Liberal Arts/Music double major schools

N8Ma
Tue, 17 Feb 2009 12:26:49 +0000

Hi laxman–

I believe we’ve crossed paths before on an earlier thread. Bard’s program is still quite new, and as a New Yorker you are probably aware that Julie Landsman is a very selective teacher. I cannot speak for this year’s cycle, but last year we had 11 applicants on horn and she accepted 1. Faculty are not under pressure to accept students they’re only lukewarm about in order to fill a particular quota. The way this affects the orchestra is that in some limited sections we hire professionals to play along with the students. However this does not affect programming considerations–last semester, our orchestra rehearsed and performed Engima Variations, Tchaikovsky 6, Beethoven 4, Rachmaninoff 2, as well as other works. This semester our two concerts are anchored by Bartok Concerto for Orchestra (led by Leon Botstein) and Dvorak 6th symphony (led by Gisele Ben-Dor).

However it is a small program–there aren’t 15 horn majors, BMs to DMAs, wandering about. But without graduate students, the focus is then on you as an undergraduate, with significant performance opportunities (and no rotations in and out of ensembles). With your academics you are certainly in the ballpark for Bard College–and since all conservatory students pursue the double degree, there isn’t any sort of distinction from administrators/faculty/peers, parsing you as the double-degree student into some other category of musician.

Here are two video clips of the Bard Conservatory orchestra, from October 2008:
[Der Heyser Bulgar - InstantEncore](Der Heyser Bulgar - InstantEncore)
[Rachmaninoff Symphony No. 2 - InstantEncore](Rachmaninoff Symphony No. 2 - InstantEncore)