in the field of dance” stated Bob Bursey, the Fisher Center’s Executive Director. “We look forward to deepening our relationship with Pam, which began with a commission and presentation in 2015, and continued with the three-year development of Four Quartets. We hope to demonstrate the possibilities for arts centers to work creatively with artists to address the evermore pressing challenges they face.”
In beginning her residency, Pam Tanowitz said: “I’m blown away by the forward-thinking minds of Jay Franke, David Herro, and the leaders of Bard Fisher Center. With this generous and unprecedented support, the company can continue our momentum after the success of Four Quartets. Simply put—it will give me the freedom to keep going.”
High-resolution images of Pam Tanowitz are available here. High-resolution images of Four Quartets are available here.
About Bard Fisher Center
Bard Fisher Center develops, produces, and presents performing arts across disciplines through new productions and context-rich programs. At once a premiere professional performing arts center and a hub for research and education, Bard Fisher Center supports artists, students, and audiences in the development and examination of artistic ideas and perspectives from the past, present, and future.
The organization’s home is the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, designed by Frank Gehry and located on the campus of Bard College in New York’s Hudson Valley. Bard Fisher Center offers outstanding programs to many communities, including the students and faculty of Bard, and audiences in the Hudson Valley, New York City, across the country, and around the world. Productions developed by the Fisher Center have been presented at venues including Lincoln Center, BAM, St. Ann’s Warehouse, Walker Arts Center, and Barbican (London). fishercenter.bard.edu
The Fisher Center illustrates Bard’s commitment to the performing arts as a cultural and educational necessity. Building on a 150-year history as a competitive and innovative undergraduate institution, Bard is committed to enriching culture, public life, and democratic discourse by training tomorrow's thought leaders. bard.edu
About Pam Tanowitz
Pam Tanowitz is a celebrated New York–based choreographer and collaborator known for her unflinchingly postmodern treatment of classical dance vocabulary. In 2000, she founded Pam Tanowitz Dance to explore dance making with a consistent community of dancers.
In 2016, Tanowitz was presented with the Juried Bessie Award for “using form and structure as a vehicle for challenging audiences to think, to feel, to experience movement; for pursuing her uniquely poetic and theatrical vision with astounding rigor and focus.” Other honors include an Outstanding Production Bessie award in 2009 for her dance Be In the Gray with Me, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts award in 2010, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2011, the Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University in 2013–14, a fall 2016 fellowship at the Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU, and named a 2016–17 City Center Choreography Fellow. Her work was selected by the New York Times Best of Dance series in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2017, and 2018.
When awarding Ms. Tanowitz the 2017 Baryshnikov Arts Center Cage Cunningham Fellowship, Mikhail Baryshnikov, the center’s artistic director, said in a statement that “her work is not an imitation of dance history, but is a distinct intellectual journey.” Her 2017 dance New Work for Goldberg Variations, created for her company in collaboration with pianist Simone Dinnerstein, was called a “rare achievement” (The New York Times). Her most recent work, the 2018 creation Four Quartets, inspired by T. S. Eliot’s literary masterpiece and set to music by Kaija Saariaho, was called "the greatest creation of dance theater so far this century” (The New York Times).
She has been commissioned by The Joyce Theater, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Bard Fisher Center, Vail International Dance Festival, New York Live Arts, The Guggenheim Museum’s Works & Process series, Danspace Project, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, Chicago Dancing Festival, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, Duke Performances, Peak Performances, FSU's Opening Nights Series, and the Institute for Contemporary Art/Boston.
Tanowitz has created or set work for City Center’s Fall for Dance Festival, The Juilliard School, Ballet Austin, New York Theater Ballet and Saint Louis Ballet; and has been a guest choreographer at Barnard College, Princeton University, Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, Marymount Manhattan College and Purchase College.
Originally from New Rochelle, New York, Tanowitz holds degrees from The Ohio State University and Sarah Lawrence College, and is currently a visiting guest artist at Rutgers University. Upcoming commissions from Paul Taylor American Dance, The Graham Company, and The Kennedy Center’s Ballet Across America will expose new audiences to her work.
01-28-2019
Matijcio, currently head of the curatorial department at the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, will assume his new post in March.
01-26-2019
Bard alumna Ruth Ungar and her band are providing support to a range of organizations, including the Bard Prison Initiative, with each $3 download of music through their website.
01-25-2019
Each of the 45 fellows will receive an unrestricted $50,000 prize, awarded annually by the Chicago-based nonprofit United States Artists.
01-23-2019
“It is crazy to me that we give away so much of our power as women in an attempt to conform to some ideal of physical perfection that is subjective and largely unobtainable.”
01-23-2019
BHSEC Manhattan alumna Leah Hennessey ’07 cowrote and costars in Slash with Emily Allan. This two-woman show runs through January 31 at MX Gallery.
01-22-2019
Handelman will receive up to $100,000 to develop her multichannel video installation Delirium.
01-22-2019
Pianist Ran Blake and vocalist Jeanne Lee met at Bard College and released only limited recordings together. Now a new album brings to light two hours of previously unissued music.
01-21-2019
TV writer Adam Conover is a member of two unions and attended public schools growing up on Long Island, so he knew he had to stand up for L.A. teachers when they went on strike.
01-08-2019
On January 11 and 13, noted choreographer, dancer, director, actor, and Professor Emerita of Dance Aileen Passloff presents four world premieres at the 92nd Street Y featuring alumni/ae guest artists.
01-06-2019
This comprehensive survey of work by Bard MFA Chair Nayland Blake '82 will open at the Institute of Contemporary Art in September.
01-04-2019
Shot in Hong Kong and New York, Tse’s latest portraits focus on the intersection of Asian and Pacific Islander and LGBTQ communities.
01-03-2019
“This isn’t a gender issue, but rather an issue of the current classification system’s inability to handle change,” writes Feltkamp.
December 2018
12-29-2018
Beastie Boys Book—a memoir of the iconic band that included the late Adam Yauch ’86—is a “brilliant 13-hour radio play.”
12-24-2018
“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.
12-21-2018
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).
“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).
12-20-2018
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.
12-15-2018
“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.”
12-14-2018
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.”
12-14-2018
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.
12-13-2018
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.
12-13-2018
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.
12-13-2018
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.
12-12-2018
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.”