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Bard College and Bard College Conservatory present

Bard Baroque Ensemble

April 19

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The Bard Baroque Ensemble, under the direction of Renée Anne Louprette, presents its debut performance in the Fisher Center, featuring works by Bach, Handel, and Mozart dedicated to the memory of Frederick Fisher Hammond (1937–2023), Professor Emeritus and the Irma Brandeis Chair of Romance Cultures and Music History.

The program celebrates the restoration of Professor Hammond’s French double-manual and Italian single-manual harpsichords—now a part of Bard College’s collection of early keyboard instruments—featuring them in the Concerto for Two Harpsichords, Strings, and Continuo in C Minor, BWV 1060 by Johann Sebastian Bach, with Sophia Cornicello and Raymond Erickson as harpsichord soloists.

One of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s most popular and enduring works, Symphony No. 40 in G Minor, K. 550, opens the program, interpreted by the Ensemble with a Baroque sensibility. Bard faculty member and distinguished tenor Rufus Müller presents the ravishing opening aria from Handel’s Serse: Ombra mai fu (Never was a shade).

The program concludes with Bach’s Cantata No. 1: Wie schön leuchtet Der Morgenstern (How brightly shines the Morningstar), featuring the Bard Chamber Singers, Preparatory Division Children’s Chorus, and soloists from the Graduate Vocal Arts Program. This luminous chorale-cantata—originally conceived for the Feast of the Annunciation—is presented here in the context of transition from darkness to light, on the date of Holy Saturday within the Christian Church. Valentina Grasso, Assistant Professor of History at Bard, will present a reading from Dante’s Divine Comedy—in lieu of the traditional Lutheran sermon—at the center of Bach’s 1724 masterpiece.

Program

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Symphony No. 40 in G Minor, K. 550

George Frideric Handel
Ombra mai fu, from Serse, HWV 40

Rufus Müller, Tenor

Johann Sebastian Bach
Concerto in C Minor for Two Harpsichords, Strings, and Continuo, BWV 1060

Sophia Cornicello and Raymond Erickson, Harpsichord Soloists

Johann Sebastian Bach
Cantata 1: Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern

Michael Adams, Soprano
Ryan Michki, Tenor
Tim Widmer, Baritone
Valentina Grasso, Reader
Bard Chamber Singers
Bard Preparatory Division Chorus

Renée Anne Louprette

Rufus Müller

Sophia Cornicello

Raymond Erickson

Michael Adams

Ryan Michki

Tim Widner

Valentina Grasso

Frederick Fisher Hammond (1937–2023)

Frederick Fisher Hammond (1937–2023), Professor Emeritus, Irma Brandeis Chair of Romance Cultures and Music History, Bard College, was a distinguished scholar of Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque music and a renowned authority on the music of Girolamo Frescobaldi, an Italian composer of the late Renaissance and early Baroque periods. Frederick Hammond was an expert and connoisseur of Italian history, literature, and language, and an esteemed harpsichordist, organist, and continuo player. He served as continuo player of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and directed the E. Nakamichi Festival of Baroque Music in Los Angeles and the Clarion Music Society in New York. His range of expertise as a keyboard player and historian was vast, spanning music from the 16th through the 20th centuries, and he was an influential mentor to many students at UCLA, Bard College, and within the Bard Prison Initiative.

William Dowd (1922–2008)

Harpsichord builder William Dowd (1922–2008) was a pioneer of the historical harpsichord movement of the mid-20th century, founding a workshop with colleague Frank Hubbard in Boston in 1949 but eventually establishing his own workshops in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1958 and in Paris in 1971. His research and incorporation of engineering techniques modeled after the two-manual French harpsichords of Blanchet and Taskin influenced future generations of harpsichord builders by establishing reliable new standards of structural and tuning stability and efficacy of construction. Among the renowned harpsichordists who performed and recorded on Dowd’s instruments was the eminent harpsichordist and early music scholar Ralph Kirkpatrick, with whom Frederick Hammond studied at Yale University. Frederick Hammond’s one-manual Italian-style and two-manual French-style harpsichords were acquired by Bard College in 2023 and restored by Masayuki Maki in 2025, incorporating new, hand-made cherry and teak hardwood jacks and Canadian goose-quill plectra.

Bard Baroque Ensemble

The Bard Baroque Ensemble provides Bard College and Bard Conservatory musicians the opportunity to explore early repertoire from the Medieval through the late Baroque and early Classical periods. The ensemble takes a leading role in an annual series of Bach cantata presentations in the Chapel of the Holy Innocents at Bard College and other venues on the Bard campus and in the Hudson Valley region, including the Old Dutch Church in Kingston and Troy Savings Bank Music Hall. The Baroque Ensemble collaborates with other Bard programs, including the Chamber Singers, Preparatory Division Chorus, Graduate Vocal Arts Program, The Orchestra Now, the Graduate Conducting Program, and faculty from other branches of the College in bringing dynamic and engaging early music performances to the wider community. The Ensemble welcomes students from both the College and Conservatory, challenging them at their own individual level while fostering a spirit of collaboration centered around the study and practice of ancient music.

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