ON AND OFF CAMPUS: BARD SUMMERSCAPE

King Arthur (Norman Garrett, center, as King Arthur), photo by Maria Baranova

SUMMERSCAPE, LIVE AND IN PERSON

Bard SummerScape often celebrates the underappreciated and underperformed. Of Ernest Chausson’s only opera, King Arthur (Le roi Arthus), the late poet John Ashbery (former Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Professor of Languages and Literature) wrote, “Arthus, with its story of passion, betrayal, forgiveness, and ultimate resurrection, and its emotionally charged but transparent score . . . is a masterpiece which deserves to be known.” The New York Times called Bard’s “richly costumed and dramatically effective” production, directed by Louisa Proske, “a powerful work for this fraught, polarized moment in American life.”

Most Happy in Concert featuring Mary Testa, Nathan Koci (conducting), April Matthis, Mikaela Bennett, and Erin Markey photo by Maria Baranova

SummerScape highlights included the world premiere of I was waiting for the echo of a better day, a commission for Fisher Center Choreographer in Residence Pam Tanowitz and award-winning composer Jessie Montgomery, which was performed outdoors at Montgomery Place; Black Roots Summer, a two-weekend celebration of Black roots music organized and led by the rousing vocalist, bandleader, cultural commentator, and antiracism educator Michael Mwenso and his longtime collaborator Jono Gasparro; and Most Happy in Concert, songs from Frank Loesser’s The Most Happy Fella, conceived by director Daniel Fish, along with Daniel Kluger and Nathan Koci—his musical collaborators from the Tony Award–winning Bard SummerScape production of Oklahoma!—and performed by seven female and nonbinary voices backed by 13 musicians.

Nadia Boulanger, 1912, photo courtesy Centre International Nadia et Lili Boulanger

This year’s Bard Music Festival, “always adventuresome and provocative,” as the Wall Street Journal noted, explored the life and work of the composer, musician, and pedagogue Nadia Boulanger. The festival, the first in its three-decade history to feature a female composer, highlighted work by Boulanger, sister Lili, and her teachers, contemporaries, and students, vividly illustrating the evolving world of European and American music in which this visionary musical thinker worked and spread her influence. The 2022 Bard Music Festival will turn to composer, pianist, and conductor Sergei Rachmaninoff.

Sergei Rachmaninoff, c. 1915 photo Bain Collection/Library of Congress