Bard College’s Fisher Center recently announced the return of its celebrated SummerScape series, Bard Music Festival’s multi-arts “festival within a festival” that will take over the Annandale-on-Hudson campus from June 23 through August 14. Now in its 32nd year, the eight-week event is organized around the music, times, and legacy of an annually chosen composer—this year’s theme is “Rachmaninoff and His World”—and brims with concerts, opera, dance, theater, pre-concert talks, and panel discussions.
Highlights of Bard SummerScape 2022 include a new production of Strauss’s comic opera “The Silent Woman” by Christian Räth; the world premiere of “Song of Songs,” a commission from Bard Fisher Center Choreographer-in-Residence Pam Tanowitz and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Lang; a new adaptation of Molière’s 1665 tragicomedy “Dom Juan” by Ashley Tata; the return of the enchanting and much-missed Spiegeltent, featuring Michael Mwenso and Jono Gasparro’s “Black Roots Summer” musical revue; a preview of a Suzan-Lori Parks, Lileana Blain-Cruz, and Courtney Bryan’s Fisher Center-commissioned adaptation of Scott Joplin’s 1911 opera “Treemonisha”; and much more.
“Rachmaninoff and His World’s” 12 concert programs, spaced over the two weekends, explore such themes as composition during the Cold War; virtuoso pianists and their public; and America’s ongoing love of his music. Weekend one of the festival (August 5–7) covers the complicated path that Rachmaninoff navigated between “Russia and Modernity,” while weekend two (August 12–14) examines the composer’s often complex relationship with the artistic “New Worlds” he created.
For a full schedule of events, tickets, and more information, visit the Bard Fisher Center’s website.
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This article appears in March 2022.
