Leon Botstein News

The Fisher Center at Bard, long known for its memorable productions of rarely performed operatic works programmed and conducted by Maestro Leon Botstein, commemorates World Opera Day on October 25 with two special releases, adding to an already robust selection of archival HD opera recordings and contextual materials available free of charge on UPSTREAMING, the Fisher Center's virtual stage.

 The Orchestra Now (TŌN), Bard Music Festival, and Bard College Conservatory of Music will present Out of the Silence: A Celebration of Music. The video series of four free live-streamed concerts for string orchestra, piano, and percussion is coming to UPSTREAMING, the Fisher Centera??s virtual stage, from September 5 - 26. 

The Fisher Center at Bard will present a 2020-2021 season of virtual and interactive works that focus on healing and transformation in troubled times. In each project, leading artists engage with cutting-edge technology to create compassionate and courageous offerings for a world riven by the pandemic and political strife.

Next month, the Bard Music Festival joins forces with The Orchestra Now (TŌN) and the Bard College Conservatory to present 'Out of the Silence: A Celebration of Music,' a series of four free live-streamed concerts for string orchestra, piano and percussion (Sep 5-26), coming to UPSTREAMING, the Fisher Center's virtual stage.

Check out a list of upcoming classical and opera streams including Anna Netrebko in Tosca, Caramoor's Chamber Music 'Feast', Music Academy of the West streams and more!

Tenor Russell Thomas, whose performance combines Wagnerian stamina with Italian lyricism, received glowing reviews for his recent performance as Titus in The Clemency of Titus. Russell and pianist Kyung-mi Kim invite us to enjoy their Living Room Recital. Songs include: Schuberta??s An die Musik, Vaughn Williamsa?? Let Beauty Awake, Mascagnia??s Risveglio, Duparca??s La??Invitation au Voyage, Verdia??s La??Esule, Barbera??s Knoxville Summer of 1915, and Meeropola??s Strange Fruit.

Throughout the lockdown The Fisher Center at Bard has maintained its commitment to presenting rare operatic works by streaming free, high-quality HD recordings of SummerScape operas produced over the past decade by the Fisher Center.

Conformada por tres movimientos, Fantasía para dos timbalistas es una obra de Philip Glass compuesta hace dos décadas e interpretada por la Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional (OSN) en el Palacio de Bellas Artes, la cual podrá ser disfrutada el próximo viernes 29 de mayo a las 20:00 horas en la plataforma Contigo en la distancia.

The Orchestra Now (TŌN) keeps the music coming through its new digital initiative STAY TŌNED, a free weekly series of audio and video streams, respectively available on Tuesdays and Thursdays, as well as other musical options that can be enjoyed on multiple platforms from home mask-free. The latest streaming event is an audio performance of Ives' Decoration Day on Tuesday, May 26. Online content is accessible at theorchestranow.org/stay-toned/ and on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at @theorchnow. A detailed schedule follows below. 

American Symphony Orchestra has launched ASO Online, a new digital initiative in collaboration with Bard's Fisher Center. To stay in touch with its audiences and to help the community escape from stress through music during the COVID-19 pandemic, ASO will release a recording of a past performance for streaming on its website each Wednesday. Streaming content will alternate each week between a??live video recordings of operas from Bard's SummerScape festival featuring ASO as the orchestra-in-residence, and iconic symphonic audio recordings from the Orchestra's past seasons.

The Bard Conservatory Orchestra joins an exciting principal cast of singers in a fully staged performance of Richard Strauss's once infamous, now famous opera, Salome—a biblical story, with a twist. The program, directed by R. B. Schlather and performed by the Bard Conservatory Orchestra, Leon Botstein, conductor, features leading opera singers Melody Moore, Jay Hunter Morris, Nathan Berg, Betsy Bishop, Robert Stahley, and others, including students of the Conservatory's Graduate Vocal Arts Program. Salome takes place Friday, April 3, at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, April 5, at 2 p.m. in the Fisher Center's Sosnoff Theater. Tickets start at $15 and can be ordered online at fishercenter.bard.edu or by calling the box office at 845-758-7900. $5 student tickets are available to Bard undergraduate students through the Passloff Pass.

Bard SummerScape's 17th edition celebrates one of the most important female figures in classical music history, with seven weeks of music, opera, theater, dance, film and the SummerScape Spiegeltent, centered around the 31st Bard Music Festival, 'Nadia Boulanger and Her World.'

The Orchestra Now (TŌN) will give the second and final concert this season of its Rose Theater series at Jazz at Lincoln Center on Sunday, March 22, 2020 at 3 pm. Six-time Grammy Award-winner and Detroit Symphony Orchestra Music Director Laureate Leonard Slatkin will guest conduct the Orchestra in the New York City premiere of Kinah, an elegy he wrote for his late parents. The concert marks his first performance with the young musicians of TŌN. The afternoon will also include the New York City premiere of Cindy McTee's Double Play, a work she dedicated to Slatkin; three short works by Leonard Slatkin's father, the American violinist Felix Slatkin, founder of the popular Hollywood String Quartet; and Rachmaninoff's haunting second symphony.

American Symphony Orchestra culminates its 2019-20 Vanguard series on March 12 with a tribute to the genre-defying genius of the great Duke Ellington on the stage of Carnegie Hall, where the composer played a series of annual concerts and premiered many of his greatest works, including Black, Brown, and Beige and New World A-Comin'.

Bard College has announced the appointment of Liza Parker as executive director of the Fisher Center, a leading performing arts center and hub for research and education. Previously a member of the senior leadership team at Lincoln Center, most recently as chief operating officer, Parker was responsible for overall strategy and direction, overseeing management of the campus, including Avery Fisher Hall, Alice Tully Hall, and the David Rubenstein Atrium. As executive director of the Fisher Center, she will lead senior administration, and manage operations and external relations for the Center's professional and educational programs.

New Amsterdam Singers (NAS), led by Music Director Clara Longstreth, will present Through the Seasons, featuring Robert Paterson's 'I Go Among Trees' - a World Premiere commissioned by NAS in honor of its 50th anniversary. The three-movement work by the New York-based award-winning composer is written for chorus and marimba on texts by Wendell Berry, May Sarton, and John Freeman; Makoto Nakura is the marimba soloist. The concert will be performed twice: Friday, March 20, 2020, at 8:00 pm at Broadway Presbyterian Church, Broadway at 114th Street, and Sunday, March 22, 2020, at 4:00 pm at The Theater of St. Jean Baptiste, 184 East 76th St.

Following last January's sold-out concert, TŌN's resident conductor Zachary Schwartzman returns to Symphony Space with more audience favorites by Ravel, Debussy, Messiaen, and Stravinsky on February 16. The Orchestra's outstanding and enthusiastic young artists will highlight this free performance with brief remarks about each of the works.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's performance series, MetLiveArts, Announces the 2020 Winter/Spring Season.

The Orchestra Now (TŌN) continues its vibrant fifth anniversary, featuring 16 performances and 3 premieres at Carnegie Hall, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lincoln Center, Peter Norton Symphony Space, and the Fisher Center at Bard. The season will mark the presentation of more than 150 concerts since the Orchestra was founded in 2015.

American Symphony Orchestra will pay tribute to the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth with a concert that investigates how his music inspired others on Friday January 31, 8 pm at Carnegie Hall. From Liszt's fantasia on the a?oeTurkish Marcha?? to Spohr's Beethovenesque scherzo and Reger's variations on a bagatelle theme by Beethoven, the program also celebrates the 100th anniversary of an often-overlooked 20th-century master, Galina Ustvolskaya. Her Piano Concerto is considered her first composition and demands the listener's ear with a pounding rhythmic motif that is repeated by the piano until the closing chord.