Ádám Fischer studied conducting and composition at the Liszt Ferenc Academy in Budapest and started his career at the Graz Opera. He became Kapellmeister at opera companies in Karlsruhe and Munich (Bavarian State Opera) and Helsinki, and general music director in Freiburg, Kassel, and at the National Theatre of Mannheim. From 2007–10 he was music director of the Hungarian State Opera in Budapest. Fischer conducts at major opera houses and festivals, including the Wiener Staatsoper, Paris Opera, Royal Opera House Covent Garden, and Metropolitan Opera, and appears as guest conductor with the Vienna Philharmonic, Vienna Symphony, Munich Philharmonic, Tonhalle Zurich, London Philharmonic, Philharmonia Orchestra London, Royal Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, Boston Symphony, Tokyo Metropolitan, and NHK Symphony Orchestra, as well as the Orchestre de Paris and both the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. In 1987 Fischer founded the Austro-Hungarian Haydn Orchestra, with which he continues to work. In 1998 he became principal conductor of the Danish National Chamber Orchestra. James Bagwell maintains an active international schedule as a conductor of choral, operatic, and orchestral music. In 2009 he was appointed music director of The Collegiate Chorale and principal guest conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra, leading them in numerous concerts at Carnegie Hall. Bagwell has prepared the Concert Chorale of New York for many performances with the ASO, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Mostly Mozart Festival, all at Lincoln Center. Since 2003 he has been director of choruses for the Bard Music Festival, conducting and preparing choral works during the summer festival at the Fisher Center. Bagwell is professor of music at Bard College and codirector of the Graduate Program in Conducting. Soprano Ju Hye Kim, studied vocal arts at Seoul National University and USC Thornton School of Music, and is currently a graduate student in the Graduate Vocal Arts Program at Bard. Kim has won prizes at competitions, including the Burbank Philharmonic Competition, California Womens’ Chorus Award, Eumag Chunchoo Competition, Ehwa Gyunghyang Music Competition, Concours International Franz Schubert Festival, and Sejong Competition. She has performed with the Seoul City Opera as Violetta in Verdi’s La traviata and Donna Anna in Mozart’s Don Giovanni. She has sung the roles of Moth in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Aspen Opera Theater Center; Lauretta in Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi and Pamina in Mozart’s The Magic Flute with the USC Thornton Opera; and Norina in Donizetti’s Don Pasquale with SNU Opera. Known for her vivid and touching vocal performances, mezzo-soprano Katherine Maysek is an artist equally at home on the stage and in the concert hall. Recent operatic roles include Mrs. Grose in Britten’s The Turn of the Screw, Nerone in Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea, and Cherubino in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro. Maysek has had repeat engagements with the Blanche Moyse Chorale in Marlboro, Vermont, as a soloist in Bach’s Christmas Oratorio and Mass in B minor. Her summer engagements have included the Tanglewood Music Center and the Toronto Summer Music Festival, among others. She is a graduate of McGill University and is a master’s degree candidate in the Graduate Vocal Arts Program at Bard. Andrew Munn seeks to use the vocal arts to explore contemporary society and its tangled roots. In 2013–14 he collaborated with composer Nathaniel May on Dust in the Bottomland, a musical monodrama for bass, piano, and tape that depicts a man’s return home to West Virginia and his perception of the changes in the social and physical landscapes. Munn spent five years in West Virginia’s coalfields, working with communities to end mountaintop removal coal mining and to place local environmental issues in the context of climate change and globalization. Munn is a first-year student in the Graduate Vocal Arts Program at Bard, studying with Sanford Sylvan. Prior to Bard, he studied voice as an undergraduate at the University of Michigan. Tenor Matt Slipp has performed in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, including a premiere of Rachmaninoff’s Francesca da Rimini through the Russian Opera Workshop. Other performances have included Frederic in Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance, Jack in Sondheim’s Into the Woods, Ferrando in Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte, Belmonte in Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Albert in Britten’s Albert Herring, and Tom in Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress. Slipp is currently in his first year in The Bard College Conservatory of Music’s Graduate Vocal Arts Program.