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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.

More About Us
  • Visiting Bard
    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
Learn More
The Bard Conservatory also offers a Preparatory Division for students ages 3–18.

News

Opening Friday, October 2, China Now Music Festival, “Chasing Dreams,” Presents Concerts and Discussions at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Bard College, Tempo Performing Arts Center, and Asia Society

Opening Friday, October 2, China Now Music Festival, “Chasing Dreams,” Presents Concerts and Discussions at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Bard College, Tempo Performing Arts Center, and Asia Society

“We aim to tell stories of the shared dreams, resilience, and creativity that connect all of us, American and Chinese alike. Through music, we can be reminded that our histories and aspirations are deeply intertwined,” says Artistic Director Jindong Cai.

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A professional photo portrait of Missy Mazzoli

Bard Composer in Residence Missy Mazzoli featured in the New York Times

“That’s what I like about opera: That it’s a music-driven story where every emotion is taken to an extreme.”

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US-China Music Institute of the Bard College Conservatory of Music Presents Ninth Annual China Now Music Festival, "Chasing Dreams," October 2–11, 2026

US-China Music Institute of the Bard College Conservatory of Music Presents Ninth Annual China Now Music Festival, "Chasing Dreams," October 2–11, 2026

This year’s festival “Chasing Dreams” reminds us that the pursuit of dreams is a shared human experience that connects all people.

Read More

Upcoming Events and Performances

  • Desirée Ruhstrat, violin, Melissa Reardon viola, and Wendy Sutter cello
    10/2
    Friday
    Desirée Ruhstrat, violin, Melissa Reardon viola, and Wendy Sutter cello
    “Resilience”

    7:00 pm
    Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space
  • China Now Music Festival: Chasing Dreams at Carnegie Hall
    10/2
    Friday
    China Now Music Festival: Chasing Dreams at Carnegie Hall
    Bard East/West Ensemble and THE RIFT: Opera in One Act 

    7:30 pm
    Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall
  • Joan Tower smiling against a solid red wall. ; Celebration: A Concert honoring Joan Tower's 54th year at Bard, "My longtime home"
    10/3
    Saturday
    Celebration: A Concert honoring Joan Tower's 54th year at Bard, "My longtime home"
    Presented by the Altalena Artists Collective

    4:00 pm
    Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space
  • China Now Music Festival: Chasing Dreams at Asia Society
    10/3
    Saturday
    China Now Music Festival: Chasing Dreams at Asia Society
    US-China Music Forum: Chasing Dreams

    4:30 pm
    Asia Society 725 Park Ave. New York City, NY 10021 United States
  • China Now Music Festival: Chasing Dreams at Kingston
    10/4
    Sunday

    China Now Music Festival: Chasing Dreams at Kingston
    Bard East/West Ensemble conducted by Jindong Cai

    3:00 pm
    TEMPO Performing Arts Center 29 Wurts Street Kingston, NY, 12401 United States

Meet Our Faculty

See All Faculty
  • Kyle Gann
    Taylor Hawver and Frances Bortle Hawver Professor of Music

    Kyle Gann

    B.Mus., Oberlin Conservatory of Music; M.Mus., D.Mus., Northwestern University. Recipient, National Endowment for the Arts Individual Artist’s Grant (1996); Peabody Award (2003); American Music Center Letter of Distinction (2003). Music critic for the Village Voice, 1986–2005. Taught at Bucknell University, Columbia University, Northwestern University, Brooklyn College, and School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Books include The Arithmetic of Listening: Tuning Theory and History for the Impractical Musician (2018); Charles Ives’s Concord: Essays after a Sonata (2017); Robert Ashley (2012); No Such Thing as Silence: John Cage’s 4’33” (2010); Music Downtown: Writings from the Village Voice (2006); American Music in the 20th Century (1997); The Music of Conlon Nancarrow (1995); and, as coeditor, The Ashgate Research Companion to Minimalist and Postminimalist Music (2013). Vice president of the Charles Ives Society. Music on the Other Minds, New World, New Albion, Mode, Cold Blue, Lovely Music, and other record labels. At Bard since 1997.
  • Marcus Rojas
    Tuba

    Marcus Rojas

    Tubist Marcus Rojas has performed with such diverse groups as The Metropolitan Opera, The American Ballet Theatre, American Symphony Orchestra, Radio City Music Hall, and ensembles led by Lionel Hampton, David Byrne and P.D.Q. Bach. An avid proponent of contemporary, improvised and classical music, he has performed the premieres of such notable composers as LaMonte Young, Gunther Schuller, and Peter Schickele. He has recorded with CBS Records, Sony Records, A&M Records and has been heard on countless film scores, including Interview With A Vampire and Sleepless in Seattle.
  • George Tsontakis
    Distinguished Composer in Residence; Composition, Bard College Conservatory of Music

    George Tsontakis

    George Tsontakis has been the recipient of the two richest prizes awarded in all of classical music; the international Grawemeyer Award, in 2005, for his Second Violin Concerto and the 2007 Ives Living, awarded every three years by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He studied with Roger Sessions at Juilliard and, in Rome, with Franco Donatoni. Born in Astoria, New York, into a strongly Cretan heritage, he has, in recent years, become an important figure in the music of Greece, and his music is increasingly performed abroad, with dozens of performances in Europe every season. Most of his music, including eleven major orchestral works and four concertos have been recorded by Hyperion and Koch, leading to two Grammy Nominations for Best Classical Composition, in 2009 and 1999. He is Distinguished Composer in Residence at Bard and artist-faculty emeritus with the Aspen Music Festival, where he was founding director of the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble from 1991 to 1999. He served three years as composer in residence with the Oxford (England) Philomusica; was the featured composer in residence with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center for the 2008-09 season; and is continuing a six-year Music Alive residency with the Albany Symphony. He lives in New York State’s Catskill Mountains, in Shokan.
  • Raymond Erickson
    Harpsichord, Piano

    Raymond Erickson

    Raymond Erickson, harpsichordist, pianist, and music historian, graduated with high honors from Whittier College and holds the Ph.D. in musicology from Yale. He is one of America’s most experienced teachers of historical performance practice, having taught the subject since the mid-1970s at Queens College’s Aaron Copland School of Music and the CUNY Graduate Center (DMA program), as well as Rutgers University. In his performances all over the US and Europe, on both harpsichord and piano, he has revived once-standard practices now largely forgotten, such as improvised preludizing and embellishments. In recent years, he has focused on Bach, and has given master classes and lectures on Bach interpretation at major conservatories and universities both here and abroad. He has published non-traditional but historically-based interpretive approaches to the Bach Ciaccona for solo violin and to the classic repertory, as well as on improvisation for classical musicians. His four books include Schubert’s Vienna (Yale, 1997) and The Worlds of Johann Sebastian Bach (Amadeus, 2009), both of which are outgrowths of the Aston Magna Academy program he directed, sponsored by the Aston Magna Foundation with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Erickson’s principal keyboard teachers were pianists Margaretha Lohmann and Nadia Reisenberg and harpsichordists Ralph Kirkpatrick and Albert Fuller.

Preparatory Division Fall Registration Now Open

Apply & Register Here →

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Bard College
Bard College
Conservatory of Music
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Annandale-on-Hudson
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All photos by Karl Rabe unless stated otherwise.