ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y. — The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College presents  “A Weekend of Brahms” on Friday, April 15, and Saturday, April 16. Leon Botstein will conduct members of the American Symphony Orchestra; the Bard Conservatory Orchestra; Bard College Chamber Singers, James Bagwell, director; Vassar College Choir; and Cappella Festiva Chamber Choir, Christine Howlett, director. The concert begins at 8 p.m. with a preconcert talk by James Bagwell starting at 7 p.m. Individual tickets are $20, $30, and $35. Call 845-758-7900 or visit the Fisher Center website at fishercenter.bard.edu to purchase tickets or for further information.

The program for “A Weekend of Brahms” includes Brahms’s Tragic Overture, Op. 81 (1880) and A German Requiem, Op. 45 (1865–68). Brahms considered A German Requiem—which became one of his most beloved and frequently performed concert works—to be “a requiem for all humanity.”  Preceded by the performance of the Tragic Overture, this noble and comforting masterpiece will be performed as a side-by-side concert in the Sosnoff Theater. Soloists for the performance include Faylotte Crayton, soprano, and Yohan Yi, bass-baritone.

About the Performers: 

Soprano Faylotte Crayton was born in San Diego, California. The granddaughter of an award-winning yodeler, she began performing musical theater at the age of five.  She began singing classical music as an undergraduate at the University of California, Santa Barbara.  She transferred to The Juilliard School, where she was a recipient of the Higley Scholarship, Dora L. Foster Scholarship, Patricia Haspert Scholarship in Vocal Arts, Mel Silverman Scholarship for Voice, and the Juilliard Alumni Scholarship. At Juilliard, Ms. Crayton performed the role of Tytania in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Lucia II in Hindemith’s A Long Christmas Dinner. Crayton is currently a student in the Graduate Vocal Arts Program at The Bard College Conservatory of Music. An avid supporter of contemporary music, she recently debuted works by Conor Brown, John Boggs, and Matthew Schickele at the Morgan Library, in “First Songs: Dawn Upshaw and the Bard Graduate Vocal Arts Program.”

Korean bass-baritone Yohan Yi is a 2008 graduate of The Bard College Conservatory’s Graduate Vocal Arts Program. He is currently a second-year student in the Domingo-Thornton Young Artist Program at LA Opera. This season he covered the title role in LA Opera’s production of Le nozze di Figaro, conducted by Plácido Domingo, and both Marullo and Monterone in Rigoletto. Yi made his American contemporary music debut at Weill Recital Hall in 2007, marking the culmination of the Osvaldo Golijov/Dawn Upshaw Workshop for Composers and Singers, a collaboration between Bard College and Carnegie Hall. He made his professional opera debut at the 2008 Cincinnati May Festival, where he performed the roles of Alcade and the Surgeon in Verdi’s La forza del destino, conducted by James Conlon. Among his many honors, he was a winner of the 2010 Pasadena Opera Guild Competition. This summer he will sing in the Ravinia Festival 2011 production of Tosca, conducted by James Conlon.

Leon Botstein has been president of Bard College since 1975. Dr. Botstein has been music director and principal conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra since 1992 and is conductor laureate of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, the orchestra of the Israel Broadcast Authority, which he served as music director and principal conductor from 2003 to 2010. He is the founder and an artistic director of the Bard Music Festival, now in its twenty-first year. He received his B.A. degree with special honors in history from the University of Chicago and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in European history from Harvard. The author of Jefferson’s Children: Education and the Promise of American Culture, he has been a pioneer in linking American higher education with public secondary schools. A member of the American Philosophical Society, Dr. Botstein has received the Carnegie Corporation Academic Leadership Award, the Award for Distinguished Service to the Arts from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Harvard University’s Centennial Award, and the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art. Botstein is the editor of The Musical Quarterly and the author of numerous articles and books.

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March 23, 2011