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.
The final performance of the festival, a chamber opera and dance concert by the Bard East/West Ensemble, will take place on October 5 at 3 pm at Jazz at Lincoln Center.
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.
Da Capo Chamber Players
Ensemble In Residence
Da Capo Chamber Players
Winners of the Naumburg Chamber Music Award, the internationally acclaimed Da Capo Chamber Players has worked closely with countless distinguished composers, representing an enormous spectrum of compositional styles. Da Capo's virtuoso artists bring years of creative insight, involvement and artistic leadership to performances of today's repertoire, including well over 150 works written especially for the group, from composers such as Joan Tower, John Harbison, Shulamit Ran, Valerie Coleman, Philip Glass, George Perle, Shirish Korde, Tania León, and Milton Babbitt, among many others.
In tour concerts and mini-residencies across the country, Da Capo works with young composers everywhere, giving them opportunities to try out things with highly experienced virtuoso performers as well as recordings (often award-winning!) of their works. The ensemble has been in residence at Bard College for over three decades, and since 2006 has been Ensemble in Residence with the Bard College Conservatory of Music. In May 2012, the Naumburg Foundation invited Da Capo to premiere works by their first ever composition winners. National Public Radio named Da Capo’s CD, Chamber Music of Chinary Ung on Bridge Records, as one of the 5 Best Contemporary Classical CDs of the year in 2010.
In May 2016, a 45th Anniversary Program offered several themes tied to Da Capo’s identity: “rhythmnation”, long-standing collaborations with gifted composers, honoring black history. The Da Capo Chamber Players’ history includes a number of exemplary programs highlighting superb works by minority composers, including African-American, Latino, and Asian. Further, these works are routinely included in Da Capo’s “normal” programming (which we of course think is “supra-normal”).
The members of the Da Capo Chamber Players are Curtis Macomber, violin; Chris Gross, cello; Patricia Spencer, flute; Marianne Gythfeldt, clarinet; and Steven Beck, piano.
Kayo Iwama
Associate Director, Graduate Vocal Arts Program
Kayo Iwama
American pianist Kayo Iwama has concertized extensively with singers such as Stephanie Blythe, Kendra Colton, William Hite, Rufus Müller, Christòpheren Nomura, Lucy Shelton and Dawn Upshaw throughout North America, Europe and Japan, and has performed in many prestigous venues including the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center, Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, The DiMenna Center, Merkin Hall, The Morgan Library, Boston’s Jordan Hall, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Seiji Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood, the Kennedy Center, Tokyo’s Yamaha Hall and the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris. The Washington Post has called her a pianist “with unusual skill and sensitivty to the music and the singer” and the Boston Globe has praised her “virtuoso accompaniment…super-saturated with gorgeous colors”.
Miss Iwama is the associate director of the innovative Graduate Vocal Arts Program at the Bard College Conservatory of Music, where she works alongside Stephanie Blythe, the Metropolitan Opera mezzo-soprano and recently appointed artistic director of the program. Miss Iwama has been with the program since its inception in 2006, working in tandem with the founding artistic director, the acclaimed soprano Dawn Upshaw. Other collaborations with Dawn Upshaw include master classes and a recital at the Britten-Pears Young Artist Program at the Aldeburgh Music Festival, and appearances at the International Vocal Arts Institute in Virginia, the University of Wyoming, Edward Pickman Hall at the Longy School of Music and the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College. Ms. Iwama has been a faculty member of Songfest, and for over two decades taught at the Tanglewood Music Center, where she also served as the coordinator of the Vocal Studies Program. There she worked with some of today’s most promising young singers and collaborative pianists, and assisted Maestros James Levine, Seiji Ozawa and Robert Spano in major operatic and concert productions. In addition her teaching has also taken her to some of the foremost universities of the United States and Asia to give master classes and performance/demonstrations. A former resident of the Boston, Massachusetts area, she was a frequent performer on WGBH radio, and performed with such groups as the Florestan Recital Project, the Handel and Haydn Society and Emmanuel Music. In addition she was the founder, music director and pianist of the critically acclaimed Cantata Singers Chamber Series, creating programs devoted to rarely-heard works of art song and vocal chamber music. She was formerly on the faculties of the Hartt School of Music, Boston Conservatory and the New England Conservatory of Music.
Miss Iwama earned a bachelor of music degree at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and her master of music at Stony Brook University where she studied with Gilbert Kalish. She also attended the Salzburg Music Festival, the Banff Music Center, the Music Academy of the West and the Tanglewood Music Center, where she worked with such artists as Margo Garrett, Martin Isepp, Graham Johnson, Martin Katz and Erik Werba. She has served previously on the music staffs of the Steans Institute at the Ravinia Festival and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Miss Iwama can be heard on CD on the Well-Tempered label, with baritone Christópheren Nomura in Schubert’s Die Schöne Müllerin, two ISMM discs devoted to French mélodies and the songs of Schumann with tenor Ingul Ivan Oak, and on the The Reckless Heart with soprano Kendra Colton, a collection of 20th century American and British song. She will also be heard on a newly released CD with Miss Colton in the vocal music of John Harbison, honoring the composer’s 80th birthday
Tao Chen
Dizi
Tao Chen
Chen Tao is an internationally acclaimed Chinese flutist, music educator, composer, and conductor of Chinese orchestra; founder and director of Melody of Dragon, Inc., and of Melody of Dragon & the Youth; artistic director and conductor of the Chinese Music Ensemble of New York and conductor of New Jersey Buddha’s Light Youth Chinese Orchestra; artistic director of New York Guqin Association; and executive chairman of the New York Chinese Music Instruments International Competition since 2015. He is also a 27th-generation musician of Zhi-Hua Buddhism music. The New York Times called Chen Tao a “poet in music” and his playing “a miracle of the oriental flute.” Conductor Herbert von Karajan praised him as an artist who “performs with his soul.”
A graduate of the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, Chen Tao was the winner of the 1989 National Folk Instrument Competition in China and has toured the United States, Germany, Italy, France, England, Holland, Singapore, and elsewhere. He has collaborated with the BBC Philharmonic and National Orchestra of Lyon. His playing can be heard on soundtracks of Hollywood movies including Seven Years in Tibet, Corrupter (with the New York Philharmonic) and on the PBS documentary Under the Red Flag. Since coming to the United States in 1993, Chen Tao has been invited to perform and lecture throughout the country. His second Flute Recital was performed in Carnegie Hall by the New York Flute Club in 2001. He has performed at Lincoln Center and the New Jersey Performing Arts Center with groups such as the Manhattan School of Music’s Chamber Orchestra, Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company, and H. T. Chen Dancers. China Institute in America has invited him to perform and lecture on the Chinese flute since 1995. The World Journal and Tsingtao Daily have called him “king of the flute.”
As a music educator, Chen Tao has been leading Melody of Dragon in collaboration with the Midori & Friends Foundation to develop Chinese music culture in elementary schools and high schools throughout the New York metropolitan area.