<p>Leigh Mesh, Associate Principal Double Bass at the Met Opera, has joined our faculty. He spent a year teaching at the Colburn Conservatory while on a leave of absence from the Met, but now he's back and active in New York. </p>
<p>And here's the final roster of faculty for our new percussion program, which will accept up to 3 undergraduates and one postgraduate Percussion Fellow in the first intake:</p>
<p>So Percussion (Eric Beach, Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski, and Jason Treuting)
Greg Zuber (principal percussion at the Met, plus Verbier faculty)
Jonathan Haas (principal percussion of the ASO & also teaches at Aspen)
Daniel Druckman (NY Phil & chair of Juilliard's percussion dept)</p>
<p>There will also be three advisors to the program: Garry Kvisted (Nexus, Steve Reich & Musicians), Jan Williams (SUNY Buffalo), Tzong-Ching Ju (Ju Percussion). </p>
<p>Bard’s percussion program will emphasize a combination of basic instruction with individualized exploration of the many facets of percussion playing, including orchestral training, world music, contemporary chamber music, and jazz. Students will have the opportunity to work with roster members through individual lessons, chamber music coaching, and joint faculty-student performances. Students will also perform with the Conservatory Orchestra, and in chamber music concerts of the Conservatory. The goal of the program is to prepare each student for specialized postgraduate percussion study based on solid grounding in the basics and familiarity and experience with the wide range of possible specializations.</p>
<p>OK I'll leave press-release mode for now. But I'm anxious to get the word out about this to gifted young musicians.</p>
<p>not to sound insulting, but out of genuine curiousity:
how does Bard propose to teach its percussionists to play jazz (as I see thats something you mentioned and aside from some truncated aebersold or lincoln center version) when the conservatory has no jazz program (meaning no combos) and the entire percussion faculty are classical orchestral percussion players? Or world music for that matter?</p>
<p>Jazzguitar19 - Bard College - not the Conservatory - offers World Music, Electronic Music, Vocal Music and Jazz - and all the courses are open to the conservatory students. There are definitely jazz combos on campus - just not under the conservatory’s wing. You can find info on the college music program at [Music</a> Program](<a href=“http://music.bard.edu%5DMusic”>http://music.bard.edu)</p>
<p>My son is taking full advantage of both the college and the conservatory music programs and faculty - and students.</p>
<p>So, as SpiritManager mentions, we do have faculty in both jazz and world music in the Bard College Music Program. So someone with an interest in jazz would have access to Thurman Barker from the Music Program faculty, plus our Balinese Gamelan and Chinese Music Ensembles. And you should have seen that one of our advisors runs the Ju Percussion Group, which is a very wide-ranging ensemble that’s based in Taiwan and does both Western and Chinese/Asian percussion music at a professional level. </p>
<p>However, it must be stressed that this is primarily a “classical” percussion program. The intent is to allow a percussionist to explore a range of interests during the undergraduate years, from timpani to tabla, snare to steel drum, so that by graduation the student is aware of the wide range of music out there, and can plan for grad school accordingly. My experience has been that in many music schools that offer both classical and jazz, there’s a “ne’er the twain shall meet” situation, and we’d like to try and see what we can do about that. Our hope is that graduates of this program will be more knowledgeable about the other percussion musics that exist outside the traditional classical (orchestral) realm. </p>
<p>But, in the end, this is not about offering jazz as a major, or making any sort of pretense towards providing a comprehensive jazz percussion education through the Bard Conservatory. </p>
<p>Naima-- I agree with you completely about the ne’er the twain shall meet. Or, oftentimes if there is a jazz major its more of an afterthought then a comprehensive program (which is why I switched from a school that had both–and actually let me study both to a dedicated jazz school). And i was also not aware that there was music outside the conservatory. Sounds cool.</p>