The Orchestra Now Kicks off Bard Season with Works by Copland and Bruckner

 

Leon Botstein conducts The Orchestra Now (photo Matt Dine)

Leon Botstein conducts The Orchestra Now (photo Matt Dine)

(ANNANDALE-on-HUDSON, N.Y.) – The Orchestra Now kicks off its fall concert season at the Fisher Center at Bard College with a program of works by Aaron Copland and Bruckner, on Saturday, September 24, at 8pm, and Sunday, September 25, at 2pm, in the Sosnoff Theater. The orchestra performs under the baton of Leon Botstein, and features soloist Viktor Toth in Copland’s Clarinet Concerto, and performs Bruckner’s Symphony No. 5.

The Orchestra Now’s fall season continues with Elgar’s Enigma Variations on October 29 – 30 and Cai Conducts Rachmaninoff on November 19 – 20. The Orchestra will be led by music director Leon Bostein with guest conductors Harold Farberman, founder and director of Bard’s acclaimed Conductors Institute; and Jindong Cai, the award-winning holder of Stanford’s Gretchen B. Kimball Director of Orchestral Studies Chair. Featured soloists will be Bard College Conservatory of Music concerto competition winners John Belk, cello, Viktor Toth, clarinet, and National Arts Youth Ambassador of China, pianist Jie Yuan.

 

Copland & Bruckner

Sat. Sep 24, 2016 at 8 pm

Sun. Sep 25, 2016 at 2 pm

Leon Botstein, conductor

Viktor Toth, clarinet

Copland: Clarinet Concerto

Bruckner: Symphony No. 5

 

Elgar’s Enigma Variations

Sat. Oct 29, 2016 at 8 pm

Sun. Oct 30, 2016 at 2 pm

Leon Botstein, conductor

John Belk, cello

Britten: Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes

Mahler: Adagio from Symphony No. 10 (Harold Farberman, conductor)

William Walton: Cello Concerto

Elgar: Enigma Variations

 

Cai Conducts Rachmaninoff

Sat. Nov 19, 2016 at 8 pm

Sun. Nov 20, 2016 at 2 pm

Jindong Cai, conductor

Jie Yuan, piano

Guohui Ye: Drinking Wine by the Stream’s Choice

Xiaogang Ye: Scent of the Green Mango

Rachmaninoff: Symphonic Dances

 

The Orchestra Now

The Orchestra Now

Founded in 2015, The Orchestra Now (T?N) is an innovative pre-professional orchestra and master’s degree program at Bard College that is preparing a new generation of musicians to break down barriers between modern audiences and great orchestral music of the past and present. Under the leadership of conductor, educator, and music historian Leon Botstein, T?N mines the wealth of underperformed repertoire, reimagines traditional concert formats, and strives to make the experience of the performers a part of the listeners’ experience. At a T?N concert, musicians and audience inspire one another, each following their curiosity with a shared sense of adventure.

The musicians of T?N hail from across the U.S. and eleven other countries: Australia, Canada, China, France, Hungary, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Spain, Taiwan and Venezuela. In addition to a concert series at their home base—the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College—they perform multiple concerts each season at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, and offer complimentary concerts at venues across the boroughs of New York City in the Around Town series. At The Metropolitan Museum of Art they join Leon Botstein in the series Sight & Sound as he explores the places where musical and visual expression meet, pairing orchestral works with masterpieces from the museum’s collection.

In addition to Mr. Botstein and T?N’s Associate Conductor and Academic Director, James Bagwell, guest conductors in the first two seasons include Fabio Luisi, Gerard Schwarz, and JoAnn Falletta.

 

Leon Botstein

Leon Botstein brings a renowned career as both a conductor and educator to his role as music director of The Orchestra Now. He has been music director of the American Symphony Orchestra since 1992, artistic codirector of Bard SummerScape and the Bard Music Festival since their creation, and president of Bard College since 1975. He was the music director of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra from 2003–2011, and is now conductor laureate. In 2018 he will assume artistic directorship of the institute of Grafenegg, Austria. Mr. Botstein is also a frequent guest conductor with orchestras around the globe, has made numerous recordings, and is a prolific author and music historian. He is the editor of the prestigious The Musical Quarterly, and has received many honors for his contributions to music.

 

 

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