(ANNANDALE-on-HUDSON, N.Y.) – The Orchestra Now performs works by Guohui Ye, Xiaogang Ye, and Rachmaninoff at the Fisher Center at Bard College on Saturday, November 19, at 8pm, and Sunday, November 20, at 2pm, in the Sosnoff Theater. The orchestra performs under the baton of Jindong Cai, and features soloist Jie Yuan on piano.

Works include Guohui Ye’s “Drinking Wine by the Stream’s Choice”; Xiaogang Ye’s “Scent of the Green Mango”; and Rachmaninoff’s “Symphonic Dances.”

Jindong Cai is an orchestra conductor and a professor of performance at Stanford University. Over the 30 years of his career in the United States, Maestro Cai has established himself as an active and dynamic conductor, scholar of Western classical music in China, and leading advocate of music from across Asia.

Born in Beijing, Cai received his early musical training in China, where he learned to play violin and piano.  He came to the United States for his graduate studies at the New England Conservatory and the College-Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati.  In 1989, he was selected to study with famed conductor Leonard Bernstein at the Tanglewood Music Center, and won the Conducting Fellowship Award at the Aspen Music Festival in 1990 and 1992.

Maestro Cai is a three-time recipient of the ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music.  He has recorded for the Centaur, Innova, and Vienna Modern Masters labels.  He has close relationships with many Chinese composers and has premiered or performed new works by Tan Dun, Zhou Long, Chen Yi, Bright Sheng, Ye Xiaogang, and Wang Xilin, among others.  In recent years, a number of professional orchestras have approached him to create special programs of works by Chinese and other Asian composers, including an upcoming “Celebration of Asia” concert with the Seattle Symphony Orchestra in 2016.

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.