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.
Assistant Professor of Music, Bard College; Director, Postgraduate Collaborative Piano Fellowship, Undergraduate and Graduate Diction, Undergraduate and Graduate Vocal Coaching, Conservatory of Music
Erika Switzer
Erika Switzer is an internationally active pianist, teacher, and arts administrator. She has performed on the stages of New York’s Weill Recital Hall (Carnegie Hall), David Geffen Hall (Lincoln Center), Frick Collection, and Bargemusic, and at the Kennedy Center, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Spoleto Festival, Mostly Mozart, Bard Music Festival, and Stanford Live. During a seven-year sojourn in Germany, she performed at the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden and the Munich Winners & Masters series, and won numerous awards, including best pianist prizes at the Robert Schumann, Hugo Wolf, and Wigmore Hall International Song Competitions. European appearances also include recitals for Pro Musicis at the Salle Cortot in Paris, Académie Francis Poulenc at the L’Hôtel de ville de Tours, and Göppingen Meisterkonzerte. Recent premieres include the 5 Boroughs Music Festival Songbook II (Matthew Aucoin, Jonathan Dawe, Evan Fein, Whitney George, Laura Kaminsky, Missy Mazzoli, Paola Prestini, Kamala Sankaram); Brooklyn Art Song Society (Andrew Staniland); and Vancouver’s Music on Main (Jocelyn Morlock, Caroline Shaw, Jeffrey Ryan). Switzer has been recorded by the CBC, Dutch Radio (Radio 4), SWR and the Bayerische Rundfunk in Germany, WQXR New York, and WGBH Boston. A recent recording release, English Songs à la française, features her long-standing duo partnership with baritone Tyler Duncan. Together with soprano Martha Guth, she created Sparks & Wiry Cries (sparksandwirycries.org), which contributes to the future of art song performance through publication of The Art Song Magazine, presentation of the songSLAM festival in New York City, and the commission of new works. In addition to teaching in Bard’s undergraduate Music Program, Switzer works with the Graduate Vocal Arts Program on diction for singers, vocal coaching, and chamber music, and directs the Postgraduate Collaborative Piano Fellowship. BM, MM (solo piano), University of British Columbia; MM, Hochschule für Musik und Theater München, Germany; DM (collaborative piano), The Juilliard School. At Bard since 2010.
Edward Carroll
Visiting Instructor of Music
Edward Carroll
Edward Carroll’s long and distinguished career has taken many twists and turns. It began as an orchestral musician at age 21 with his appointment to the Houston Symphony, detoured back to Juilliard (BM, MM) and New York City as a trumpet soloist making over 20 recordings on the Sony, Vox, MHS, and Newport Classic labels and performing with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, matured as he conducted his first concerts, detoured once again as he fulfilled a lifelong dream of moving to Europe assuming the position of principal trumpet of the Rotterdam Philharmonic, eventually embarked on what has become a distinguished teaching career and now, in the final quarter of his musical journey, returned to his life-long passion of conducting. Mr. Carroll has served on the faculties of the Rotterdam Conservatory, London’s Royal Academy of Music, McGill University, the Bard Conservatory, and the California Institute of the Arts. He has performed with conductors such as Leonard Bernstein, Bernard Haitink, Valery Gergiev, James Conlon, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and Simon Rattle in concert halls around the world, listing Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Vienna’s Grosser Musikvereinsaal, Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Hall, New York’s Carnegie Hall, Boston’s Symphony Hall, and Tokyo’s Suntory Hall amongst his favorites. He has appeared as a soloist with the Rotterdam Philharmonic, the Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra, the London Sinfonietta, Virtuosi di Roma, the Gulbenkian Orchestra of Lisbon, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, and a variety of North American orchestras. Edward Carroll’s recordings conducting the Metamorphosis Ensemble of London (Cantoris) and Chamber Soloists of Washington (Sony) have received critical acclaim, as have his many performances conducting the Peruvian National Symphony and National Youth Orchestras. In addition to teaching and conducting, Edward Carroll is currently the director of the Center for Advanced Musical Studies (www.chosenvalemusic.org) where he presents the annual Chosen Vale International Seminars with friends such as Hakan Hardenberger, John Wallace, Markus Stockhausen, Mark Gould, Colin Currie, and Steve Reich. Author Alexander McGrattan states in his book THE TRUMPET (Yale University Press) that “the work of Ed Carroll has been seminal to the creation of a new generation of adventurous young trumpet players since his work at the Rotterdam Conservatory and the establishment of the Lake Placid Music Seminars in the mid-1990s in New York State.” Mr. Carroll feels otherwise but perhaps that can be left for another biography.
David Krakauer
Clarinet
David Krakauer
Internationally acclaimed clarinetist David Krakauer redefines the notion of a concert artist. Known for his mastery of myriad styles, he occupies the unique position of being one of the world’s leading exponents of Eastern European Jewish klezmer music, and at the same time is a major voice in classical music. As one of the foremost musicians of the vital new wave of klezmer, David Krakauer tours the globe with his celebrated Klezmer Madness! ensemble. While firmly rooted in traditional klezmer folk tunes, the band “hurls the tradition of klezmer music into the rock era” (Jon Pareles, The New York Times). In addition to his annual European tours to major international festivals and jazz clubs, recent seasons brought Krakauer and his band to the Library of Congress, Stanford Lively Arts, San Francisco Performances, the Krannert Center, Carnegie’s Zankel Hall, the Venice Biennale, Krakow Jewish Culture Festival, BBC Proms, Saalfelden Jazz Festival, Transmusicales de Rennes, La Cigale, New Morning in Paris, and many others. His newest project, The Big Picture, re-imagines familiar themes by such renowned film music composers as John Williams, Marvin Hamlisch, Randy Newman, Wojciech Kilar and Vangelis, and interprets melodic gems by the likes of Sidney Bechet, Sergei Prokofiev, Mel Brooks, Ralph Burns, John Kander & Fred Ebb and Jerry Bock that have appeared in popular films. In addition, Krakauer is in demand worldwide as a guest soloist with the finest ensembles including the Emerson, Orion and Kronos String Quartets, as well as orchestras including the Amsterdam Sinfonietta, the Detroit Symphony, the Weimar Staatskapelle, the Phoenix Symphony, the Dresdener Philharmonie, and the Seattle Symphony. Krakauer’s discography contains some of the most important klezmer recordings of the past decade including six CDs under his own name: two on John Zorn's Tzadik Label and four on Label Bleu; plus collaborations with the Klezmatics, Itzak Perlman, the Kronos Quartet/Osvaldo Golijov and Socalled. Abraham Inc’s "Tweet-Tweet" on his own label, Table Pounding Records (and Label Bleu in Europe) was released in early 2010. Composers who have written major pieces for him include David del Tredici, Paul Moravec, Ofer Ben-Amots, Jean Philippe Calvin, George Tsontakis, Anthony Coleman and Wlad Marhulets. David Krakauer is on the clarinet and chamber music faculties of Mannes College of Music, the Manhattan School of Music, NYU and the Bard College Conservatory of Music. His unique sound can be heard as soloist in Danny Elfman's score for the film "Taking Woodstock" and throughout "The Tango Lesson".
Hugo Valverde
Horn
Hugo Valverde
Hugo Valverde carries a professional orchestral and solo career in the United States and his native Costa Rica as a French horn player, currently holding the full-time and tenured position of Second Horn with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra since 2017.
As an orchestral player he has performed with the Costa Rican National Symphony Orchestra, the Classical Tahoe Festival Orchestra in Incline Village, Nevada, The Strings Music Festival Brass Ensemble in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, The Orchestra of the Americas on their Eastern Canada Tour, The Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo, Japan, The New York City Ballet and The Philadelphia Orchestra.
In his role as a soloist he performed Richard Strauss’ Concerto No. 1 with the Lynn Philharmonia Orchestra under Guillermo Figueroa and he premiered the piece “Tributo al Ciudadano Pablo” by Marvin Camacho -who is a well renowned Costa Rican composer and pioneer in new contemporary music- with the “Heredia Symphony Orchestra” of Costa Rica under Josué Jiménez. The piece is written and dedicated to him by the composer and it reflects Hugo Valverde’s commitment to Latin American repertoire, having performed and premiered pieces by Manuel Matarrita -Costa Rican pianist and composer-, and other Latin American composers. He often performs chamber music concerts with his colleagues of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra at the Carnegie Hall Concert Series at Weill Recital Hall and also with the woodwind quintet “Quinteto de Luz” in Costa Rica at the National Music Institute, Teatro Espressivo and the National Theatre of Costa Rica.
A dedicated educator, Mr. Valverde has been involved in pedagogical programs in the United States and Latin America, giving masterclasses for the Orchestra of the Americas, Yale University School of Music, Manhattan School of Music, New York University, Bard College Conservatory of Music, National Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico, The Blackburn Music Academy in Napa Valley, San Jose State University, Austin Peay University, New World School of the Arts, University of Panama School of Music and the University of Costa Rica, among others. During the pandemic he created the project “Lockdown Warmups”, which offered 40+ free masterclasses and professional online coaching from renown musicians from the Berlin Philharmonic and New York Philharmonic Orchestras, Chicago Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, Jacksonville Symphony, Seattle Symphony Orchestras, The Cleveland and The Philadelphia Orchestras, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Bavarian Radio, Frankfurt Radio, Hamburg, West Germany Radio Symphonies, and other remarkable ones, for young Latin American horn players. He currently teaches at the Precollege Division at Manhattan School of Music.
As a recording studio musician, Mr. Valverde has been part of two soundtracks for movies called “The Woman in the Window”, produced by Fox 2000 Pictures, released by Netflix and 20th Century Studios and music composed by Danny Elfman; and the other one is “Don’t Worry Darling”, produced by New Line Cinema, and music by John Powell. He was also part of the recording of Sir Paul McCartney’s song “My Valentine” with Michael Bublé in the solo voice and Mr. McCartney himself in the live recording session at the Manhattan Center Studios. The song was released in February 2022 in various music and video streaming platforms like YouTube, Apple Music, Spotify, Tidal, etc.
The live recording and broadcast made in 2019 of George Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess” was chosen as the recipient of the “Best Opera Recording” award in the “63rd Grammy Award Ceremony”. In March 14th, 2021, The Metropolitan Opera Company won the “The Recording Academy” Grammy, and Mr. Valverde was part of this broadcast and recording, who was also given a certificate of participation as a member of The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra in recognition of his effort put into the project.
Mr. Valverde studied at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University in Houston, Texas, Lynn University Conservatory of Music in Boca Raton, Florida and the National Music Institute in San José, Costa Rica. His main teachers are Daniel León, Luis Murillo, Gregory Miller and William VerMeulen.
In his spare time, Hugo enjoys road biking around Central Park, New York City area, New Jersey and his native Costa Rica, and is an avid coffee aficionado, given the fact that Costa Rica is known worldwide for the top-quality coffee they produce.