The two-year M.M. program is designed and directed by HAROLD FARBERMAN (founder and director of the Conductors Institute at Bard; JAMES BAGWELL (director of Bard’s undergraduate Music Program, music director of the Collegiate Chorale and principal guest conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra) and LEON BOTSTEIN, president of Bard College, music director of the American Symphony Orchestra and conductor laureate of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra.
The program is small and unusually diverse. We enroll approximately 12 students, allowing for significant podium time. In the choral conducting program, students have the opportunity to work with a variety of choruses and singers. They work regularly within a variety of choral repertoire; all of the choral conductors work regularly with the Bard Chamber Singers, the Bard Symphonic Chorus, and the Graduate Vocal Ensemble, a group of professional ensemble singers based in New York City. The program offers students unique access to the resources of the Collegiate Chorale in New York City, the Bard Music Festival, and other musical institutions at Bard and in New York. All orchestral conductors participate in the Conductors Institute – a summer program, now in its thirteenth year – for two summers.
Here is a sample of the diversity of programming:
- A concert with pop singer Natalie Merchant and the Bard Conservatory Orchestra
- A concert of The Brahms Requiem with members of the American Symphony Orchestra and Bard Conservatory Orchestra and singers from the Bard Graduate Vocal Arts Program (music director: Dawn Upshaw)
- Fully-staged operas (i.e., Ravel’s L‘enfant et les sortilèges) featuring singers from the Bard Graduate Vocal Arts Program and premieres of works by new composers
For application instructions visit: http://www.bard.edu/conservatory/gcp
Application Deadline: February 15, 2012
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