ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y. — The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College presents the opening concert of the 2013–14 season of the popular American Symphony Orchestra (ASO) series on Friday, October 25 and Saturday, October 26, at 8 p.m. Featured soloists for the ASO’s fall-spring season include Bard College Conservatory of Music students and Concert Competition winners Fanya Wyrick-Flax ’13, Dongfang Ouyang ’14, and Zhi Ma ’15. The concert will be conducted by Leon Botstein, music director, with a preconcert talk by Peter Laki, visiting associate professor of music at Bard College, beginning at 7 p.m. Individual tickets are $25, $30, $35, and $40. Call 845-758-7900 or visit the Fisher Center website at fishercenter.bard.edu to purchase tickets or for further information.

The October program features Igor Stravinsky’s Petrushka; Avner Dorman’s Piccolo Concerto, Fanya Wyrick-Flax ‘13, piccolo; and Felix Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 5.

Concert Two of the 2012–13 series, on Friday, February 21 and Saturday, February 22, Joan Tower’s Stroke; Erkki Melartin’s Concerto in D Minor for violin and orchestra, Op. 60 (1913), Dongfang Ouyang ’14; and Robert Schumann’s Symphony No. 2.

Concert Three, on Friday, April 11, and Saturday, April 12, features Johann Strauss’s Emperor Waltz, Accelerations, and The Blue Danube; Julius Conus’s Violin Concerto, Zhi Ma ’15; and Johannes Brahms’s Symphony No. 2.

Season subscriptions are available. For more information, contact the box office at 845-758-7900.
 
About the Performers:

Leon Botstein is music director and principal conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra and conductor laureate of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra. He is founder and coartistic director of the Bard Music Festival, which celebrated its 22nd season this year at Bard College, the institution he has served as president since 1975. Botstein has guest conducted major orchestras throughout the world. Among his recordings are operas by Strauss, Dukas, and Chausson, as well as works by Shostakovich, Dohnányi, Liszt, Bruckner, Bartók, Hartmann, Reger, Glière, Szymanowski, Brahms, Copland, Sessions, Perle, and Rands. He is the editor of The Musical Quarterly and the author of many articles and books. For his contributions to music he has received the Award for Distinguished Service to the Arts from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Centennial Medal of the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art. He is a recipient of the Carnegie Foundation’s Academic Leadership Award and a member of the American Philosophical Society.
 
Founded in 1962 by legendary conductor Leopold Stokowski, the American Symphony Orchestra continues its mission to demystify orchestral music and make it accessible and affordable to everyone. Under music director Leon Botstein, the ASO has pioneered what the Wall Street Journal called “a new concept in orchestras,” presenting concerts in the Vanguard Series at Carnegie Hall curated around various themes from the visual arts, literature, politics, and history, and unearthing rarely performed masterworks for well-deserved revival. The ASO appears at The Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College in a winter subscription series as well as at Bard’s annual SummerScape and the Bard Music Festival.


To download high- resolution photographs, go to http://www.fishercenter.bard.edu/press,
scroll down the page, and click on the desired photo to link to a 300-dpi downloadable image.

 
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