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.
The American mezzo-soprano, Michaela Martens, is known internationally for her portrayals of some of the most difficult dramatic roles in the repertoire.
In addition to her two favorite roles, Klytämnestra/Elektra (San Francisco Opera, Chicago Lyric Opera, Houston Grand Opera) and die Amme/Die Frau ohne Schatten (Chicago Lyric Opera, Oper Graz), her successes in Strauss include Adelaide/Arabella (San Francisco Opera), and Herodias/Salome (The Santa Fe Opera, Pittsburgh Opera, Òpera de Columbia).
She has sung such notable roles as Kundry in Parsifal (Metropolitan Opera, Santiago Opera), Gertrud in Hansel and Gretel (Bayerische Staatsoper, Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera), Ortrud in Lohengrin (Vienna State Opera, Oper Graz), the 2nd Norn in Götterdämmerung (Metropolitan Opera), and Fricka in Das Rheingold (North Carolina Opera).
Ms. Martens is at home with such composers as Berlioz (Cassandre/Les Troyens, San Francisco Opera, London Philharmonic), Massenet (Hérodiade/Hérodiade, Washington Concert Opera), Giordano (Countess de Coigny/Andrea Chènier, Metropolitan Opera), Bartók (Judith/Bluebeard’s Castle, Metropolitan Opera, New Japan Philharmonic, ENO), Janáček (Kostelnička/Jenůfa, Zürich Opera, ENO), Britten (Mrs. Sedley/Peter Grimes, Metropolitan Opera), Virgil Thomson (Susan B. Anthony/The Mother of Us All, Hudson Opera House, NY), and John Adams (Marilyn Klinghoffer/ The Death of Klinghoffer, Metropolitan Opera, ENO).
Recent concert engagements include Adams/The Gospel According to the Other Mary (St. Louis Symphony at Carnegie Hall), Mahler/das Lied von der Erde (Dallas, Texas), Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 (Cleveland Orchestra, Indianapolis Symphony, Nashville Symphony), Harbison Requiem (live recording and performance, Nashville Symphony), and the Verdi Requiem (Grant Park Music Festival, Spoleto Festival). She made her debut at Carnegie Hall with the American Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Leon Botstein in the difficult title role of Magnard’s rarely heard Bérénice.
Michaela has worked with such renowned conductors as Seiji Ozawa, Sir Charles Mackerras, James Levine, Sir Andrew Davis, Charles Dutoit, Fabio Luisi, Daniele Gatti, Franz Welser-Möst, Bertrand de Billy, Sir Donald Runnicles, Marco Armiliato, Patrick Summers, and David Robertson. As a student at The Juilliard School, she was invited by Maestro Ozawa to sing the role of Ellen Orford in Peter Grimes at the 40th Anniversary of Peter Grimes at Tanglewood and then again for the Seito Kinen Festival in Matsumoto, Japan.
Ms. Martens keeps an active voice studio both at home in the Hudson Valley and as the resident voice teacher for the Lyric Opera of Kansas City. She has been a guest clinician and teacher at The Juilliard School and at the University of Washington, her alma mater. Ms. Martens’ students can be heard on the stages of the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, Opera San Jose, Seattle Opera, Houston Grand Opera, and the Santa Fe Opera, to name but a few. This summer, her students are headed to the Santa Fe Opera, Des Moines Metro Opera, Chautauqua Opera, Charlottesville Opera, Saratoga Opera, and Central City Opera.
As a student growing up in Seattle, Washington, Michaela was lucky enough to fall into the hands Ellen Faull; fearless teacher and mentor, and then after moving to New York, with the brilliant Ruth Falcon who was her teacher for 20 years. May they both Rest in Peace.
A national winner of the Metropolitan Opera (Laffont) competition, she also holds awards from the George London Foundation, the Licia Albanese Foundation, and the DeRosa Foundation.
She shares her home in the Hudson Valley with her two children and their pets: two chocolate Labradors, a tuxedo cat, and an aging bearded dragon.
Jessie Montgomery
Composition Masterclasses
Jessie Montgomery
Jessie Montgomery is an acclaimed composer, violinist, and educator. She is the recipient of the Leonard Bernstein Award from the ASCAP Foundation and the Sphinx Medal of Excellence, and her works are performed frequently around the world by leading musicians and ensembles. Her music interweaves classical music with elements of vernacular music, improvisation, poetry, and social consciousness, making her an acute interpreter of 21st-century American sound and experience. Her works have been described as “turbulent, wildly colorful, and exploding with life” (The Washington Post). Her growing body of work includes solo, chamber, vocal, and orchestral works. Some recent highlights include Shift, Change, Turn (2019), commissioned by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra; Coincident Dances (2018) for the Chicago Sinfonietta; and Banner (2014)—written to mark the 200th anniversary of “The Star-Spangled Banner”—which was presented in its United Kingdom premiere at the BBC Proms on August 7, 2021. Summer 2021 brought a varied slate of premiere performances, including Five Freedom Songs, a song cycle conceived with and written for soprano Julia Bullock, for Sun Valley and Grand Teton Music Festivals, San Francisco and Kansas City Symphonies, Boston and New Haven Symphony Orchestras, and the Virginia Arts Festival (August 7); a site-specific collaboration with Bard SummerScape Festival and Pam Tanowitz Dance, I was waiting for the echo of a better day (July 8); and Passacaglia, a flute quartet for the National Flute Association’s 49th annual convention (August 13). Since 1999, she has been affiliated with the Sphinx Organization, which supports young African American and Latinx string players, and has served as composer-in-residence for the Sphinx Virtuosi, the Organization’s flagship professional touring ensemble. A founding member of PUBLIQuartet and a former member of the Catalyst Quartet, Montgomery holds degrees from The Juilliard School and New York University, and is currently a PhD candidate in music composition at Princeton University. She has served as a professor of violin and composition at the New School, and in May 2021, she began her three-year appointment as the Mead Composer-in-Residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
BM, The Juilliard School; MM, New York University; graduate fellow in music composition, Princeton University. (2022– ) Composer in Residence.
[Photo by Jiyang Chen]
Lucy Fitz Gibbon
Undergraduate and Graduate Voice, Undergraduate and Graduate Seminars
Lucy Fitz Gibbon
Noted for her “dazzling, virtuoso singing” (Boston Globe), Lucy Fitz Gibbon is a dynamic musician whose repertoire spans the Renaissance to the present. She believes that creating new works and recreating those lost in centuries past makes room for the multiplicity and diversity of voices integral to classical music’s future. As such, Ms. Fitz Gibbon has given U.S. premieres of rediscovered works by Baroque composers Francesco Sacrati, Barbara Strozzi, and Agostino Agazzari, as well by 20 th century composers including Tadeusz Kassern, Roman Palester, and Jean Barraqué. She has also worked closely with numerous others, premiering works by John Harbison, Kate Soper, Sheila Silver, David Hertzberg, Reena Esmail, Roberto Sierra, Anna Lindemann, and Pauline Oliveros. In helping to realize the complexities of music beyond written notes, the experience of working with these composers translates to all music: the commitment to faithfully communicate not only the score, but also the underlying intentions of its creator.
As a recitalist Ms. Fitz Gibbon has appeared with her collaborative partner, pianist Ryan McCullough, in such venues as London’s Wigmore Hall; New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, Park Avenue Armory, and Merkin Hall; and Toronto’s Koerner Hall. They have three forthcoming CDs: Descent/Return, featuring works by James Primosch and John Harbison on Albany Records (May 2020); one alongside Dawn Upshaw and Stephanie Blythe of Sheila Silver’s complete Art Song repertoire; and one featuring mid-20 th century Polish works on Acte Préalable. In concert, Lucy has appeared as a soloist with orchestras including the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra; the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra; the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra; the Albany, Richmond, Tulsa, and Eureka Symphonies, and the American Symphony Orchestra in her Carnegie Hall debut. She has also premiered two major works by John Harbison and Shirish Korde with Boston Musica Viva, appeared in concert with the Aizuri Quartet, and will appear on tour with Musicians from Marlboro in such venues as Carnegie Hall and the Kimmel Center through 2022. Debuts with the Seattle Opera and Lexington and Kalamazoo Symphonies, as well an appearance with the Doric Quartet at the West Cork Festival in Ireland and a guest recital at the Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival, were all delayed because of COVID-19.
A graduate of Yale University, Ms. Fitz Gibbon is the recipient of numerous awards for her musicaland academic achievements. She holds an artist diploma from The Glenn Gould School of the Royal Conservatory and a master’s degree from Bard College-Conservatory’s Graduate Vocal Arts Program; her principal teachers include Monica Whicher, Edith Bers, and Dawn Upshaw. She has spent summers at the Tanglewood Music Center (2014-2015) and Marlboro Music Festival (2016-2019). She is currently Interim Director of the Vocal Program at Cornell University and on the faculty of Bard College Conservatory’s Graduate Vocal Arts Program, and will serve as voice faculty for Kneisel Hall’s 2020 season, occurring online. For more information, see www.lucyfitzgibbon.com.
Hongmei Yu
Erhu
Hongmei Yu
A graduate of the Central Conservatory of Music (CCOM), Yu Hongmei is one of the most brilliant erhu virtuosos as well as the most influential erhu educator in contemporary China. She currently serves as the Dean of the Chinese Music Department in CCOM, and is the designated guest erhu soloist for the China National Traditional Orchestra. Yu Hongmei maintains an active solo career in erhu performing. She has toured Europe, America, Africa, and many regions in Asia, and has successfully held hundreds of recitals in the United States, France, Canada, Japan, Hong Kong and mainland China. Her album String Glamour won the Best Traditional World Music award by Indie Music in the United States. She was the first Chinese recipient honored for this award in its 30-year history. Yu Hongmei has premiered many classic erhu works and core repertoires, and has produced exemplary works embodying different times in Chinese history: Dreams of Jinghua, Eight Banners, Tianxiang, West Rhapsody. She has appeared in many world class concert halls: Musikverein (Golden Hall in Vienna), Carnegie Hall in New York, Avery Fisher Hall of Lincoln Center, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington D.C., Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, Lucerne Concert Hall at KKL Luzern. She participated in many major performance events such as American Culture in China, New Culture in Australia with Chinese Culture, Spring Prague in the Czech Republic, Chinese Arts Festival, Beijing International Music Festival, Shanghai International Arts Festival, German Music Festival, and the Macao Arts Festival. As an educator, Yu Hongmei recorded Erhu by Maestros, and edited and published Collections of Erhu Works presented by China Central Television, the most predominant state television broadcaster. Her publications, such as Dynamics in Erhu Performance and How to play A Flower (an erhu piece by Song Fei) are well recognized and widely cited in Chinese music journals. Yu Hongmei has been invited to lecture at various institutions including California Institute of the Arts and the City University of Hong Kong. New York Concert Journal complimented her on her exquisite touching sounds as she “represents the contemporary spirit of Chinese musical culture.” Joining the US-China Music Institute of Bard Conservatory of Music, Yu Hongmei continues committing herself to preserving cultural heritage, promoting and developing Chinese music in America.