Families

×

The Orchestra Now Presents Concerts at Bard in Celebration of Charles Ives at 150

Bard College is pleased to present Charles Ives at 150, a two-week festival celebrating the sesquicentennial of Charles Ives, the leading American concert composer of his time. The festival will begin this Saturday, November 9, and will offer concerts and discussions on the Bard Campus through Saturday, November 16 at the Fisher Center, before culminating in a concert at Carnegie Hall in New York City on Thursday, November 21.

The festival will furnish a unique opportunity to freshly explore Ives’ significance in framing the ever-elusive American experience. Curated by eminent Ives scholar J. Peter Burkholder and cultural historian Joseph Horowitz, and supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, this cross-disciplinary festival will showcase the breadth of Ives’ output, including the Second Symphony and Orchestral Set, the symphonic poem Central Park in the Dark, piano works including the Concord Sonata, and a number of songs.

CONCERTS AND EVENTS

IVES AND THE PIANO
Saturday, November 9 at 6 pm at Olin Hall on the Bard College campus
Recital, readings, artwork, and discussion.
Featuring Donald Berman, Leon Botstein, Kyle Gann, and Joseph Horowitz
Free and open to the public. No RSVP necessary.
More info

CHARLES IVES: A LIFE IN MUSIC
Saturday, November 16 at 5 pm and Sunday, November 17 at 12 pm at Olin Hall on the Bard College campus
Scripted playlet with songs and commentary.
Featuring William Sharp, Donald Berman, Richard Aldous, J. Peter Burkholder, Kyle Gann, and Joseph Horowitz
Free and open to the public. No RSVP necessary.
More info

CHARLES IVES’ AMERICA
Saturday, November 16 at 7 pm and Sunday, November 17 at 2 pm at the Fisher Center at Bard
Orchestral concert including performances of songs quoted in Ives’ music, followed by a discussion.
Featuring The Orchestra Now (TŌN), Leon Botstein, William Sharp, J. Peter Burkholder, Donald Berman, and Joseph Horowitz
Tickets from $15. Livestream pay-what-you-wish.
Info and tickets

CHARLES IVES’ AMERICA
Thursday, November 21 at 7 pm at Carnegie Hall
Orchestral concert including performances of songs quoted in Ives’ music, preceded by a discussion at 6 pm.
Featuring The Orchestra Now (TŌN), Leon Botstein, William Sharp, J. Peter Burkholder, Donald Berman, and Joseph Horowitz
Tickets from $29 ($25 + $4 fee)
More info

Festival participants include historian Richard Aldous, Eugene Meyer Distinguished Professor of History at Bard College; pianist Donald Berman, piano department chair at the Longy School of Music of Bard College and president of the Charles Ives Society; Leon Botstein, Bard College president, music historian, and music director and conductor of TŌN; musicologist J. Peter Burkholder, preeminent Ives scholar and distinguished professor emeritus of music in musicology at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music; Kyle Gann, Taylor Hawver and Frances Bortle Hawver Professor of Music at the Bard College Conservatory of Music and vice president of the Charles Ives Society; cultural historian Joseph Horowitz, producer of the Naxos documentary film Charles Ives’ America; baritone and actor William Sharp, widely regarded as a supreme exponent of Ives’ songs; and TŌN, Bard College’s graduate orchestral training program.

About Charles Ives
The leading American concert composer of his time, Charles Ives (1874–1954) was also an iconic American genius whose story links to Transcendentalism, the Civil War, camp meetings, and Wall Street. Charles Ives at 150 will furnish a unique opportunity to freshly explore Ives’ significance in framing the ever-elusive American experience. Too often, he has been viewed as an outsider, an oddball, an accident, an avant-gardist ahead of his time, but Ives vividly exemplifies his own American time and place: the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era. Festival performances will showcase the breadth of Ives’ output, including the Second Symphony and Orchestral Set; the symphonic poem Central Park in the Dark; piano works including the Concord Sonata; and a number of songs.

Post Date: 11-06-2024

×

Peter L’Official’s Essay “Black Builders” Published in Places Journal

Peter L’Official, associate professor of literature and director of the American and Indigenous Studies Program, has published “Black Builders,” an article exploring the relationship between both writing and architecture, and race and design, for Places Journal. In examining the works of visionary Black architect and urban planner W. Joseph Black (1961–1977), who tragically died of cancer at age 43, novelist Colson Whitehead, and other scholars and writers, L’Official asks: “What do we learn about visions of cities when we consider writing and architecture as mutually defining?” L’Official delves deeply into Black’s archives and grapples with his brilliant unfinished masterpieces including the ambitious Harlem Music Center and Gateway to Harlem complex, as well as two comprehensive volumes Visions of Harlem, intended as an exhibition and catalogue, and Black Builders of America, a compendium focused on the many known and unknown Black builders dating back from 1619 to the contemporary. Inspired by the career and legacy of W. Joseph Black, L’Official proposes a notion: “writing about architecture is also a method of practicing architecture—that is, by thinking it.” In contemplating “how many works by Black architects, planners, builders, and other dreamers lie dormant, still, in archives, or tossed by the wayside in frustration, never to be lauded as great works of even speculative imagination?” L’Official asserts “We should also expand our notions of who and what Black builders and Black building can be—and, indeed, of what it means to ‘build’ in the first place.”

L’Official’s “Black Builders” is the first essay in An Unfinished Atlas, a series funded by the Mellon Foundation and published by Places Journal that brings together scholars, cultural critics, essayists, and novelists of color to enrich the cultural record of place-based narratives across what is now called North America.

Post Date: 11-05-2024

×

Joshua Lutz ’97 MFA ’05 Interviewed in Psychology Today

Alumnus and former Bard MFA faculty member Joshua Lutz ’97 MFA ’05 was interviewed about photography and mindfulness for Psychology Today. Lutz is an artist and educator who is now associate professor and chair of photography at Purchase College. In the interview, he talked about “contemplative photography,” his name for the practice of using photography to become aware of the world around us. “Photographs are remarkably adept at telling stories,” he said. “They’re grounded in some version of truth, though the fun part of working with images is exploring what that truth actually is.” As far as photography’s psychological benefits, he advises that while photography can be a vehicle for contemplation, it’s important to strike a balance between photographing and being in the moment.

Lutz also spoke about his photobook collaboration with George Saunders, Orange Blossom Trail, which was released in September. As he visited the trail in Central Florida, his photography became “a way not just to document but to tell the stories of this area—through images that speak to both what’s seen and maybe what’s beneath the surface as well.”

Post Date: 11-05-2024