ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y. — On Thursday, February 9, at 8 p.m., The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College will host a rare recital by two of the music world’s most renowned performers: soprano Dawn Upshaw and pianist Richard Goode. Proceeds from this benefit performance will go to the scholarship fund of the Bard College Conservatory of Music, on whose faculty both Upshaw and Goode serve. The program includes works by Debussy, Ives, Bach, and Berg, and Schoenberg’s Opus 15 “Book of the Hanging Gardens.” Dawn Upshaw has achieved international celebrity as a singer of opera and concert repertoire ranging from the sacred works of Bach to the freshest sounds of today. Her acclaimed performances on the opera stage comprise the great Mozart roles as well as modern works by Stravinsky, Poulenc, and Messiaen. From Salzburg, Glyndebourne, and Paris to the Metropolitan Opera, where she began her career in 1984 and has sung nearly 300 performances, Upshaw has also championed numerous new works created for her, including The Great Gatsby by John Harbison; the Grawemeyer Award-winning L’Amour de Loin by Kaija Saariaho (recently released on DVD); John Adams’s nativity oratorio El Nino; and Osvaldo Golijov’s chamber opera Ainadamar and song cycle Ayre, the latter recorded for Deutsche Grammophon. A three-time Grammy Award winner, Upshaw is featured on more than 50 recordings (including the million-selling Symphony No. 3 by Henryk Gorecki), a dozen recital recordings, and several discs of music theater repertoire on Nonesuch. As a recitalist Dawn Upshaw has premiered more than 40 works in the past decade. She began her career as a winner of the Metropolitan Opera Young Artists Development Program and the Young Concert Artists Auditions. She is artistic director of the new Vocal Arts Graduate Program at Bard. Richard Goode studied with Elvira Szigeti and Claude Frank, with Nadia Reisenberg at the Mannes College of Music, and with Rudolf Serkin at the Curtis Institute. He has won many prizes, including the Young Concert Artists Award, First Prize in the Clara Haskil Competition, the Avery Fisher Prize, and a Grammy Award with clarinetist Richard Stoltzman. His remarkable interpretations of Beethoven came to national attention when he played all five concerti with the Baltimore Symphony under David Zinman, and when he performed the complete cycle of sonatas at New York’s 92nd Street Y and Kansas City’s Folly Theater. Goode has made more than two dozen recordings, including Mozart concerti with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and chamber and solo works of Brahms, Schubert, Schumann, and George Perle. He is the first American-born pianist to have recorded the complete Beethoven Sonatas; the recording was nominated for a 1994 Grammy Award. As a recitalist, he has become a favorite throughout Europe as well as the United States, and appears regularly in Paris, London, Amsterdam, Vienna, and the leading cities of Germany and Italy. In Berlin, Die Welt proclaimed, “The musical world has a new pianist, who is able to play Beethoven like nobody else.” Goode serves, with Mitsuko Uchida, as coartistic director of the Marlboro Music School and Festival in Marlboro, Vermont. He is a member of the faculty (piano master classes) at the Bard College Conservatory of Music. All proceeds from the February 9 concert will go toward the scholarship fund for students of the Bard College Conservatory of Music. Tickets are $20, $35, and $45. To purchase tickets, call the Fisher Center box office at 845-758-7900 or visit the Fisher Center website: www.bard.edu/fishercenter. # ABOUT THE CONSERVATORY The mission of The Bard College Conservatory of Music is to provide the best possible preparation for a person dedicated to a life immersed in the creation and performance of music. Music, like all art, engages the mind and the heart. It redefines boundaries and questions limits in order to make a meaningful statement about the human condition. The education of the mind is therefore as important as the education of the fingers. The greatest musicians not only have the technical mastery to communicate effectively, but are also deeply curious, and equally adept at analytical and emotional modes of thought. Every student in the Conservatory is also a student in the College. We believe deeply in the value of an education in the liberal arts and sciences, not as a luxury but as the best preparation for functioning competitively and creatively. By strengthening free inquiry, the liberal arts and sciences build and protect the freedom to question old models, preserve the past, and initiate change, in music as in other fields. Students in the Conservatory participate fully in the life of the College by pursuing a major in a field other than music. In close relationship with their liberal arts education, Conservatory students receive an unparalleled musical education, working closely with world-class master teachers. The double-degree program is demanding. But because the Conservatory and the College are small and flexible, and because of the close integration of the two, students are helped to rise to the challenges. They are also be helped by belonging to a community with a shared belief in the importance of the education of the whole person. The artistry derived from involvement with the members of the Conservatory faculty is enriched by serious participation in Bard’s scholarly community. No place is better positioned to ensure the success of this delicate symbiosis than Bard College. # # # (1/4/06)