To celebrate the Fisher Center at Bard College’s plans to construct a new 25,0000-square-foot performing arts studio building, the facility will host a special concert starring Ms. Lisa Fischer and Grand Baton, The Orchestra Now conducted by James Bagwell, and a rare performance of Bela Bartok’s “The Wooden Prince” conducted by Leon Botstein on October 21.
In addition to trumpeting the construction of the new structure, which was designed by esteemed architect Maya Lin, the concert will cap the Fisher Center’s immensely successful 20th anniversary season. Over the course of its first 20 years, the center has become a leading site for such major performing arts productions as Pam Tanowitz’s “Four Quartets”; Daniel Fish’s Tony Award-winning production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma!”; and Bard SummerScape 2023’s staging of Justin Peck’s “Illinoise.” The new building will feature four state-of-the-art studios for artist residencies, rehearsals, informal performances, and dance and theater classes, all of them connected by gathering hubs; the spaces will also house Fisher Center LAB, the center’s celebrated residency and commissioning program for professional artists.
Lin’s previous commissions include the Neilson Library at Smith College, the Museum of Chinese in America in Manhattan, and the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama. She was recently chosen to design a public art installation for the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago. In 1981, when she was a 21-year-old architecture student, Lin won the design competition for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC; she is well known in our region for Wavefield, her spectacular earthwork at Storm King Art Center.
The concert will take place at the Fisher Center’s Sosnoff Theater on the Bard College campus in Annandale-on-Hudson on October 21 at 5pm. Tickets start at $25, with $5 tickets available for Bard students via the center’s website.
