Leon Botstein News

The Orchestra Now performs two concerts in Manhattan in December, one with guest pianist Shai Wosner at The Metropolitan Museum of Art as part of the Orchestra’s popular Sight & Sound series (Dec. 5); and a free concert at Peter Norton Symphony Space offering works by Berlioz, Britten, Tan Dun, and Sibelius led by TŌN’s resident conductor Zachary Schwartzman (Dec. 19). 

The American Symphony Orchestra celebrates its return to the stage and its 60th anniversary season in 2021-22 with four full-orchestra programs at Carnegie Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall, and a free opening concert titled Mahler in New York at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine on December 16. The opening program focuses on composers whom Mahler had championed during his years in New York.

 The Orchestra Now will give its first Carnegie Hall concert of the season on Thursday, November 18 at 7 pm. The concert features the world premiere of award-winning composer Scott Wheeler’s Birds of America performed by renowned violinist Gil Shaham, and more.

One of the crowning glories of the 2021 Bard SummerScape season, the festival's lauded production of Ernest Chausson's only opera, King Arthur (“Le roi Arthus”), will be available for on-demand viewing from October 25 to November 1 on the Fisher Center's streaming service, UPSTREAMING.

The concert features acclaimed guest conductor Carlos Miguel Prieto, Musical America’s 2019 Conductor of the Year and music director of both the Orchestra of the Americas and the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de México, the country’s most important orchestra. He leads TŌN and mezzo-soprano Solange Merdinian in Falla’s ballet score El Sombrero de Tres Picos, along with Debussy’s La Mer, Messiaen’s Le tombeau resplendissant, and Mexican composer José Pablo Moncayo’s Huapango.

The cast of the national tour of Oklahoma! has been announced! The cast will feature Sasha Hutchings as Laurey Williams, Sean Grandillo as Curly McLain, Christopher Bannow as Jud Fry, Sis as Ado Annie Carnes, Hennessy Winkler as Will Parker, Benj Mirman as Ali Hakim, Barbara Walsh as Aunt Eller and more.

The Met today announced a new season of live performances with in-person audiences beginning fall 2021 and a new Artist in Residence, the acclaimed dancer and choreographer Bijayini Satpathy. Beginning in October, performances will once again take place in galleries throughout the Museum, as well as in the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium, and will feature MetLiveArts commissions and leading international musicians and composers.  

The Orchestra Now, the visionary orchestra and master’s degree program founded by Bard College president, conductor, educator, and music historian Leon Botstein, returns to the stage for its seventh season on September 11.

The Bard Music Festival continues its intensive exploration of “Nadia Boulanger and Her World” through the prism of her life and career. 

Opening Sunday, July 25, Ernest Chausson’s only opera, King Arthur (“Le roi Arthus”), will receive its long overdue first fully staged American production at Bard SummerScape.

The Bard Music Festival returns for its 31st season this August, with a rare and intensive two-week exploration of “Nadia Boulanger and Her World.” In twelve themed concert programs, performed live with limited in-person audiences, Bard examines Nadia Boulanger (1887–1979), the pioneering Parisian pedagogue, composer, conductor, pianist, organist and indomitable personality who shaped more than a generation of American musicians.

Artistic Director of Collingwood Summer Music Festival Daniel Vnukowski will host Summer Solstice Series this month. The four-part presentation will include Celebrating Robert Burns with R.H. Thomson and Mr. Vnukowski (June 16, 7 p.m. EDT) and more.

Committed since its inception to reviving important but neglected operas, Bard SummerScape has long proven itself “an indispensable part of the summer operatic landscape” (Musical America). This year's immersion in “Nadia Boulanger and Her World” presents the long overdue first fully staged American production of King Arthur (“Le roi Arthus”), the only opera by Boulanger's compatriot and close contemporary Ernest Chausson.

Bard SummerScape returns to live performance with a wide-ranging and adventurous lineup this summer. Staged for limited in-person audiences, the 2021 season presents the 31st Bard Music Festival, “Nadia Boulanger and Her World,” which pays tribute to one of the most important female figures in classical music history.

Staged for limited in-person audiences, the 2021 season presents the 31st Bard Music Festival, “Nadia Boulanger and Her World,” which pays tribute to one of the most important female figures in classical music history; the first fully staged American production of King Arthur (Le roi Arthus), and more.

Bard SummerScape will return this summer with a full season of live music, dance, opera, and performance, culminating in the 31st annual Bard Music Festival, “Nadia Boulanger and Her World.” Productions will be staged for limited in-person audiences both indoors and outdoors across Bard’s idyllic 1,000-acre campus, July 8 - August 22.

Music director Leon Botstein leads The Orchestra Now in two spring concerts livestreamed FREE from the Fisher Center at Bard on April 10 and May 1, an exciting return to performing symphonic works with a larger orchestra on stage. The April 10 program features Tania León’s Pulitzer Prize-nominated work Ácana, alongside music by Bernstein, Stravinsky, and Mendelssohn. The May 1 performance is the first concert of a belated two-part tribute to Beethoven’s 250th birthday. The second part will be performed by the Bard Conservatory Orchestra on May 8.

Bard College has announced the appointment of Kobena Mercer as the Charles P. Stevenson Chair in Art History and the Humanities, a joint appointment between the Art History and Visual Culture Program in the undergraduate College, and the Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS). Mercer, who comes to Bard from Yale University, will assume his faculty position in fall 2021.

The Orchestra Now (TŌN) has announced the March 19 release of Piano Protagonists: Music for Piano and Orchestra, a new CD on Bridge Records. The new recording features three works for piano and orchestra first performed in concerts at the Bard Music Festival with the “powerful technique and exceptional insight” (The Washington Post) of award-winning American pianist Orion Weiss.

Principal Trumpet Barry Perkins has been invited to represent Pacific Symphony in the Hope & Harmony Ensemble, formed by concert tour company Classical Movements in honor of the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.