Bard Conservatory

Music for the Mind and 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. We seek to do so in a just, inclusive, and diverse community.

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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 to 18.

Featured News

Joan Tower’s Cello Concerto A New Day Featured in Times Union

A New Day, a cello concerto released in 2021 by Joan Tower, Asher B. Edelman Professor in the Arts at Bard College, was featured in Times Union. The work, which began as a commission by the Colorado Music Festival, Cleveland Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and National Symphony Orchestra, was written while Jeff Litfin, her late husband of 50 years, was dying. More >

Benjamin Hochman. Photo by Omri Ben David / Culiner Creative Circle

Bard’s Conservatory of Music Presents Benjamin Hochman Album Release Concert on Nov. 8, 2024

The Bard College Conservatory of Music is pleased to present a celebration of the new album release by renowned pianist and conductor Benjamin Hochman, a lecturer at Bard College Berlin. The event, which takes place on November 8, 2024, at 7 pm in the Bitó Conservatory Building on Bard’s campus, will begin with a reception followed by a piano concert of Hochman’s album Resonance. More >

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Upcoming Events

11/22
Friday

Third Year Recital Marathon
1:00 pm – 6:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Olin Hall
11/22
Friday

Percussion Studio Concert
8:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space
11/23
Saturday

Third Year Recital
2:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Olin Hall

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Meet Our Faculty

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Leon Botstein

Codirector, Graduate Conducting Program; Music Director, Bard Conservatory; President, Bard College

Leon Botstein
Leon Botstein has been music director and principal conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra since 1992. This year he becomes conductor laureate of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, where he had served as music director since 2003. He is also the founder and co-artistic director of the Bard Music Festival, now in its 21st year. He has been president of Bard College in New York since 1975. Upcoming engagements include the Russian National Philharmonic, the Odessa Symphony, and the Budapest Opera Orchestra. Recent engagements have included the BBC Philharmonic, Bamberg Symphony; the Budapest Festival Orchestra; Düsseldorf Symphony; the London Philharmonic; NDR-Hamburg and Hannover; the Royal Scottish National Orchestra; the St. Petersburg Philharmonic; and Teatro Real Madrid, among others. Among Leon Botstein’s recordings are operas by Strauss, Dukas, and Chausson, as well as works of Shostakovich, Dohnanyi, Liszt, Bruckner, Bartók, Hartmann, Reger, Glière, Szymanowski, Brahms, Copland, Sessions, Perle, and Rands. Many live recordings with the American Symphony Orchestra are now available to download on the Internet. Mr. Botstein is the editor of The Musical Quarterly and the author of numerous articles and books. For his contributions to music he has received the award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and Harvard University’s prestigious Centennial Award, as well as the Cross of Honor, First Class from the government of Austria. He is a 2009 recipient of the Carnegie Foundation’s Academic Leadership Award, and earlier this year he was inducted into the American Philosophical Society.
Claire Galloway

Undergraduate Voice, Artist-in-Residence

Claire Galloway

Claire Galloway is a soprano with performance experience in recitals, ensembles, and concerts at venues including Opera Baltimore, Market Square Concert Series, Mid-Atlantic Symphony, Opera NexGen, Lidal North Oslo, Savannah Voice Festival, Bel Cantanti Opera, Prototype Festival, and Bach in Baltimore. She has presented roles by Mozart, Poulenc, Massenet, and Bernstein; and premiered roles by Steven Crino, Jonathan Dove, and Frances Pollock. She was awarded second prize at 2023’s songSLAM and the 2022 International Clara Schumann Competition; and was a semifinalist at the Jensen Foundation Vocal Competition, James Toland Vocal Arts Competition, and NYIOPS/Premiere Opera Vocal Competition, among others.

As an educator at Bard College, the Peabody Conservatory, and in private voice and diction instruction through Claire Galloway, Soprano LLC, she has taught a large spectrum of vocal students as well as a range of courses, including the courses Advanced French Airs et Mélodies, Building a Brand and Portfolio, Pitching Your Own Creative Idea, German and French Vocal Literature, French and Italian Diction, and has been a coach for the vocal ensembles run by Beth Willer.

She has training and certification in somatic body work, founding and running The Somatic Singer workshop series and was a co-founder of the Somatic Song Institute in Laguna Beach, CA. She was a Brown Loranger Fellow at Songfest as well as a Ravinia Steans Music Institute Fellow.

She has specialized in Nordic repertoire as a Fellow at the Nordic Song Festival, Trollhättan, Sweden for the past three years. Galloway is fluent or IPA proficient in French, German, Spanish, Italian, Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian, Russian, Czech, and Ukrainian. She honed her language skills at Bard College as a French double major, Boston University as an M.A.T. in French Secondary Education, Middlebury College Summer Language Institutes, Center for University Programs Abroad in Paris, and was a Teaching Assistant in Bouxwiller, France through TAPIF.

BA, Bard College; MAT, Boston University; MM, Peabody Institute, Johns Hopkins University. She has been at Bard since 2023 at Artist-in-Residence.
Wu Man

Master Classes

Wu Man
Recognized as the world’s premier pipa virtuoso and leading ambassador of Chinese music, Wu Man has carved out a career as a soloist, educator, and composer, giving her lute-like instrument—which has a history of over 2,000 years in China—a new role in both traditional and contemporary music. Through numerous concert tours Wu Man has premiered hundreds of new works for the pipa, while spearheading multimedia projects to both preserve and create awareness of China’s ancient musical traditions.
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.

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