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.
A dual opera performance featuring Gian Carlo Menotti’s Amelia Goes to the Ball and Giacomo Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, performed by the Bard College Conservatory of Music and Graduate Vocal Arts Program, was reviewed in the Millbrook Independent. “Both witty operettas celebrate skillful women in a male-dominated society,” wrote Kevin McEneaney.
Jason Haaheim was appointed a Principal Timpanist of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra in 2013. In addition to performances at New York's Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall, Mr. Haaheim can be seen and heard performing with the MET Orchestra on television, international radio, and Live in HD movie theater broadcasts. Guest principal timpanist engagements have included the Seoul Philharmonic, the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, and the Milwaukee Symphony. Mr. Haaheim has also been principal timpanist of the Lakes Area Music Festival, and a resident artist of the Twickenham Festival. A sought-after clinician, Mr. Haaheim gives masterclasses both nationally and internationally, and is a founder of the multi-day Northland Timpani Summit. He is an adjunct faculty member of the NYU Steinhardt School of Music, and a frequent coach for the National Youth Orchestra (NYO) and the New York Youth Symphonies (NYYS). Prior to the Met, Mr. Haaheim was principal timpanist of the Southwest Michigan Symphony and the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, and he performed regularly as timpanist with the Madison Symphony, Illinois Symphony, Peoria Symphony, and the Illinois Philharmonic. Mr. Haaheim has also been invited to perform as guest principal timpanist with the Chicago Symphony, the Detroit Symphony, the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), the Glimmerglass Festival, the Auckland Philharmonia, the Fort Wayne Philharmonic, and the Hong Kong Philharmonic. Mr. Haaheim began studying piano in 4th grade, adding percussion studies in 5th grade. He holds a bachelor of arts degree with a double major in honors-music-performance and physics from Gustavus Adolphus College (St. Peter, MN); he also holds a master’s degree in electrical engineering from UC-Santa Barbara. Influential teachers have included John Tafoya (Indiana University, National Symphony), Dean Borghesani (Milwaukee Symphony), Jonathan Haas (Aspen Music Festival, NYU), and Robert Adney (Gustavus Adolphus College, MacPhail Music School). While auditioning and freelancing, Mr. Haaheim worked as “Senior Research and Development Engineer” at NanoInk, a Chicago-area tech company. In this capacity, he gave invited talks on nanotechnology, authored multiple peer-reviewed publications, and was granted numerous patents. In 2017, this dual-career path was highlighted in an interview with Melissa Block on NPR’s Weekend Edition. Active in all musical areas, Mr. Haaheim has also performed extensively as a chamber musician and jazz drummer. He collaborated with Yo-Yo Ma in a Civic Orchestra / Silk Road Ensemble performance, and recorded the premiere of Augusta Read Thomas’s “Terpsichore’s Dream” with members of the Chicago Symphony. Mr. Haaheim has performed with Chicago’s ensemble dal niente, and premiered Ryosuke Yagi’s “Mirrors…for timpani” with the UCSB Ensemble of Contemporary Music. Other projects have included drumming for the jazz-fusion quartet “The J3 Intent” and the alt-country band “The Lost Cartographers.” At Gustavus, Mr. Haaheim was selected for the honors recital and won first place in the orchestra’s concerto competition. Extra-musical interests include backpacking and hiking, rock climbing, and both downhill and cross-country skiing.
Blair McMillen
Artist in Residence; Visiting Assistant Professor of Music; Piano
Blair McMillen
B.A., B.M., Oberlin College; M.M., The Juilliard School; D.M.A., Manhattan School of Music. Pianist, chamber musician, improviser, concert series curator. Appearances as soloist at Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, le Poisson Rouge, Moscow Conservatory, Casals Hall (Tokyo), Miller Theatre. Has performed with American Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra of St. Luke's, Albany Symphony, Juilliard Orchestra (Lincoln Center and tour of Japan). Profiled by New York Times, Washington Post, Accent, others. Member, Da Capo Chamber Players, American Modern Ensemble, Avian Orchestra. Pianist for St. Paul Chamber Orchestra (spring 2011). Solo recordings include Soundings (Midnight Productions), Concert Music of Fred Hersch (Naxos), Multiplicities '38 (Centaur). At Bard since 2006.
Zhou Wang
Guzheng
Zhou Wang
A respected performer of the Shanxi Zheng genre, Zhou Wang is a Professor of Guzheng at the China Central Conservatory of Music, and the Director of the Chinese Music Department of CCOM. She also serves as Vice President of the China Guzheng Society. Zhou Wang learned from her father, the world class musician in the Qin Zheng Shanxi genre Zhou Yanjia. She then studied with Maestros Zicheng Gao, Zheng Cao, Sihua Xiang, Xiuming Yang, Shange Fan, and Zhaoyuan Shi, combining north-south flavors and inheriting the true art of Zheng playing from different genres. Joining the Central Song and Dance Troupe in 1977, Zhou Wang has been an active performer in China and abroad. She was invited by the National Record Association to record The Tune of Qin Mulberry, a classical masterpiece of Shanxi genre. As a musical ambassador and a soloist, she has toured internationally on behalf of the Ministry of Culture on many occasions. As a scholar of musical exchange, she has given lectures at institutions including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2014, she held a Zheng recital at Carnegie Hall. Zhou Wang has served as judge and chairperson for many national and international competitions: the Golden Bell Award, Mandarin Award, Central China Television, National Chinese Instrument Competition, and Hong Kong International Zheng Competition. In over forty years of teaching, she has been dedicated to fostering many outstanding young guzheng players, who have won prizes in major competitions around the world. Many of them continue careers as educators to teach the younger generations. In promoting Chinese music, Professor Zhou Wang has published recordings of many core classical repertoires such as High Mountain and Running River and albums featuring traditional guzheng solo works of several traditional genre classic pieces: Famous Melody of the North, Geniuses Traditional Zheng as well as many internal course teaching materials for the China Central Conservatory of Music. Her publication, Qin Zheng Qin Ren Qin Sheng, has been widely cited in Chinese musical journals. Zhou Wang also arranges and composes traditional and contemporary Zheng musical works. She arranged the Shanxi genre Zheng pieces Huan Music, Lao Long Cries the Sea and Ming Fei’s Resentment (a guzheng and erhu duet). Together with Professor Zhenyu Huang, she has composed the contemporary Zheng pieces Fantasia in the West, Reflection, and Slowly Voice ??
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.