Music, like all art, engages the mind and the heart.
The mission of the Bard College Conservatory of Music is to provide the best possible preparation for a person dedicated to a life immersed in the creation and performance of music.
Bagwell was recognized by both organizations for the role he has played over the past two decades in creating a consistent record of excellence in choral performance.
The three-day program brought together renowned guzheng masters from China, musicians from across North America, and young student performers for a gathering of artistic exchange, collaboration, and performance.
Weston Sprott enjoys an exciting career that includes orchestral, chamber, and solo performances, as well as numerous educational and outreach efforts. He is Dean of the Preparatory Division at The Juilliard School, leading Juilliard Pre-College and the Music Advancement Program, and a trombonist in New York’s Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, of which he has been a member since 2005. He has been recognized as “an excellent trombonist” with a “sense of style and phrasing [that] takes a backseat to no one”. He is a recipient of the Sphinx Medal of Excellence and the Atlanta Symphony Talent Development Program Aspire Award.
Sprott has performed frequently with the Philadelphia Orchestra, held a position with the Zurich Opera/Philharmonia, and has appeared with numerous other major orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, Atlanta Symphony, and Oslo Philharmonic. He previously held principal positions with the Pennsylvania Ballet Orchestra and the Delaware Symphony Orchestra. His chamber music and festival engagements include the Stellenbosch International Chamber Music Fesitval (SICMF), Classical Tahoe, Festival Napa Valley, Walla Chamber Music Festival, Chineke!, PRIZM Ensemble, and numerous others.
As a soloist, Sprott has been featured regularly throughout the United States, Europe, South Africa, and Asia. He made his Carnegie solo debut in 2007 and was a featured soloist with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center is 2017. Sprott’s debut album, Act I, was released in 2010 and hailed by the American Record Guide as “an outstanding recording” that “feels the emotion of every note and phrase”.
A dedicated and tireless teacher, Sprott holds faculty positions at Juilliard Pre-College and Bard College. He previously led the brass department at Mannes College and held faculty positions at Rutgers University, Purchase College, and the Juilliard Music Advancement Program. He also regularly serves on the faculties of SICMF, PRIZM, Curtis Institute of Music’s Summerfest, National Youth Orchestra-USA (NYO-USA) and NYO2.
He appeared in Ben Niles’ documentary film Some Kind of Spark, which highlights the impact of music education in the lives of students as they attend Juilliard’s Music Advancement Program. Other documentary film credits include A Wayfarer's Journey:Listening to Mahler, and Rittenhouse Square. His thoughts are also quoted in Rhythms of the Game, a book by former New York Yankees star Bernie Williams. He also works with organizations like Play On Philly and Music Kitchen, and has sponsored educational opportunities and solicited instrument donations for disadvantaged students. His philanthropic spirit was recognized in an article by the Wall Street Journal. He is the Board Chair of the Friends of SICMF, a member of the Bronx Arts Ensemble’s Artistsic Advisory Board, and a member of the Avery Fisher Artist Program's Recommendation Board. Weston is an active speaker, writer, and advisor for diversity and inclusion efforts in classical music.
Weston Sprott is an artist/clinician for the Antoine Courtois Instrument Company. He designed and performs exclusively on the Courtois Creation New York trombone. Performances and interviews with Mr. Sprott have been seen and heard on PBS' Great Performances, NPR's Performance Today, MSNBC, and Sirius Satellite Radio.
Zhou Wang
Guzheng
Zhou Wang
A respected performer of the Shanxi Zheng genre, Zhou Wang is a Professor of Guzheng at the China Central Conservatory of Music, and the Director of the Chinese Music Department of CCOM. She also serves as Vice President of the China Guzheng Society. Zhou Wang learned from her father, the world class musician in the Qin Zheng Shanxi genre Zhou Yanjia. She then studied with Maestros Zicheng Gao, Zheng Cao, Sihua Xiang, Xiuming Yang, Shange Fan, and Zhaoyuan Shi, combining north-south flavors and inheriting the true art of Zheng playing from different genres. Joining the Central Song and Dance Troupe in 1977, Zhou Wang has been an active performer in China and abroad. She was invited by the National Record Association to record The Tune of Qin Mulberry, a classical masterpiece of Shanxi genre. As a musical ambassador and a soloist, she has toured internationally on behalf of the Ministry of Culture on many occasions. As a scholar of musical exchange, she has given lectures at institutions including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2014, she held a Zheng recital at Carnegie Hall. Zhou Wang has served as judge and chairperson for many national and international competitions: the Golden Bell Award, Mandarin Award, Central China Television, National Chinese Instrument Competition, and Hong Kong International Zheng Competition. In over forty years of teaching, she has been dedicated to fostering many outstanding young guzheng players, who have won prizes in major competitions around the world. Many of them continue careers as educators to teach the younger generations. In promoting Chinese music, Professor Zhou Wang has published recordings of many core classical repertoires such as High Mountain and Running River and albums featuring traditional guzheng solo works of several traditional genre classic pieces: Famous Melody of the North, Geniuses Traditional Zheng as well as many internal course teaching materials for the China Central Conservatory of Music. Her publication, Qin Zheng Qin Ren Qin Sheng, has been widely cited in Chinese musical journals. Zhou Wang also arranges and composes traditional and contemporary Zheng musical works. She arranged the Shanxi genre Zheng pieces Huan Music, Lao Long Cries the Sea and Ming Fei’s Resentment (a guzheng and erhu duet). Together with Professor Zhenyu Huang, she has composed the contemporary Zheng pieces Fantasia in the West, Reflection, and Slowly Voice ??
Barbara Jöstlein Currie
Horn
Barbara Jöstlein Currie
Barbara Jöstlein Currie joined the Met Orchestra in 1998, as assistant horn. A year later, she won the 4th horn position which she has held since. Growing up in Chicago and studying with former Chicago Symphony Orchestra musicians Phil Farkas and Nancy Fako, she left for New York to study with former Met principal horn, Julie Landsman at the Juilliard school with a full scholarship. During her studies, she took a year off to play third and associate horn with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra in Israel. She has performed frequently at the Hollywood Bowl with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and with the San Diego Symphony during the summer. Along with teaching at the Bard Conservatory, she also teaches at Manhattan School of Music pre-college, and has given master classes at many universities such as Colburn and Cincinnati Conservatory, as well as in Japan. Barbara is also active in the recording industry, playing on movies such as True Grit and Contagion, and with musicians such as Tony Bennett and Sting, and has also recorded soundtracks in Los Angeles during her time off. During her summers, Barbara lives in Southern California with her husband and three children, and make frequent trips to Disneyland and the beach. Barbara's brother Thomas is the associate principal horn of the St. Louis Symphony and played for two years with the NY Philharmonic.
Xinyan Li
Chinese Music History; Composition in Chinese Style
Xinyan Li
Born in Qiqihar, China, Dr. Xinyan Li received her doctoral degree in composition at University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory of Music and Dance. She earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees at China Conservatory of Music in composition and music theory.
Dr. Li’s music works have been featured at Aspen Music Festival, Carnegie Hall, National Opera Center, Composers Now Festival, the 89th Music Mountain Festival, the 11th Beijing International Chamber Music Festival, the 13th Thailand International Composition Festival, the 19th Nordic International Bassoon Symposium, the 44th and 45th IDRS Annual Conference, Seal Bay Festival, and China’s National Center for the Performing Arts. She was invited as a visiting composer by Aspen Music Festival in 2007 and 2015; her interview and six works have been broadcasted by Sweden’s national radio—Sveriges Radio in 2011; her wind quintet Mo Suo’s Burial Ceremony was released by Albany Records in 2019, performed by Pan Pacific Ensemble; her music composed for Laozi’s Dao De Jing, translated by Ken Liu, has been released by Audible in 2022; her three chamber works were published by TrevCo Music Publishing. Her music has been performed by Omaha Symphony, musicians of Eighth Blackbird, PRISM Quartet, American Composers Orchestra, The Orchestra Now, Bergen Woodwind Quintet, Cassatt String Quartet, Earplay, Quintet of the Americas, Donald Sinta Quartet, Music From China, as well as principal musicians of Philadelphia, Baltimore, Detroit, St. Louis, Montreal, Bergen Orchestras and Danish Chamber Orchestra. Her awards include ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, American Composers Orchestra New Music Readings, Tsang-Houei Hsu International Music Composition Award, IDRS Conference 2016 Schwob Prize in Composition, and LunArt Festival Call for Scores.
As a native Chinese, Dr. Li has conducted field research on folk songs, folk chorus and ethnic instrumental music of various minorities, such as Dong, Miao, Yi, and Zhuang in southwest China, as well as Mongolian and Daur in northeast China. She has also extensively studied roles, singing styles, and instrumental music of Beijing Opera and Kunqu. Rooted in Chinese music and culture, she composed a duet for qingyi and xiao, a chamber concerto for hualian and chamber orchestra, a septet for guqin, guanzi, and five western instruments, a trio for flute, pipa, and cello, and a quartet for flute, pipa, erhu, and percussion. These compositions have been performed by virtuosos Zhihou Hu, Zhang Qiang, Zhou Yi, Shenshen Zhang, Guowei Wang, Chen Yue, Huang Mei, as well as Beijing Opera actress Zhu Hong and actor Qingxian Liu.
Dr. Li has taught composition and music theory at New York Philharmonic Orchestra’s Very Young Composers Program, University of Missouri-Kansas City, and China Conservatory of Music. Her composition students have been accepted by the Pre-College Division of The Juilliard School, Mannes School of Music, and Berklee College of Music. She has given music lectures at Grieg Academy-University of Bergen in Norway and Adelphi University in New York. As a pianist, she is skilled in playing improvisation piano accompaniment. She has worked with Metropolitan Opera conductor Gregory Buchalter, New England Conservatory professor Karen Holvik, and Chinese singer Gong Linna.