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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.

More About Us
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    Interested in visiting Bard for a campus tour or performance? 
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A singer in front of an orchestra in Olin Hall
Photo by Karl Rabe

Offering Unique Undergraduate and Graduate Programs

  • Undergraduate Double Degree in Liberal Arts and Music Performance (BA and BM)
  • Graduate Degree in Vocal Arts (MM)
  • Graduate Degree in Conducting (MM)
  • Graduate Degree in Instrumental Studies (MM)
  • Master of Arts in Chinese Music and Culture (MA)
  • Advanced Performance Studies 
  • Postgraduate Collaborative Piano Fellowship
Learn More
The Bard Conservatory also offers a Preparatory Division for students ages 3–18.

News

Jindong Cai conducts The Orchestra Now onstage at Jazz at Lincoln Center.

Seventh Annual Sound of Spring Concert Reviewed in Several Publications

The Millbrook Independent describes the concert as “a mélange of city and landscape visions."

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Professor Joan Tower Wins Columbia University Dean’s Award for Lifetime Achievement

Professor Joan Tower Wins Columbia University Dean’s Award for Lifetime Achievement

“[Tower has] expanded the possibilities and audiences of modern classical Composition,” wrote GSAS Dean Carlos Alonso.

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a black and white archival photo of a man at a piano

Bard Conservatory of Music Announces Seventh Annual Kurtág Festival Honoring György Kurtág’s 100th Birthday, March 11–April 4

The 2026 edition highlights the clarity, precision, and expressive depth of Kurtág’s music.

Read More

Upcoming Events and Performances

  • Rosemary Nelis holding a viola.; Alumni/ae Spotlight Series: Rosemary Nelis, viola
    2/27
    Friday
    Alumni/ae Spotlight Series: Rosemary Nelis, viola 7:30 pm
    Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space
  • Raman Ramakrishnan (left) wearing a green sweater and holding a cello against a blue and white background. Thomas Sauer (right) wearing a black button up shirt, with a grey background.; Faculty Spotlight Series: Raman Ramakrishnan, cello, with guest artist Thomas Sauer, piano
    2/28
    Saturday
    Faculty Spotlight Series: Raman Ramakrishnan, cello, with guest artist Thomas Sauer, piano 4:00 pm
    Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space
  • 2/28
    Saturday
    Third Year Recital: Drew Frankenberg, composition 6:00 pm
    Bard Hall
  • An empty recital hall.; Third Year Recital Marathon
    3/1
    Sunday
    Third Year Recital Marathon 1:00 pm
    Olin Hall
  • An empty recital hall.; Third Year Recital: Jiayi Sun, konghou
    3/1
    Sunday
    Third Year Recital: Jiayi Sun, konghou 7:00 pm
    Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space

Meet Our Faculty

See All Faculty
  • Gil Shaham
    Violin

    Gil Shaham

    Gil Shaham is one of the foremost violinists of our time; his flawless technique combined with his inimitable warmth and generosity of spirit has solidified his renown as an American master. The Grammy Award-winner, also named Musical America’s “Instrumentalist of the Year,” is sought after throughout the world for concerto appearances with leading orchestras and conductors, and regularly gives recitals and appears with ensembles on the world’s great concert stages and at the most prestigious festivals.

    Highlights of recent years include the acclaimed recording and performances of J.S. Bach’s complete sonatas and partitas for solo violin. In the coming seasons in addition to championing these solo works he will join his long time duo partner pianist, Akira Eguchi in recitals throughout North America, Europe, and Asia.

    Appearances with orchestra regularly include the Berlin Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Israel Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, and San Francisco Symphony as well as multi-year residencies with the Orchestras of Montreal, Stuttgart and Singapore. With orchestra, Mr. Shaham continues his exploration of “Violin Concertos of the 1930s,” including the works of Barber, Bartok, Berg, Korngold, Prokofiev, among many others.

    Mr. Shaham has more than two dozen concerto and solo CDs to his name, earning multiple Grammys, a Grand Prix du Disque, Diapason d’Or, and Gramophone Editor’s Choice. Many of these recordings appear on Canary Classics, the label he founded in 2004. His CDs include 1930s Violin Concertos, Virtuoso Violin Works, Elgar’s Violin Concerto, Hebrew Melodies, The Butterfly Lovers and many more. His most recent recording in the series 1930s Violin Concertos Vol. 2, including Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto and Bartok’s Violin Concerto No. 2, was nominated for a Grammy Award. He will release a new recording of Beethoven and Brahms Concertos with The Knights in 2020.

    Mr. Shaham was born in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, in 1971. He moved with his parents to Israel, where he began violin studies with Samuel Bernstein of the Rubin Academy of Music at the age of 7, receiving annual scholarships from the America-Israel Cultural Foundation. In 1981, he made debuts with the Jerusalem Symphony and the Israel Philharmonic, and the following year, took the first prize in Israel’s Claremont Competition. He then became a scholarship student at Juilliard, and also studied at Columbia University.

    Gil Shaham was awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant in 1990, and in 2008 he received the coveted Avery Fisher Prize. In 2012, he was named “Instrumentalist of the Year” by Musical America. He performs on an Antonio Stradivari violin, Cremona c1719, with the assistance of Rare Violins In Consortium Artists and Benefactors Collaborative, and lives in New York City with his wife, violinist Adele Anthony, and their three children.
  • Alexander Farkas
    Alexander Technique

    Alexander Farkas

    Alexander Farkas, qualified as a teacher of the Alexander Technique in 1998, trained in London with Shoshana Kaminitz and had prior and further study with Patrick Macdonald, Margaret Goldie, Marjorie Barlow and Elisabeth Walker. A musician as well, he received a MM in piano from the Manhattan School of Music and, with a focus on becoming a collaborative artist, had further study with Brooks Smith, John Wustmann and Paul Ulanowsky. His earlier piano studies were with Nadia Reisenberg. As a teacher Alex has been on the faculty of the Yale School of Music, the Hartt School, University of Hartford, and Vassar College. He was also the recipient of an IREX Grant for study in Hungary and has translated several books on music for Editio Musica, Budapest, most notably the Selected Writings of Lajos Bardos. As a pianist Alex has played for Jennie Tourel and served as accompanist for the class of Pierre Bernac. Applying the Alexander Technique to the vocal arts, Alex has presented workshops and masterclasses both here and abroad including the Royal College of Music, the Royal Academy of Music, Trinity College of Music, London, the Musikhochschule Luzern and the Musikschule Basel, Switzerland and as a guest teacher for Alexander students at training courses in the U. K., Australia and France. Alex has taught for the Bard Conservatory of Music since 2005. His new book, The Alexander Technique; Arising from Quiet, was published in London last fall and contains articles dealing with the many challenges that face all players.
  • Jenny Q Chai
    Piano Masterclasses; Chinese Admissions Ambassador

    Jenny Q Chai

    An artist of singular vision, pianist Jenny Q Chai is widely renowned for her

    ability to illuminate musical connections throughout the centuries. With radical

    joie de vivre and razor-sharp intention, Chai creates layered multimedia

    programs which explore and unite elements of science, nature, fashion, and art.

    The New Yorker describes Chai as “a pianist whose dazzling facility is matched

    by her deep musicality.”

    Chai’s instinctive understanding of new music is complemented by a deep

    grounding in core repertoire, with special affinity for Schumann, Scarlatt

    Beethoven, Bach, Debussy, and Ravel. She is a noted interpreter of 20th-century

    masters Cage, Messiaen, and Ligeti, and her career is threaded through with

    strong relationships and close collaborations with a range of notable contemporary

    composers, including Tan Dun, Jarosław Kapuściński, Andy Akiho, Pamela Z,

    Lukas Ligeti, Cindy Cox, Annie Gosfield and György Kurtág. With a deft poeti

    touch, Chai weaves this wide-ranging repertoire into a gorgeous and lucid

    musical tapestry. Chai is also a vital champion and early tester of the groundbreaking

    synchronous score following software program, Antescofo. Developed at IRCAM by

    scientist Arshia Cont, the software offers a real time computer and animation respons

    to live performance elements, enabling performers to create multimedia presentations

    of AI sophisticated and expressive fluency. Chai explored and helped hone Antescof

    in residence at IRCAM alongside frequent collaborator Jarosław Kapuściński, and has

    since toured internationally with the software offering multimedia performances i

    Shanghai, New York, Havana, and elsewhere. In September 2019, Chai gave a TEDx

    Talk titled When Classical Music Meets Technology.

    Other notable highlights include her 2024 Shanghai Symphony Hall Audiovisual AI

    Concert, 2012 Carnegie Hall recital debut; many

    performances at (le) Poisson Rouge, including a 2016 Antescofo-supported

    program, Where’s Chopin?; her 2018 Wigmore Hall debut with a program

    exploring the relation between color and sound; lectures and recitals at Shanghai

    Symphony Hall, Shanghai Concert Hall, and Shanghai Mercedes Benz Arena; a

    featured performance at Tan Dun’s International Music Medicine Festival in Qingdao;

    the Leo Brouwer Festival in Havana, Cuba; Philippe Manoury’s double-piano concerto,

    Zones de turbulences, at the Warsaw Autumn International Festival of Contemporary

    Music with duo partner, pianist Adam Kośmieja and the Polish National Radio

    Symphony Orchestra; and much more.



    Her immersive approach to music is also channeled into her work with FaceArt Institute

    of Music, the Shanghai-based organization she founded and runs, offering musi

    education and an international exchange of music and musicians in China and beyond.

    In summer 2019, Chai oversees FaceArt’s first ever month-long Co-Creation Summe

    Festival, which invites International piano and composition faculty. Additionally, Chai

    served on the Board of Directors of the New York City-based contemporary music

    organization Ear to Mind, and has published a doctoral dissertation on Marco Stroppa’s

    Miniature Estrose which is collected by many schools including Stanford and Harvard

    University.

    Chai has recorded for labels such as Divine Art, Deutschlandfunk, Naxos, ArpaViva and

    MSR. In 2010, she released her debut recording, New York Love Songs, featuring

    interpretations of works by Cage and Ives among others, and her most recent

    recording, (S)yn(e)sth(e)te, was released by MSR Records in 2017. She can also be

    heard on Michael Vincent Waller’s Five Easy Pieces and Cindy Cox’s Hierosgamos. In

    2021, her newest album on Bach, Ives and Schumann Kreisleriana received positive

    reviews globally. The album was featured by Apple Music as one of its selected best

    Classical Music albums.

    The recipient of the Yvar Mikhashoff Trust’s 2011 Pianist/Composer Commissionin

    Project, the DAAD Arts and Performance award in 2010, Chamber Music America

    commissioning award and first prize winner of the Keys to the Future Contemporar

    Solo Piano Festival, Jenny Q Chai studied at the Shanghai Music Conservatory, the

    Curtis Institute of Music, the Manhattan School of Music, and in Cologne University of

    Music and Dance. Her teachers include Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Seymour Lipkin,

    Solomon Mikowsky, Marilyn Nonken, and Anthony de Mare.

    Academically, Chai has given lecture recitals at universities such as Stanford, Harvard,

    University of California Berkeley, NYU, Shanghai Conservatory and more.

    Chai is a former piano faculty member of the University of California Berkeley, an

    alumni mentor at Curtis Institute of Music and an official career mentor at Manhatt

    School of Music. In 2022, Chai became Fazioli Global Piano Ambassador.

    Chai is a social activist who works passionately on environmental causes through her

    music and runs a personal animal shelter. She has rescued over one hundred small

    animals in China since the pandemic and is an active donor to many animal rescue

    organizations.
  • Adele Anthony
    Violin

    Adele Anthony

    Since her triumph at Denmark’s 1996 Carl Nielsen International Violin Competition, Adele Anthony has enjoyed an acclaimed and expanding international career. Performing as a soloist with orchestra and in recital, as well as being active in chamber music, Ms. Anthony’s career spans the continents of North America, Europe, Australia, India and Asia.

    In addition to appearances with all six symphonies of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Ms. Anthony’s highlights from recent seasons have included performances with the symphony orchestras of Houston, San Diego, Seattle, Ft. Worth, and Indianapolis, as well as the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. Being an avid chamber music player, Ms. Anthony appears regularly at La Jolla SummerFest and Aspen Music Festival. Her wide-ranging repertoire extends from the Baroque of Bach and Vivaldi to contemporary works of Ross Edwards, Arvo Pärt and Phillip Glass.

    An active recording artist, Ms. Anthony’s work includes releases with Sejong Soloists, Eric Ewazen, Concerto for Violin and String Orchestra (Albany), a recording of the Philip Glass Violin Concerto with Takuo Yuasa and the Ulster Orchestra (Naxos), Arvo Pärt’s ‘Tabula rasa’ with Gil Shaham, Neeme Järvi and the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra (Deutsche Grammophon), and her latest recording of the Sibelius Violin Concerto and Ross Edwards “Maninyas” with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra (Canary Classics/ABC Classics).

    Adele Anthony performs on an Antonio Stradivarius violin, crafted in 1728.
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Bard College
Bard College
Conservatory of Music
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Annandale-on-Hudson
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All photos by Karl Rabe unless stated otherwise.