Bard's Carousel of Summer Arts
by Rob Schumer

Ah, the tranquil joys of summer in the Hudson Valley: raspberry picking, bicycle riding on quiet country lanes, barbecuing with the family, and… a summer-long performing arts festival filled with world-class opera, theater, dance, orchestral and chamber music, film, multi-media cabaret and even puppetry.

Seem incongruous? It shouldn't, not if you're "hip" to Bard College's ambitious and expansive summer performing arts extravaganza known as SummerScape. Now in its fourth year, this eight-week long festival of the arts manages, somewhat incredibly, to jam into one extended and thematically coherent festival a summer-long smorgasbord of high quality and innovative work for stage and screen. SummerScape—along with other regional arts powerhouses MassMOCA in North Adams, Massachusetts, and Dia:Beacon, in Beacon—is part of a movement in recent years to create in the Hudson Valley an internationally visible destination for the enjoyment of artistic excellence. Focusing on the performing arts, SummerScape offers something for almost everyone.

SummerScape was conceived originally as an opportunity to fully utilize the extraordinary Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College, which opened in April of 2003. The Fisher Center, in turn, grew out of the prior success of the annual Bard Music Festival, whose inaugural season, in 1990, was held, in part, in a tent, and whose programs of multi-artist concerts eventually came to demand its own permanent performance complex. The Music Festival, designed to present thematically related classical music concerts focused on but not restricted to the work of one composer, along with fresh scholarship (including the publication of a volume of documents and essays about each composer), and featuring deep mining of the artist's catalogue, has much the same structure as at its inception 17 years ago. SummerScape refers to the whole summer-long season of programming that now includes the Music Festival, which remains a densely-packed three-weekend affair. (The third weekend is held in the fall, this year on October 27–28.) SummerScape draws its overall programming theme each year from the featured composer chosen for the Music Festival.

The Fisher Center is the central venue for performances throughout SummerScape and, with its rich aesthetic persona, also constitutes the spiritual center of the festival. From the outside, looking for all the world like some metallic embodiment of a fractal equation, the Fisher Center presents the striking spectacle of an ultra-modern, architecturally adventurous complex whose specular undulations seem to relate almost organically to the rolling knolls of its pastoral setting. On the inside, within the main Sosnoff Theater, one encounters a physically intimate yet aurally imposing concert space featuring superb acoustics and state-of-the-art staging mechanics. The Sosnoff Theater has the flexibility to present anything from intimate chamber recitals to full orchestra with chorus, to grand opera (the front part of the stage descending to create a generous orchestra pit). The building also contains a smaller Theater Two for smaller-scale productions. The building and acoustic shell were designed by internationally renowned architect Frank Gehry, who collaborated on the sound engineering with Japan's foremost acoustic designer, Yasuhisa Toyota. Apart from Bard's programming, the Fisher Center has already become, both as an architectural wonder and because of its sterling acoustics, a destination of note in the northeastern United States.

Franz Liszt (1811–1886) is the featured composer of this year's Music Festival. Liszt was a Hungarian-born child prodigy who, introduced to Beethoven at age 12, taught by Mozart's nemesis Salieri, by his early teens had already become a piano sensation and by his 20s was touring widely through Europe. He went on to become the greatest piano virtuoso of his and perhaps of any time, and a leading exponent of Romantic composition. His many other accomplishments include being a mentor and teacher to an astounding number of the finest pianists of the succeeding generation, and being also a tireless and selfless supporter of the work of contemporaries such as Berlioz, Wagner, Schumann, and Mendelssohn. He was also known for his numerous affairs with aristocratic women, his fiery and mysterious charisma, and his eventual turn to Roman Catholicism (he took minor orders and wore an abbé's frock in later years).

As with past Bard Music Festivals, this year's program explores the full range of the composer's music, and also delves into his influences, his contemporaries' output, and his legacy. The three weekends of Music Festival programming feature 14 separate concerts in which one can hear many of Liszt's most well-known works, such as the Piano Sonata in B Minor, the Hungarian Rhapsodies, and selections from the Années de pèlerinage, and also a much larger number of his less-frequently performed compositions. There also will be an abundant quantity of supporting pre-concert talks, panel discussions and program notes. Perhaps most excitingly, each concert will present Liszt's music juxtaposed with thematically related works of his contemporaries; by hearing each of Liszt's works in its proper historical and aesthetic setting, we thereby may gain a more contextualized, nuanced appreciation.

SummerScape is now under the guidance of Tambra Dillon, the new Director of the Fisher Center, who joined Bard in 2005. Dillon draws on a diverse background in performing arts programming, marketing, and development, having held high-level positions with the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the San Francisco Opera, and Temple Bar in Dublin, Ireland, among other prominent national and international arts institutions. She brings intimate knowledge of performing arts organizations and personalities, and evinces passion for enlarging the Fisher Center's programming so as to occupy an even greater presence in the cultural landscape of the Hudson Valley.

An interesting feature of the SummerScape program is the process by which the selection of works is made. The choice of Music Festival composer sets the general parameters, but little else. According to Bard College President and Music Festival Co-Artistic Director Leon Botstein, "in programming SummerScape, we take thematic guidance from the music Festival's selection, but broadly construed.

The works considered each have some kind of connection to the composer chosen for the Music Festival, but otherwise there are no limitations."

"So for the Czech composer Janácek," principal focus of the 2003 Music Festival, "we were able to look at all late 19th century and early 20th century Czech and eastern European culture," Botstein commented. "In 2005, with Copland, it was easy, because Copland was involved with so many aspects of 20th century American life. For Liszt, who was quite cosmopolitan, we have all mid-19th century Europe, quite a rich area. And next year we have Elgar, who might have been thought a limiting choice, but it actually opens up all of British life and culture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the worlds of politics, of empire."

Programmers also look for works that have not been over-performed or "not been given adequate staging opportunities or interpretation," says Botstein. Says Co-Artistic Director Christopher Gibbs, "the mission, in part, is to build a buzz around pieces we believe in, get performers as well as audiences and, ideally, producers and critics interested in them. It's partly an educational mission."

SummerScape often presents the work of younger, relatively unknown creative talent. Botstein is quick to dismiss "the ‘Hollywoodization' of the arts—we're interested strictly in quality, not in having stars, beyond their being unaffordable." Speaking on the same theme, Gibbs points out that "there's really no point in bringing in people that you can hear perform all over the world. Also, a lot of what we do is unusual and not in the repertoire of established musicians. For an artist to learn a new work is making a real commitment. Some more established artists might say, well, I'll do this concerto, but I won't do that one. And we don't adapt our program! We work from the other end, from the program side."

This year, SummerScape is mounting the first-ever fully-staged American production of Genoveva, Robert Schumann's only opera. "We basically looked at every operatic production Liszt was involved with," Gibbs explained "and Genoveva emerged as the best choice, as something worthy, interesting, obscure. Liszt conducted it, presented it, wrote about it, and greatly admired it." An added attraction: the production will be under the direction of the 32-year-old wunderkind director of the Royal Danish Opera, Kasper Bech Holten. Already prominent throughout Europe, this will be only his second United States directorial appearance.

The theatrical production is to be Camille, an adaptation for stage based on the novel La Dame aux Camélias by Alexandre Dumas fils, and directed by Kate Whoriskey. The novel was also the basis for Verdi's opera La Traviata, and for the 1936 George Cukor film Camille starring Greta Garbo, which can be seen as part of SummerScape's film festival. The novel is based on the real life story of a woman who had romantic involvements with both Dumas and Liszt.

Dance at SummerScape this year consists of a program of two works by choreographer Donna Uchizono, one a SummerScape commission to music by Liszt, the other the premiere of a new work featuring Mikhail Baryshnikov. Coming up with appropriate dance selections was a special programming challenge this year. "There's very little dance that relates to Liszt," Dillon observed. "What's there is not in any company's current repertory. So we thought it would be interesting to commission a mid-career choreographer and focus on the idea of the grand piano, which is what Liszt is best known for. Uchizono also made a piece for Misha [Baryshnikov], and he then expressed an interest in performing it here, which was quite flattering, We then identified a pianist, Markus Groh, who's known for his Liszt, and so it just came together."

An intriguing new feature of SummerScape this year will be the SpiegelPalais, a new venue for kids' events, for SummerScape's renowned cabaret, as well as the scene for a new late-night "club." This wooden structure, to be set up on the lawns south of the Fisher Center, is a transportable pavilion which Dillon described as being "like a carousel, with walls, and without the horses, really ornate, with beveled mirrors everywhere," capable of creating a magical and mysterious environment. The structure is Belgian and dates from the early 20th century. It is one of only a small number in existence. On weekend afternoons, the SpiegelPalais will host programs geared to kids aged 3 and up, while Thursday to Sunday evenings will be geared to the older set. Dillon anticipates that "after the show, audiences and artists will know that they can go there, listen to informal music, see some cabaret and alternative performances, have a beer, grab some food."

An added bonus for those coming to Bard for SummerScape events will be the chance to take in a large group art exhibit, not formally part of SummerScape, entitled Uncertain States of America, featuring works by 41 young American artists all in their 20s or 30s. Hosted at Bard's Center for Curatorial Studies, near the Fisher Center, the exhibit is also being seen in Norway, Iceland, and Paris, but this will be its only United States mounting. The show includes works on canvas as well as other media including film, video, installation, performance, and text. Its goal is to present the work of the next generation of American artists and is drawn from the work of artists from all over the country. The exhibit is open to the public and free of charge.

Looking beyond this year's SummerScape, prospects for the future are exciting. Dillon plans to expand programming into the fall and the spring, and wants to integrate programming into Bard's academic life, perhaps designing programs collaboratively with various academic departments. "We're ready for the next spurt of growth at the Fisher Center," Dillon observed. "Arts can become a destination, bring new arts tourists to the area, and provide full-time residents and weekenders in the area with even more cultural opportunities."

Dillon has already scheduled the Mark Morris Dance Company for December performances of The Hard Nut, their offbeat and popular version of the Nutcracker. "The audiences up here are so sophisticated," Dillon observed, "they're so enthusiastic. The classical music audience that Bard has been so successful in developing has crossed over into multi-disciplinary work during the past summer seasons."

All-in-all, between the raspberries and the opera, the bike rides and the modern dance, the barbecues and the symphonic masterpieces, the Hudson valley will be a pretty wonderful place to spend time this summer.