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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.

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    Interested in visiting Bard for a campus tour or performance? 
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A singer in front of an orchestra in Olin Hall
Photo by Karl Rabe

Offering Unique Undergraduate and Graduate Programs

  • Undergraduate Double Degree in Liberal Arts and Music Performance (BA and BM)
  • Graduate Degree in Vocal Arts (MM)
  • Graduate Degree in Conducting (MM)
  • Graduate Degree in Instrumental Studies (MM)
  • Master of Arts in Chinese Music and Culture (MA)
  • Advanced Performance Studies 
  • Postgraduate Collaborative Piano Fellowship
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The Bard Conservatory also offers a Preparatory Division for students ages 3–18.

News

A professional photo of Composer in Residence Missy Mazzoli.

Composer in Residence Missy Mazzoli Profiled in the New York Times

“We want the field to expand,” said Mazzoli, “and so bringing in [diversity] helps the field survive and thrive.”
 

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a man conducts an orchestra

US-China Music Institute's Conference on Chinese Music in the West Featured in China Daily 

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.

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a man in a black t-shirt stands in front of a hallway of gothic stone arches

James Bagwell Named Principal Conductor of the Tulsa Symphony Orchestra and Berkshire Bach Society

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.

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Meet Our Faculty

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  • 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 ??
  • Derek Fenstermacher
    Tuba

    Derek Fenstermacher

    Currently principal tubist with both the New Jersey and Chattanooga Symphony Orchestras, Derek Fenstermacher received his B.M. from the University of Alabama, an M.M. from the Cincinnati College/Conservatory of Music. His primary instructors have included Mark Barton, Timothy Northcut, Demondrae Thurman, Mike Dunn, and Philip Moore, with additional tutelage from Andrew Miller, Warren Deck, Gene Pokorny, Dan Perantoni, Dave Kirk, Cristian Ganicenco, Gil Long, Sam Pilafian, and Pat Sheridan. Mr. Fenstermacher won his first orchestral position at the age of 20 and has since performed with the Nashville Symphony, New World Symphony, Houston Ballet, Alabama Symphony, Cincinnati Chamber, Huntsville Symphony, Dayton Philharmonic, West Virginia Symphony, Mobile Symphony, Tuscaloosa Symphony, and Meridian Symphony Orchestras. As a soloist, he has won many prestigious music competitions, including 1st place at the Leonard Falcone Artist Tuba Competition, and three 1st place awards at the 2008 International Tuba/Euphonium Conference. An avid chamber musician, he currently performs with the Boreas Tuba Quartet, and will be joining the New York Tuba Quartet in 2012. With over 10 years teaching experience, Mr. Fenstermacher has given masterclasses at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Montclair State University, as well as numerous other schools in Alabama, Texas, Ohio, Kentucky, and New Jersey.
  • Qiang Zhang
    Pipa

    Qiang Zhang

    A world-famous pipa virtuoso, Professor Zhang Qiang is the Director of the String Instrument Division of the Chinese Music Department at the China Central Conservatory of Music (CCMO). After graduating from CCMO in 1987, Professor Zhang had devoted himself to teaching at CCMO as a pipa instructor for almost three decades. He has been a judge at major domestic and international instrumental music competitions and has been invited to give lectures at many educational institutions. In addition to his traditional approach in systematic technique training, Professor Zhang focuses on the cultivation of students' music awareness and strongly urges his students to explore and display personal character in performing. Many of his students stand out as national winners of China’s highest-level competitions. Professor Zhang is an active performer throughout China and abroad. He has regularly appeared in international music festivals: the Edinburgh International Festival, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Tanglewood Music Center Festival of Contemporary Music, Berlin Art Week, Torino Art Festival, and other festivals held in mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao. His musical collaborations also include the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra and China National Symphony Orchestra, Dutch New Orchestra, China Symphony Orchestra, Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, China Radio National Orchestra, Shanghai National Orchestra, Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra, Taipei National Orchestra, Guangdong National Orchestra, Macau Chinese Orchestra and Singapore Chinese Orchestra. He was invited to perform at Carnegie Hall, Berlin Philharmonic Concert Hall, Musikverein (Golden Hall in Vienna), Lincoln Center in New York City. His work features solo pieces for pipa, concertos, traditional repertoires, and he actively engages in contemporary chamber music. Professor Zhang maintains a lifelong devotion to academic research. Together with three professors from CCMO, he has been working on a historical preservation project, Xian Suo Bei Kao, imparing, performing and eventually completing the full-scale (1814 manuscripts) music on the ancient spectrum of the Qing Dynasty.
  • 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]
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Bard College
Bard College
Conservatory of Music
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