World Premiere of ULYSSES & More Set for Fisher Center at Bard 20th Anniversary Season This Fall

Over the course of this year, the Fisher Center at Bard presents its 20th Anniversary Season: Breaking Ground, comprising programming that exemplifies the institution’s role as one of the foremost producers of multidisciplinary performing arts projects. It continues this fall with a wide-ranging lineup of performances and events.
 
The upcoming programming features unbounded and genre-defying visions for theater, music, and public discourse. It includes two of the country’s most original and celebrated theater companies, Bread and Puppet Theater and Elevator Repair Service, in performances that epitomize their bodies of work. On September 9, Vermont’s Bread and Puppet Theater, which celebrates its 60th anniversary in 2023, returns to the picturesque grounds of Bard’s Montgomery Place with their legendary activist circus pageant, having last performed there in 2019. Elevator Repair Service makes its Fisher Center debut with the world premiere of Ulysses (September 21 – October 1), a Fisher Center commission that brings James Joyce’s complex, maddening, epic novel to wild, illuminating theatrical life. The production is a fitting next challenge for the experimental theater company that has based past works on Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, and Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises—with highly acclaimed results.
 
The Fisher Center’s fall season also includes a robust lineup of revelatory live music. The Orchestra Now (TŌN), Bard’s graduate-level training orchestra, kicks off its 2023–24 season with two programs this September: Two Sides of Vienna, a concert juxtaposing the music of Franz Lehár and the Strauss brothers with Mahler’s beautifully tragic Sixth Symphony (September 16 & 17); and Jean-Marie Zeitouni Conducts, an all-French program that marks the TŌN debut of the celebrated Canadian conductor (September 30). A screening of Singin’ in the Rain, widely considered the greatest movie musical of all time, is accompanied by a performance of the score by the Bard Conservatory Orchestra, conducted by James Bagwell, in a co-presentation with the Fisher Center and the Bard College Conservatory of Music (September 23 & 24). On October 6, the U.S.-China Music Institute of the Bard College Conservatory of Music, in collaboration with the Central Conservatory of Music, China, presents Generational Crossings, a concert paying tribute to influential Chinese composers Zhou Long and Chen Yi, performed by The Orchestra Now under the baton of Jindong Cai. The performance is part of the sixth annual China Now Music Festival: The Bridge of Music.
 
With three events October 12–14, author, Bard professor, and Fisher Center Advisory Board member Neil Gaiman concludes The Bard Lectures, a series of revealing talks about writing that began in the spring. The lectures, whose name references both Bard College and Bardic tradition, elucidates writers’ crucial contributions in today’s world as Gaiman explores the joys and struggles the craft entails.
 
The Fisher Center gives precedence to artistic research and education and has become a leading incubator of major performing arts productions, such as Daniel Fish’s Tony Award-winning production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! and Pam Tanowitz’s Four Quartets. The 20th Anniversary Season: Breaking Ground culminates in the groundbreaking ceremony for The Fisher Center’s new 25,000-square-foot performing arts studio building, designed by Maya Lin, which will offer artists at all stages of their careers vastly expanded room to explore as they build works from the ground up. The new building will contain four state-of-the-art studios for artist residencies, rehearsals, informal performances, and dance and theater classes connected by gathering hubs. These spaces will provide a home for Fisher Center LAB, the center’s acclaimed residency and commissioning program for professional artists. The ceremony, on October 21, features a special concert by frequent Fisher Center collaborator Ms. Lisa Fischer, with her band Grand Baton, and The Orchestra Now, conducted by Leon Botstein and James Bagwell.
 
The 20th Anniversary Season kicked off in March with the world premiere of choreographer Beth Gill’s Nail Biter (March 31 – April 2), a Fisher Center commission to which Brian Seibert of The New York Times, in a Critic’s Pick review, ascribed “the delight of imaginative artistry and choreographic craft” and “decisions that feel like discoveries.” The Fisher Center inaugurated the 2023 edition of the Bard Summerscape festival—also turning 20 this year—with the sold-out, seven-performance world premiere of Illinois (June 23 – July 2), a music-theater work based on Sufjan Stevens’ acclaimed album of the same name. The work was directed and choreographed by Tony Award winner Justin Peck, with music and lyrics by Stevens and a story by Peck and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury. The opera produced as part of this year’s SummerScape, Camille Saint-Saëns’ Henri VIII (July 21–30), staged by Jean-Romain Vesperini and featuring the American Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leon Botstein, received vast critical praise, with Heidi Waleson of The Wall Street Journal writing that Vesperini and Botstein “deftly traced [the opera’s] psychological manipulations in this acute staging,” and Zachary Woolfe of The New York Times describing the production as “well staged and excitingly sung,” adding, “Henri VIII revealed itself as a grand and compelling, often thrilling work that deserves a more frequent spot on stages.”
 
Additional highlights of SummerScape 2023 included the 33rd Bard Music Festival, focused on British composer Vaughan Williams and his world and presented by the Fisher Center August 4–13. It prompted David Allen of The New York Times to write, “For the conductor Leon Botstein, sustaining eclectic listening is practically a reason for living. And the Bard Music Festival excels at that. Not only does this year’s iteration argue for Vaughan Williams himself…it laudably brings to life a musical culture that normally receives no attention outside Britain, and precious little even there.” The Fisher Center also just concluded 2023 programming for the Spiegeltent at SummerScape, having featured live music, dance, and more from John Cameron Mitchell and Amber Martin, Nona Hendryx, Jeff Hiller, Matteo Lane, Alicia Hall Moran, Erin Markey, Jasmine Rice LaBeija, Britton and the Sting, Nicholas Galanin and Ya Tseen, Susanne Bartsch, Martha Redbone, The Hot Sardines, Lola Kirke, and others. 

20th Anniversary Season: Breaking Ground Fall 2023 Programming
 
The Fisher Center Presents

Bread and Puppet Theater

Saturday, September 9, at 4pm
 
Montgomery Place Campus
Admission is Free

Peter Schumann’s celebrated Bread and Puppet Theater brings the 2023 edition of its legendary activist circus pageant to the fields of Montgomery Place, a 380-acre National Historic Landmark estate adjacent to Bard’s main campus and acquired by the College in 2016. Featuring more than 20 live puppeteers, musicians, and performers, the event unfolds against the panoramic backdrop of the Hudson River and the Catskill Mountains. This colorful, celebratory, and thought-provoking event concludes with the sharing of the company’s famous home-baked rye bread. It is suitable for all ages and free and open to the public. Reservations are recommended.

The Orchestra Now

Two Sides of Vienna

Saturday, September 16, at 7pm
Sunday, September 17, at 2pm
 
Jean-Marie Zeitouni Conducts
Saturday, September 30, at 7pm
 
Sosnoff Theater
Tickets start at $15
 
In the 2023–24 season, The Orchestra Now—Bard’s graduate-level training orchestra, made up of vibrant young musicians from across the globe—gives 11 performances at their home base, the Fisher Center at Bard.
 
First up is Two Sides of Vienna, a concert juxtaposing two distinct styles of Viennese music from the late 19th and early 20th centuries: the vibrant and festive melodies of Franz Lehár and the Strauss brothers and Mahler’s beautifully tragic Sixth Symphony. The concert opens with an overture of music from Lehár’s well-known 1905 operetta The Merry Widow, which was compiled in 1940 for the Vienna Philharmonic in celebration of the composer’s 70th birthday. This is followed by two dance pieces: Eduard Strauss’ train-themed polka Bahn frei!, and his brother Johann Jr.’s majestic Emperor Waltz, written to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the crowning of Emperor Franz Josef. After intermission, the program explores a contrasting style from the same era with Mahler’s deeply personal and darkly passionate Symphony No. 6.
 
In Jean-Marie Zeitouni Conducts, an all-French program, the celebrated Canadian conductor makes his debut with TŌN. The evening begins with Saint-Saëns’ exuberant Bacchanale from his opera Samson et Dalila. Then, mezzo-soprano Megan Moore, a co-founder of the Lynx Project who has performed with the Metropolitan Opera, joins for Berlioz’s tenderly expressive song cycle The Summer Nights. The program also includes Fauré’s evocative suite of incidental music for the play Pelléas et Mélisande and d’Indy’s soaring and lyrical Symphony on a French Mountain Air, featuring Bard College Conservatory faculty pianist Ryan MacEvoy McCullough.
 
The Fisher Center Presents 
Elevator Repair Service

Ulysses

Fisher Center LAB Commission/World Premiere
Created by Elevator Repair Service
Directed by John Collins
Co-Direction and Dramaturgy by Scott Shepherd
Text by James Joyce
 
Thursday, September 21, at 8pm
Friday, September 22, at 8pm
Saturday, September 23, at 8pm
Sunday, September 24, at 3pm
Thursday, September 28, at 8pm
Friday, September 29, at 8pm
Saturday, September 30, at 2pm
Saturday, September 30, at 8pm
Sunday, October 1, at 3pm
 
LUMA Theater
Tickets start at $25
$5 available for Bard students through the Passloff Pass

James Joyce’s Ulysses has fascinated, perplexed, scandalized, and/or defeated readers for over a century. Building on a rich history of staging modernist works—Gatz, The Sound and the Fury, The Select (The Sun Also Rises)—Elevator Repair Service (ERS) takes on this Mount Everest of twentieth-century literature in their Fisher Center debut. Seven performers sit down for a sober reading but soon find themselves guzzling pints, getting in brawls, and committing debaucheries as they careen on a fast-forward tour through Joyce’s funhouse of styles. With madcap antics and a densely layered sound design, ERS presents an eclectic sampling from Joyce’s life-affirming masterpiece.

Post-show Discussion
 

Following the September 24 matinee, Gideon Lester (the Fisher Center’s artistic director and chief executive) will lead a discussion with David Vichnar (Joyce scholar; assistant professor of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures, Charles University), John Collins (director, Ulysses), Scott Shepherd (co-director/dramaturg, Ulysses), and members of the company.
 
Ulysses is a Fisher Center LAB commission and is co-commissioned by Symphony Space, where the work was partly developed.
 
Fisher Center and the Bard College Conservatory of Music Present
A Symphonic Night at the Movies: Singin’ in the Rain
Performed Live by the Bard Conservatory Orchestra

Saturday, September 23 at 7 pm
Sunday, September 24 at 2 pm

Sosnoff Theater
Tickets start at $25
$5 tickets available for Bard students
 
Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen’s 1952 landmark Singin’ in the Rain tops the American Film Institute’s list of the greatest movie musicals of all time. The Bard Conservatory Orchestra brings this film masterpiece to life with live orchestral accompaniment and award-winning on-screen performances by Gene Kelly, Donald O’Connor, and Debbie Reynolds.

U.S.-China Music Institute with the Central Conservatory of Music, China
Generational Crossings
China Now Music Festival: The Bridge of Music
The Orchestra Now
Conducted by Jindong Cai

Friday, October 6, at 7pm
With a Pre-Concert Talk at 6pm
 
Sosnoff Theater
Tickets start at $25
 
The China Now Music Festival returns to the Sosnoff stage for its sixth season with a concert honoring two of the most influential composers from China working in the U.S. today, Zhou Long and Chen Yi. Led by maestro Jindong Cai, The Orchestra Now (TŌN) will perform U.S. premieres of major symphonic works by this legendary couple and their renowned teacher at Columbia University, Chou Wenchung. With the addition of two pieces by their young protégées Zhou Juan and Li Shaosheng, who now have major careers in China, the program links three generations of composers to highlight the generational bridge that Chen Yi and Zhou Long have built between the country of their birth and the one they now call home—a musical bridge between China and the U.S. that is both strong and enduring.
 
This concert is presented by the U.S.-China Music Institute of the Bard College Conservatory of Music, in collaboration with the Central Conservatory of Music, China, as part of the 6th annual China Now Music Festival: The Bridge of Music. More information about the program and this year’s festival can be found here.

The Fisher Center Presents

Neil Gaiman: The Bard Lectures

October 12–14

Pulling Back the Curtain: How Fiction Works and Why It Still Matters
Thursday, October 12, at 7pm
 
To Pay the Pied Piper: The Cost of Stories
Friday, October 13, at 7pm
 
On Endings, Epilogues, and Afters
Saturday, October 14, at 7pm
 
Sosnoff Theater
Tickets start at $25 for each in-person lecture
$5 tickets available for Bard students, faculty, and staff
Livestream available for all lectures, $20 per lecture
Signed books from the author will be available for purchase.
 
Award-winning author, professor in the arts at Bard, and Fisher Center Advisory Board member Neil Gaiman has an astonishingly broad career: from journalism to graphic novels; fiction for adults and children; and writing for film, television, and theater. Over three evenings this fall, Gaiman will deliver a series of lectures on writing in which he will explore his creative strategies, share stories, and offer advice—live and in-person at the Fisher Center.
 
The Fisher Center Presents

Performing Arts Studio Building Groundbreaking

Featuring a Special Concert with Ms. Lisa Fischer & Grand Baton and The Orchestra Now
Conducted by Leon Botstein and James Bagwell
 
Saturday, October 21, at 5 pm
 
Tickets go on sale in September
 
Audiences are invited to attend a special celebration of the Fisher Center and groundbreaking of the site for their new Maya Lin-designed performing arts studio building. The day will feature a ribbon cutting and intimate reception with Lin before a special concert with Ms. Lisa Fischer & Grand Baton, and The Orchestra Now, conducted by Leon Botstein and James Bagwell.
 
Bard Conservatory Orchestra Presents

Uncommon Connections

Saturday, October 28, at 7pm
Sunday, October 29, at 2pm
 
Sosnoff Theater

$15–20 Suggested donation
A concert by the Bard Conservatory Orchestra with maestro Leon Botstein celebrating faculty members Joan Tower and Marcus Roberts. The program includes Tower’s Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman and Duke Ellington’s New World A-Comin’ featuring jazz pianist Marcus Roberts with members of his jazz ensemble, and Béla Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra and Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring to round out the program.
 

About the Fisher Center at Bard

The Fisher Center develops, produces, and presents performing arts across disciplines through new productions and context-rich programs that challenge and inspire. As a premier professional performing arts center and a hub for research and education, the Fisher Center supports artists, students, and audiences in the development and examination of artistic ideas, offering perspectives from the past and present as well as visions of the future. The Fisher Center demonstrates Bard’s commitment to the performing arts as a cultural and educational necessity. Home is the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, designed by Frank Gehry and located on the campus of Bard College in New York’s Hudson Valley. The Fisher Center offers outstanding programs to many communities, including the students and faculty of Bard College and audiences in the Hudson Valley, New York City, across the country, and around the world. Building on a 163-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.

The Center presents more than 200 world-class events and welcomes 50,000 visitors each year. The Fisher Center supports artists at all stages of their careers and employs more than 300 professional artists annually. The Fisher Center is a powerful catalyst for art-making regionally, nationally, and worldwide. Every year it produces 8 to 10 major new works in various disciplines. Over the past five years, its commissioned productions have been seen in more than 100 communities around the world. During the 2018–2019 season, six Fisher Center productions toured nationally and internationally. In 2019, the Fisher Center won the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical for Daniel Fish’s production of Oklahoma!, which began its life in 2007 as an undergraduate production at Bard and was produced professionally in the Fisher Center’s SummerScape Festival in 2015 before transferring to New York City.

For more information: Fishercenter.bard.edu

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