Bard Summer Arts Festival Explores Life and Times of Stravinsky

Igor Stravinsky

Igor Stravinsky

(ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.) – Russia’s profound and far-reaching impact on 20th-century culture will be explored at the 2013 Annual Bard SummerScape Festival, which once again offers an extraordinary summer of music, opera, theater, dance, film, and cabaret, keyed to the theme of the 24th annual Bard Music Festival, Stravinsky and His World. The festival runs Thursday, July 6, 2013, through August 18, 2013.

Presented in the striking Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts and other venues on Bard College’s bucolic Hudson River campus, the seven-week festival opens on July 6 with the first of two performances of A Rite (2013) by the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and SITI Company, and closes on August 18 with a party in Bard’s beloved Spiegeltent, which returns for the full seven weeks.

Complementing the Bard Music Festival’s exploration of “Stravinsky and His World,” some of the great Russian-born composer’s most captivating compatriots provide key SummerScape highlights. These include the first fully-staged American production of Sergey Taneyev’s opera Oresteia; the world premiere of an original stage adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov’s seminal novel The Master and Margarita; and a film festival titled “Between Traditions: Stravinsky’s Legacy and Russian E?migre? Cinema.” Together, SummerScape’s offerings will continue Bard’s yearlong tenth-anniversary celebrations for the Frank Gehry-designed Fisher Center, which commence with a month of special performances in April.

Bard SummerScape 2013: Stravinsky and His World

Dubbed “part boot camp for the brain, part spa for the spirit” by the New York Times, the Bard Music Festival provides the creative inspiration for SummerScape, presenting “Stravinsky and His World”: an illuminating and extensive program of orchestral, choral, and chamber concerts, as well as pre-concert talks and panel discussions, all devoted to examining the life and times of Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971), arguably the most important composer of the 20th century.

Bill T Jones

Bill T Jones

The groundbreaking nature of his music is in part due to the broad and eclectic range of influences on which he drew. Over the course of his long career, these included such unlikely bedfellows as Russia’s folk and classical traditions, African-American ragtime, the Baroque concerto grosso, and Second Viennese School twelve-tone technique. The Bard Music Festival offers an immersion in the worlds Stravinsky straddled, from their luminaries to their lesser-known figures, contextualizing him within the musically distinct milieus – all of them cultural melting pots – he inhabited: pre-revolutionary Russia, 1920s Paris, and post-war Hollywood.

A wide range of Stravinsky’s music will be performed, from canonical masterworks like The Rite of Spring and Symphony of Psalms to such comparative rarities as Mavra and his melodrama Perse?phone. With its recognized gift for thematic programming, Bard achieves a depth and breadth of musical and cultural discovery that is truly unique. The two weekends of the Bard Music Festival will take place on August 9-11 and August 16-18.

The American Symphony Orchestra, under its music director, Leon Botstein, is in residence at Bard throughout SummerScape. Besides leading the Bard Music Festival’s three orchestral programs, Botstein will also conduct this season’s annual opera, Oresteia (1887-94), a musical setting of Aeschylus’s tragic trilogy by Sergey Taneyev (1856–1915). Returning to direct Oresteia’s first full staging outside Russia is Thaddeus Strassberger, creator of SummerScape’s previous hit productions The King In Spite of Himself, Les Huguenots, and The Distant Sound. In theater, Bard will present Mikhail Bulgakov’s satirical, absurdist masterpiece The Master and Margarita (1937), widely recognized as one of the greatest Russian novels of the 20th century. Hungarian director Ja?nos Sza?sz, whose previous stage adaptation has already “made it big” (Moscow Times) in both Moscow and Budapest, will direct ten performances of a new adaptation between July 11 and 21.

Continuing SummerScape’s tradition of opening each year with a significant dance performance, this season the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and SITI Company join forces to launch the festival with their new dance-theater piece, A Rite (2013), which celebrates the centenary of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring and the furor of its Paris premiere on May 29, 1913.

Imported from Europe for its eighth SummerScape season, Bard’s authentic and sensationally popular Spiegeltent is a handmade pavilion decorated with mirrors and stained glass, evoking a bygone era of glamour. Offering food, beverages, and intimate performances on Thursdays through Sundays throughout SummerScape, the mirrored tent is the festival’s unique, fun spot to hear live music, discover cutting-edge cabaret, enjoy a family performance, and relax alongside festival artists.

SummerScape 2013: key performance dates

MUSIC

Bard Music Festival, Weekend One: “Becoming Stravinsky: From St. Petersburg to Paris” (Aug 9–11) Bard Music Festival, Weekend Two: “Stravinsky Re-invented: From Paris to Los Angeles” (Aug 16–18)

 

OPERA

Sergey Taneyev: Oresteia Sosnoff Theater

July 26* and Aug 2 at 7 pm

July 28*, 31, and Aug 4* at 3 pm Tickets: $30, 60, 70, 90

THEATER

Mikhail Bulgakov: The Master and Margarita (adaptation) Theater Two

July 11, 12, 13*, 18, 19, and 20 at 7:30 pm

July 14*, 17, 20, and 21* at 3 pm

Tickets: $45

DANCE

Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and SITI Company: A Rite July 6 at 8 pm and July 7* at 3 pm

Sosnoff Theater

Tickets: $25, 40, 45, 55

 

FILM FESTIVAL

“Between Traditions: Stravinsky’s Legacy and Russian E?migre? Cinema” July 12, 13, 19, 20, 26; Aug 2 and 3 at 7 pm

July 13, 20, 21, 27; Aug 3 at 2 pm

July 14 at 3pm

July 21 at 5:30 pm

July 27 at 6:30 pm

July 27 and Aug 2 at 9 pm Ottaway Film Center Tickets: $12

SPIEGELTENT

Live Music, Cabaret, Family Performances, and Festival Salon
Prices vary

Venues:

SummerScape opera, theater, and dance performances and most Bard Music Festival programs are held in the Sosnoff Theater or Theater Two in Bard’s Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, designed by Frank Gehry and celebrated since its opening as a major architectural landmark in the region. Some chamber programs and other BMF events are in Olin Hall. The Spiegeltent has its own schedule of events, in addition to serving as a restaurant, cafe?, and bar before and after performances. The Film Festival screenings are at the Jim Ottaway Jr. Film Center in the Milton and Sally Avery Arts Center.

 

 

 

 

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.