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.
Violinist Carmit Zori is the recipient of a Leventritt Foundation Award, a Pro Musicis International Award, and the top prize in the Walter W. Naumburg International Violin Competition. She has appeared as a soloist with the New York Philharmonic, the Rochester Philharmonic, and the Philadelphia Orchestra, among many others, and has given solo recitals at Lincoln Center, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, the Phillips Collection in Washington D.C., the Tel Aviv Museum and the Jerusalem Center for the Performing Arts. Her performances have taken her throughout Latin America and Europe, as well as Israel, Japan, Taiwan and Australia, where she premiered the Violin Concerto by Marc Neikrug.
Ms. Zori enjoys a prolific career as a chamber musician. After ten years as artistic director at Bargemusic, she founded the Brooklyn Chamber Music Society in 2002. In addition to her own series, she has appeared with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and has been a guest at chamber music festivals and concert series around the world, including the Chamber Music at the Y series in New York City; Festival Casals in Puerto Rico; Chesapeake Bay Music Festival; Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival; Bard Music Festival; Chamber Music Northwest; Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival; La Jolla Chamber Music Festival; Seattle Chamber Music Festival; Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival; Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society in Wisconsin; Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival; Peasmarsh Chamber Music Festival in the UK; Philadelphia Chamber Music Society; Sarasota Music Festival; and is a regular participant at the Marlboro Chamber Music Festival in Vermont.
Ms. Zori has played for Music for Food, a concert series that helps relieve food insecurity in cities all over the United States. She has also participated in Project: Music Heals Us, a nonprofit organization that aims to educate and heal marginalized communities through music. Carmit is also a member of the Israeli Chamber Project, an ensemble that performs chamber music and conducts educational outreach in the US, Israel, and various other countries throughout the world.
Ms. Zori can be heard on the Arabesque, Koch International, and Elektra-Nonesuch labels. In addition to teaching at the Bard Conservatory, she is professor of violin at Rutgers University and SUNY-Purchase.
At the behest of violinists Alexander Schneider and Isaac Stern, Ms. Zori came to the United States from her native Israel at the age of fifteen to study at the Curtis Institute of Music with Ivan Galamian, Jaime Laredo and Arnold Steinhardt.
Terrence Wilson
Piano
Terrence Wilson
Acclaimed by the Baltimore Sun as “...one of the biggest pianistic talents to have emerged in this country in the last 25 years” pianist Terrence Wilson has appeared as soloist with the symphony orchestras of Atlanta, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Dallas, Detroit, Houston, Washington, DC (National Symphony), San Francisco, St. Louis, and with the orchestras of Cleveland, Minnesota, and Philadelphia and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. Conductors with whom he has worked include Christoph Eschenbach, Alan Gilbert, Neeme Järvi, Jesús López-Cobos, Lawrence Renes, Robert Spano, Yuri Temirkanov, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, Gunther Herbig and Michael Morgan.
Abroad, Terrence Wilson has played concerti with such ensembles as the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra in Switzerland, the Malaysian Philharmonic, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, and the Orquestra Sinfonica do Estado de Minas Gerais in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. He has toured with orchestras in the US and abroad, including a tour of the US with the Sofia Festival Orchestra (Bulgaria) and in Europe with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra conducted by Yuri Temirkanov.
An active recitalist, Terrence Wilson made his New York City recital debut at the 92nd Street Y, and his Washington, DC recital debut at the Kennedy Center. In Europe he has given recitals at the Verbier Festival in Switzerland, the Lourvre in Paris, and countless other major venues. In the US he has given recitals at Lincoln Center in New York City (both Alice Tully Hall and Avery Fisher Hall), the Ravinia Festival in Chicago, the Caramoor Festival in Katonah, NY, San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre, and for the La Jolla Chamber Music Society. An avid chamber musician, he performs regularly with the Ritz Chamber Players. Festival appearances include Aspen, Blossom, Grant Park, Tanglewood and Wolf Trap.
In the last couple seasons, Wilson performed as soloist with the Symphony Orchestras of Anchorage, Brevard (FL), Greensboro, Harrisburg, Memphis, Portland (ME), Raleigh and Wichita to name a few. He also appeared as soloist with the Madison Symphony in their gala season-opening concert in September 2023. Other highlights included a multi-city chamber music tour with Imani Winds with performances at such venues as the Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum in Boston and the 92nd Street Y in New York City, a recital tour culminating in a recital at the prestigious Ravinia Festival - 25 years since his debut, and a return as soloist with the Grant Park Orchestra in Chicago with performances of Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto with Music Director Giancarlo Guerrero. Wilson also performed with Symphony Tacoma as well as the Symphony Orchestras of Roanoke and Toledo among others. He also made a recital appearance in Brookings, OR and performed chamber music with the Escher Quartet in New Orleans.
In 2025-2026, Wilson performs with the Folsom and Stockton Symphonies (Beethoven piano concertos 3 and 4 respectively). He will also perform with ProMusica Chamber Orchestra in Columbus, OH and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET) in New York City with The Orchestra Now (TŌN) - Bard College’s graduate training orchestra - in Saint-Saëns’ 2nd and 5th piano concertos respectively. The season will see Wilson in recitals at Boston Conservatory’s (at Berklee) Piano Masters Series, and in Washington, DC at the Bender Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington. Other highlights of the season include a tour with mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges and the Catalyst Quartet with performances in San Francisco and at the Library of Congress, as well as a performance in Montréal at Fondation Arte Musica with the Escher Quartet.
Committed to education, Wilson serves as a member of the piano faculty at the Brevard Music Center (BMC) Institute and Festival in Brevard, NC for six weeks each summer. In July 2024, he was featured as faculty soloist with the Brevard Chamber Symphony at Whittington-Pfohl Auditorium at BMC. He is also a frequent guest teacher, lecturer and adjudicator in numerous international piano competitions. In 2025, Terrence Wilson was a pre-screening juror in the junior division of the Palm Springs International Piano Competition and adjudicated in the Hilton Head International Piano Competition. In April 2026, Wilson will perform a joint faculty recital at Bard Conservatory with Raman Ramakrishnan, in a program including the cello sonatas of Frank Bridge and Sergei Rachmaninoff.
Terrence Wilson has received several awards and prizes, including the SONY ES Award for Musical Excellence, an Avery Fisher Career Grant, and the Juilliard Petschek Award. He has also been featured on several radio and television broadcasts, including NPR’s “Performance Today,” WQXR radio in New York, and programs on the BRAVO Network, the Arts & Entertainment Network, public television, and as a guest on late night network television. In 2011, Wilson was nominated for a Grammy in the category of “Best Instrumental Soloist With an Orchestra” for his (world premiere) recording with the Nashville Symphony conducted by Giancarlo Guerrero of Michael Daugherty’s Deus ex Machina for piano and orchestra - written for Wilson in 2007.
Terrence Wilson is a graduate of The Juilliard School, where he studied with Yoheved Kaplinsky. He has also enjoyed the invaluable mentorship of the Romanian pianist and teacher Zitta Zohar, as well as that of Maria Clodes-Jaguaribe. A native of the Bronx, he resides in Montclair, New Jersey. In March 2021, Wilson was appointed to the piano faculty at Bard College Conservatory of Music.
Jindong Cai
Director, US-China Music Institute; Graduate Conducting Program, faculty
Jindong Cai
Conductor Jindong Cai is the director of the US-China Music Institute and professor of music and arts at Bard College. He is also an associate conductor of The Orchestra Now (TON). Prior to joining Bard he was a professor of performance at Stanford University. Over the 30 years of his career in the United States, Cai has established himself as an active and dynamic conductor, scholar of Western classical music in China, and leading advocate of music from across Asia. Cai started his professional conducting career with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, where he held assistant conducting positions and worked closely with Music Director Jesús López-Cobos, Conductor Keith Lockhart, and Cincinnati Pops Conductor Erich Kunzel. He has worked with numerous orchestras throughout North America and Asia. Cai maintains strong ties to his homeland and has conducted most of the top orchestras in China. He has served as the principal guest conductor of the China Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra since 2012. In 2015, he led the Shenzhen Symphony on its first tour to the American West Coast, performing in Palo Alto, San Jose, Seattle, Los Angeles, and San Diego. The concerts included collaboration with the San Francisco Opera on the premiere of a scene from Bright Sheng’s much anticipated new opera, Dream of the Red Chamber. Cai is a three-time recipient of the ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music. He has recorded for the Centaur, Innova, and Vienna Modern Masters labels. He has close relationships with many Chinese composers and has premiered or performed new works by Tan Dun, Zhou Long, Chen Yi, Bright Sheng, Ye Xiaogang, and Wang Xilin, among others. In recent years, a number of professional orchestras have approached him to create special programs of works by Chinese and other Asian composers, including the “Celebration of Asia” concert with the Seattle Symphony Orchestra in 2016. Cai has received much critical acclaim for his opera performances. In 1992, his operatic conducting debut took place at Lincoln Center’s Mozart Bicentennial Festival in New York, when he appeared as a last-minute substitute for his mentor Gerhard Samuel in the world premiere of a new production of Mozart’s Zaide. The New York Times described the performance as “one of the more compelling theatrical experiences so far offered in the festival.” Cai serves as the principal guest conductor of the Mongolia State Academic Theater of Opera and Ballet in Ulaan Baatar. Since 2011, he has visited Mongolia a dozen times to conduct opera and ballet performances, and led the theater’s historical first tour to China in 2013. Cai joined the Stanford University faculty in 2004 as director of orchestral studies and conducted the Stanford Symphony Orchestra for 11 years. He led the Stanford Symphony Orchestra on three international tours—to Australia and New Zealand in 2005; China in 2008, as part of the Beijing Olympic Cultural Festival; and Europe in 2013. In 2013, Cai launched “The Beethoven Project,” for which the Stanford Symphony Orchestra performed all nine Beethoven symphonies and all five of the composer’s piano concerti—featuring Van Cliburn Gold Medal–winning pianist and Stanford alumnus Jon Nakamatsu—in one season. Cai is also the founder of the Stanford Pan-Asian Music Festival. Over its 11-year history, the festival—which is dedicated to promoting an appreciation of music in contemporary Asia through an annual series of concerts and academic activities—has become one of the most important platforms for the performance of Asian music in the United States. As a scholar and expert on music in contemporary China and Asia, Cai is frequently interviewed by news media around the world, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, BBC, and NPR. Together with his wife Sheila Melvin, Cai has coauthored several New York Times articles on the performing arts in China and the book Rhapsody in Red: How Western Classical Music Became Chinese. Their latest book, Beethoven in China: How the Great Composer Became an Icon in the People’s Republic, was published by Penguin in September 2015. Born in Beijing, Cai received his early musical training in China, where he learned to play violin and piano. He came to the United States for his graduate studies at the New England Conservatory and the College-Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati. In 1989, he was selected to study with famed conductor Leonard Bernstein at the Tanglewood Music Center, and won the Conducting Fellowship Award at the Aspen Music Festival in 1990 and 1992.
Mariko Anraku
Harp
Mariko Anraku
Harpist Mariko Anraku is hailed as "a manifestation of grace and elegance" (Jerusalem Post) and has enchanted audiences through numerous appearances as soloist, as well as chamber and orchestral musician. The New York Times has hailed her as a "masterful artist of intelligence and wit".
Since 1995, she has held the position of Associate Principal Harpist of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. Since her debut as soloist with the Toronto Symphony led by Sir Andrew Davis, Ms. Anraku has appeared with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, New Japan Philharmonic Orchestra, Tokyo Symphony, Yomiuri Symphony Orchestra, Concerto Soloists of Philadelphia, among others. As a recitalist, she has performed in major concert halls on three continents, including Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall and Markin Concert Hall in New York, Jordan Hall in Boston, Bing Theater at the LA County Museum, The Opera Comique in Paris, the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome, the Casals, Kioi and Oji Halls in Tokyo, The Shanghai Oriental Arts Center among many others.
Ms. Anraku's impressive list of awards include First Prize at the First Nippon Harp Competition, First Prize, the Channel Classics Recording Prize and the ITT Corporation Prize at the Concert Artists Guild Competition in New York, and the Pro Musicis Foundation International Award. She was also awarded Third Prize and the Pearl Chertok Prize for the best performance of the required Israeli composition at the 11th International Harp Contest in Israel.
Ms. Anraku's strong commitment to contemporary music and the expansion of boundaries of the harp repertoire has included an invitation to premiere works by T oshio Hosokawa at the Donaueschingen Musiktage in Germany, the Wien Modern in Austria, and festivals in Tubinger and Cologne, Germany, collaborating with traditional Japanese musicians and monks. Ms. Anraku also gave the USA premiere of Jean-Michel Damase's Concerto "Ballade" with the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra at the American Harp Society Conference. She has also collaborated in a ''Tribute to Takemitsu" performance at Markin Concert Hall in New York.
An active chamber musician, Ms. Anraku has performed at the Spoleto, Tanglewood, Newport and Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festivals in the USA, The Banff Centre and the Festival of Sound in Canada, the Spoleto Festival in Italy, and the Karuizawa and Takefu Music Festivals, among others in Japan. She has also performed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Harvard Music Association, and Columbia University, and has collaborated with artists including clarinetist Richard Stoltzman and flutists Emmanuel Pahud, Carol Wincenc, Paula Robison, Emily Beynon, Michael Parloff, Marina Piccinini, Stefan Ragnar Hoskuldsson and Denis Bouriakov.
Ms. Anraku has recorded exclusively for EMI Classics, including three solo recordings and "Beau Soir" a collaboration with eminent flutist Emmanuel Pahud. "Music for Harp", a compilation from her solo CDs is also available.
Ms.Anraku is a faculty member of the Manhattan School of Music, Bard Conservatory, and The Pacific Music Festival (PMF). She is a devoted teacher, deeply committed to the mentoring and development of young musicians and has given masterclasses at The Curtis Institute of Music, The Juilliard School, Peabody Institute, The Glenn Gould School, Conservatorium Maastricht, The Central Conservatory and China Institute of Music in Beijing, The Shanghai Conservatory of Music etc. She is often invited to be a jury member at local and international competitions.
She holds Bachelor's and Master's Degrees from The Juilliard School and is a recipient of an Artist's Diploma from The Glenn Gould School in Toronto. Her teachers have included Judy Loman, Nancy Allen, Lanalee deKant and her aunt Kumiko Inoue. Ms. Anraku also studied Oriental Art History at Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan, and enjoys playing community service concerts at hospitals, drug rehabilitation centers, prisons and other venues.