The Gauntlet

Photo by Jacob McCoy

Fisher Center at Bard

Chair Jeanne Donovan Fisher

President Leon Botstein

Executive Director Liza Parker

Artistic Director Gideon Lester

and The Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities

present

Sxip Shirey & Coco Karol

The Gauntlet

Concept, Composer, and Libretto Sxip Shirey

Concept, Movement Interviews, Choreographer, and Libretto Coco Karol

Guest Conductors Rima Fand and Raquel Klein

Documentarian and Videographer Jacob McCoy

Assistant Conductor Jonja Merck ’22

Movement Interview Coordinator Brenden Schaaf

Stage Manager Jason Kaiser

parliament of reality

Friday, October 15 at 5:30 pm

Saturday, October 16 at 1 pm

Sunday, October 17 at 3 pm

Running time for this performance is approximately 75 minutes.

________________________________________________________________________

Presented in tandem with the Hannah Arendt Center’s 2022 Conference: Revitalizing Democracy: Sortition, Citizen Power, and Spaces of Freedom.

________________________________________________________________________

Fisher Center LAB's 2021-2022 season receives funding from members of the Live Arts Bard Creative Council, The Lucille Lortel Foundation, and the Fisher Center's Artistic Innovation Fund, with lead support from Rebecca Gold and S. Asher Gelman through the March Forth Foundation. The Fisher Center at Bard is generously supported by Jeanne Donovan Fisher, the Martin and Toni Sosnoff Foundation, the Advisory Board of the Fisher Center at Bard and Fisher Center members, as well as by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature.

The Company

Choir

Zara Boss ’25

Cynthia Cunningham

Isabel Draves

Jim Etkin

Michael Hofmann VAP ’15

Charvez Johnson ’22

Shelli Koffman

Tinaz Kotval ’25

Shannon Malone

Lyndsay von Miller

Elena Stern ’25

Simon Zhang

Dancers

Miguel Angel Guzmán

Effy Grey

Remi Harris

Coco Karol

Movement Interview Participants

The libretto of this performance is compiled from Movement Interviews with the following individuals:

Linda Badami, General Contractor

Roger Berkowitz, Founder and Academic Director, Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities and Professor of Politics, Philosophy, and Human Rights, Bard College

Erin Cannan, Vice President for Civic Engagement and Deputy Director, Center for Civic Engagement, Bard College

Darrah Cloud, Town Supervisor, Pine Plains

Nick Flynn, Poet

Itzel Herrera Garcia ’23, Dance and Psychology Major

Caleb Hammons, Director of Artistic Planning and Producing, Fisher Center at Bard

Michael Hofmann VAP ’15, Mayoral Aide, City of Hudson

Holly Kelly, Executive Director, O+ Festival

Hans Kern ’14, Co-founder, Bard Institute for the Revival of Democracy Through Sortition

Hélène Landemore, Full Professor of Political Science, Yale University

Keith Nelson, Co-founder, Bindlestiff Family Cirkus

Kimba Araki Ross, Bard Parent/Domestic Worker/Chiropractor

Jamie Sanin, Founder, Celebrate845

Estefany Vargas, Kingston YMCA Farm Project

Chris Wells, Founder, The Secret City

Dar Williams, Singer/Songwriter/Author

Mark Williams, Jr. ’18, Community Public Health Educator, Columbia University Irving Medical Center

Notes

Coco’s Personal Notes/ Movement Interviews

The language of the libretto for The Gauntlet: Spaces of Freedom comes from a process I developed called ‘movement interviews,’ where I interview individuals using movement and dialog with the idea that our bodies are archives of memory and knowledge and that movement changes both our ability to access those archives and how we make meaning of experiences. In this way, I believe we can start to unpack vast concepts such as ‘freedom’ through personal narratives and embodied experiences.

For this process to make a Gauntlet performance for the Fisher Center and the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College, I did 20 movement interviews with local activists, organizers, artists, scholars, elected officials, citizens, and conference speakers on the topic Spaces of Freedom. The interviews took place in Olafur Eliasson’s parliament of reality, virtually, or were sheltered by the eaves of the Fisher Center in the rain. I used some of Hannah Arendt's writings on freedom as a jumping-off point to explore urgent connections between freedom and forgiveness, freedom and the ability to start something new––to do the unexpected, and early childhood notions of freedom. In addition, the interviews covered topics such as common ground, social trust, and citizen power that relate to the political conference, “Revitalizing Democracy: Sortition, Citizen Power, and Spaces of Freedom,” that this performance is occurring in conjunction with. I was so moved to hear each interviewee’s stories of personal freedom, and so inspired by how many people also told me profound stories of how they have worked to support the freedoms of others. I feel the language we included from the interviews, in the libretto, illustrates the complexity of freedom and human connection. You will hear this in The Gauntlet: Spaces of Freedom.

I wish to thank Linda Badami, Roger Berkowitz, Erin Cannan, Darrah Cloud, Nick Flynn, Itzel Herrera Garcia, Caleb Hammons, Michael Hofmann, Holly Kelly, Hans Kern, Hélène Landemore, Keith Nelson, Kimberly Araki Ross, Jamie Sanin, Estefany Vargas, Chris Wells, Mark Williams Jr., and Dar Williams for allowing me to interview them with movement. Their stories and voices make up The Gauntlet: Spaces of Freedom.

And an enormous thank you to Caleb Hammons, Gideon Lester, and Roger Berkowitz for the inspiring cross-disciplinary, curatorial collaboration to present the Gauntlet in this context. Thank you to Jacob McCoy, who is an integral part of the movement interviews and documentary video work that accompanies this archival storytelling performance work. Thank you to the dancers: Effy Grey, Miguel Angel Guzmán, and Remi Harris. And thank you to the tireless team of folks at Bard who worked with Sxip and I to make this performance happen. They were an integral part of both the creative and tactical process and never gave up on it.

Sxip’s Personal Notes

The Gauntlet is an immersive choral form, in which the audience walks through a choir that is singing a libretto derived from the stories of their local community. This libretto is heard as waves of poetry, melody, and harmony passed from one singer to another. The audience stands within this harmonic din, and in doing so, adds their own story to the social body as listener and witness. We are all storytelling apes, living in the soupy sea of each other’s epic and intimate songs.

In The Gauntlet: Spaces of Freedom, we have pushed the form with new choral strategies and much deeper use of text. It has been amazing to evolve this form of choral arts with the Fisher Arts center and use the outdoor spaces as part of the composition itself, including Olafur Eliasson’s parliament of reality. We had fascinating people to do the movement interviews with, and we have fascinating singers to sing the libretto. What I love about the choir singing The Gauntlet: Spaces of Freedom is that each singer has their own story inflected in their voice—no matter whose story they are telling. The Gauntlet collapses the choir back into individuals and honors that.

Thank you, Gideon and Caleb, for pushing through, after one COVID cancelation, to bring this form to Fisher Center at Bard and thank you to Roger for welcoming it as part of the Hannah Arendt Center’s annual conference, “Revitalizing Democracy: Sortition, Citizen Power, and Spaces of Freedom.” Also, a huge thanks to our stage manager Jason Kaiser, and to my co-conductors, Rima Fand, Raquel Acevedo Klein, and Jonja Merck. And alas, thanks to the amazing staff at the Fisher Center: Jason Wells, Hannah Gosling-Goldsmith, Cathy Teixeira, and David Steffen.

Who's Who

Sxip Shirey is a composer/producer/director/performer based in NYC. He is the composer and MD for the theater/circus arts production “LIMBO" and "LIMBO UNHINGED," developed by Melbourne based Strut N Fret Productions House, which brought him all over the world from The Sydney Opera House to South Bank Center in London to playing Madonna's Birthday Party in the Hamptons. Shirey teaches workshops in "Text and Object-Oriented Composition" at Norwegian Theater Academy, Fredrikstad, Norway, which Shirey considers "The Black Mountain College of NOW.” Shirey toured as the opening act for the Dresden Dolls, has collaborated often with Amanda Palmer, and was a member of the band Luminescent Orchestrii. Shirey has played Appalachian music for gypsies in Transylvania and gypsy music for Appalachians in West Virginia. Shirey has presented at TED (2008), is a 2011 United States Artist Fellow, and is currently an artist in residence at Brooklyn premier contemporary music venue National Sawdust. He wrote music for a short film, "Statuesque," written/directed by Neil Gaiman, starring Bill Nighy, which premiered on Christmas Day on SKY TV, UK. He created music for the app-version of Shaun Tan’s book “Rules of Summer,” NSW Lothian Children's Books, 2013. Shirey has also served as artist-curator in residence at National Sawdust, bringing in artists including Taylor Mac, Rhiannon Giddens, Ned Rothenberg, Baby Dee, Sarah Angliss, Theo Bleckmann, Todd Reynolds, Basil Twist, The Quintet of the Americas, and Lady Rizo. Shirey is currently developing his immersive choral works, “The Gauntlet,” with his artist partner Coco Karol, worldwide.

Coco Karol is a NY-based dancer/choreographer/ artist who makes cross-disciplinary performances that invite conversations between personal and shared experiences. A performer, choreographer, hospice volunteer, and dedicated teacher, Coco is interested in how we create meaning and connection to others. For her, dance joins poetic and physical experiences. She holds a BFA from Tisch Dance NYU and an MFA from Hollins University. Among the choreographers he has danced for are Chris Elam/ Misnomer Dance Theater, Cherylyn Lavagnino/ CLD, and Christopher Williams. Her choreography has been toured internationally and premiered in reputable New York venues such as Carnegie Hall, Symphony Space, Galapagos, Brooklyn Studios for Dance, and has been curated by AUNTS. She has worked with musicians including Bjork, Amanda Palmer, Ryan Lott, Sugar Vendil, Minna Choi/ MagikMagik, Lacy Rose, Alaina Ferris, and Inhyun Kim/ Ear to Mind; visual artists including Steven Sebring, Eve Bailey, Marcos Zotes, Benjamin Heller, and C. Finley. She teaches various dance and embodied inquiry techniques that she developed, including Movement Before Dialogue workshops such as, Gestures of Care, a movement and storytelling series for end-of-life care professionals. Ongoing works include ‘Movement Interviews’ (dance as inquiry), The Lullaby Project (oral histories/ physical archives), and The Gauntlet, community-inclusive choral performances with her artistic partner and husband, Sxip Shirey.

Rima Fand is a Brooklyn-based composer, musician, and educator. An innovator who is also strongly drawn to folk traditions, she creates on an edge where the traditional meets the experimental. Since 2018 she has been composing an object-theater/chamber opera entitled Precipice, currently in development with American Opera Project, and is the recipient of a 2020 Opera America Commissioning Grant for this production. She has created music for puppetry, outdoor spectacle, tableau vivant, clown shows and musical theater. In 2002 she and Sxip Shirey co-founded the raucous string band Luminescent Orchestrrii, which toured internationally for a decade. She is most grateful to be joining Sxip and Coco in the creation of the current Gauntlet. www.rimafand.com

Raquel Acevedo Klein is an active conductor, vocalist, composer, and instrumentalist from Brooklyn, NY. Raquel has performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Radio City Music Hall, Town Hall, BAM, St. Ann’s Warehouse, Celebrate Brooklyn!, Little Island, National Sawdust, the Guggenheim, Rockefeller Center, the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and elsewhere. She has premiered works and operas by Philip Glass, Caroline Shaw, John Adams, Nico Muhly, Paola Prestini, Bryce Dessner, Missy Mazzoli, and George Lewis to name a few. She has recorded and performed with artists including Glen Hansard, Arcade Fire, Bon Iver, The National, Grizzly Bear, Cory Smythe, Sufjan Stevens, The Knights, NY Philharmonic, and the American Composers Orchestra. She conducts for the Grammy Award-winning Brooklyn Youth Chorus and New Jersey Symphony Orchestra among others. Her performances and curations have caught the attention of publications including the NY Times, LA Times, The New Yorker, and Time Out New York.

Jacob McCoy is a filmmaker and multimedia artist based in Brooklyn, New York. His experience in design and music, as well as supporting touring artists as a backline tech, have aided in the evolution of his current focus: directing, filming, and editing content for performing artists, musicians, and the institutions that support them.

About

ABOUT FISHER CENTER

The Fisher Center develops, produces, and presents performing arts across disciplines through new productions and context-rich programs that challenge and inspire. As a premier professional performing arts center and a hub for research and education, the Fisher Center supports artists, students, and audiences in the development and examination of artistic ideas, offering perspectives from the past and present, as well as visions of the future. The Fisher Center demonstrates Bard’s commitment to the performing arts as a cultural and educational necessity. Home is the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, designed by Frank Gehry and located on the campus of Bard College in New York’s Hudson Valley. The Fisher Center offers outstanding programs to many communities, including the students and faculty of Bard College, and audiences in the Hudson Valley, New York City, across the country, and around the world. Building on a 161-year history as a competitive and innovative undergraduate institution, Bard is committed to enriching culture, public life, and democratic discourse by training tomorrow’s thought leaders.

The Center presents more than 200 world-class events and welcomes 50,000 visitors each year. The Fisher Center supports artists at all stages of their careers and employs more than 300 professional artists annually. The Fisher Center is a powerful catalyst of art-making regionally, nationally, and worldwide. Every year it produces 8 to 10 major new works in various disciplines. Over the past five years, its commissioned productions have been seen in more than 100 communities around the world. During the 2018-19 season, six Fisher Center productions toured nationally and internationally. In 2019 the Fisher Center won the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical for Daniel Fish’s production of Oklahoma! which began life in 2007 as an undergraduate production at Bard and was produced professionally in the Fisher Center’s SummerScape Festival in 2015 before transferring to New York City.

ABOUT FISHER CENTER LAB

Fisher Center LAB is the Fisher Center’s artist residency and commissioning program, providing custom-made and meaningful support for innovative artists across disciplines. Since its launch in 2012, Fisher Center LAB has supported residencies, workshops, and performances for hundreds of artists, incubating new projects and engaging audiences, students, faculty and staff in the process of creating contemporary performance.

ABOUT THE HANNAH ARENDT CENTER

The Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College is the world's most expansive home for bold and risky humanities thinking about our political world inspired by the spirit of Hannah Arendt, the leading thinker of politics and active citizenship in the modern era. The Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities cares for and makes available the Hannah Arendt Library, which houses nearly 5,000 books from Arendt’s personal library, many with marginalia and notes. The Center oversees a variety of programs—the Courage to Be, Campus Plurality Forum, and the Virtual Reading Group, among others—that combine courses, symposia, blogs, and oral histories to bring Arendt’s fearless style of thinking to a broad audience. The Center hosts lectures, special events, and themed dinner parties on Hannah Arendt and relevant topics, all leading up to the annual fall conference, where philosophers, thinkers, and activists come together at Bard College's Annandale campus to discuss contemporary issues. Above all, the Center provides an intellectual space for passionate, uncensored, nonpartisan thinking that reframes and deepens the fundamental questions facing our nation and our world.

ABOUT BARD COLLEGE

Founded in 1860, Bard College is a four-year residential college of the liberal arts and sciences located 90 miles north of New York City. With the addition of the adjoining Montgomery Place estate, Bard’s campus consists of nearly 1,000 parklike acres in the Hudson River Valley. It offers bachelor of arts, bachelor of science, and bachelor of music degrees, with majors in nearly 40 academic programs; graduate degrees in 11 programs; nine early colleges; and numerous dual-degree programs nationally and internationally. Building on its 161-year history as a competitive and innovative undergraduate institution, Bard College has expanded its mission as a private institution acting in the public interest across the country and around the world to meet broader student needs and increase access to liberal education. The undergraduate program at the main campus in the Hudson Valley has a reputation for scholarly excellence, a focus on the arts, and civic engagement. Bard is committed to enriching culture, public life, and democratic discourse by training tomorrow’s thought leaders. For more information about Bard College, visit bard.edu.

Land Acknowledgement

LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT FOR BARD COLLEGE IN ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON

Developed in Cooperation with the Stockbridge-Munsee Community

In the spirit of truth and equity, it is with gratitude and humility that we acknowledge that we are gathered on the sacred homelands of the Munsee and Muhheaconneok people, who are the original stewards of this land. Today, due to forced removal, the community resides in Northeast Wisconsin and is known as the Stockbridge-Munsee Community. We honor and pay respect to their ancestors past and present, as well as to future generations and we recognize their continuing presence in their homelands. We understand that our acknowledgement requires those of us who are settlers to recognize our own place in and responsibilities toward addressing inequity, and that this ongoing and challenging work requires that we commit to real engagement with the Munsee and Mohican communities to build an inclusive and equitable space for all.

For more information about the Stockbridge-Munsee Community, please visit mohican.com.

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Support for the Fisher Center and Bard Music Festival is provided by the following individuals, corporations, and foundations, among many others. We thank you for joining the late Richard B. Fisher with your generosity and partnership.

Special thanks to those who are supporting our programs with their commitments to the Bard College Endowment Challenge. Thank you for ensuring Bard’s continuity as a beacon for higher education, bolstering the development of innovative programs that offer access to rigorous, high-quality education for new populations around the world.

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Donors to the Bard College Endowment Challenge

Anonymous

Bettina Baruch Foundation

Michelle R. Clayman

Robert C. Edmonds ’68

Jeanne Donovan Fisher

Susan and Roger Kennedy

Dr. Barbara Kenner

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Denise Simon

Martin and Toni Sosnoff

Felicitas S. Thorne

Donors to the Fisher Center

Leadership Support

Arthur F. and Alice E. Adams Charitable Foundation

Carl Marks & Co.

Carolyn Marks Blackwood and Gregory H. Quinn

Jeanne Donovan Fisher

Alan H. and Judith Fishman

Jay Franke and David Herro

S. Asher Gelman ’06 and Mati Bardosh Gelman

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Millbrook Tribute Garden

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Felicitas S. Thorne

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Amanda J. Rubin

Director

Anonymous

Dionis Fund of Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation

Anne Donovan Bodnar and James L. Bodnar

Stefano Ferrari

Henry L. Kimelman Family Foundation

Jana Foundation

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Prof. Nancy S. Leonard and Dr. Lawrence Kramer

Lucille Lortel Foundation

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Alan Seget

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Thendara Foundation

Producer

Gary DiMauro and Kathryn Windley

Thomas and Bryanne Hamill

Paul and Lynn Knight

Lazard Asset Management

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The Dates Fund of the Community Foundations of the Hudson Valley

Curtis DeVito and Dennis Wedlick

James Gillson

Arnold Iovinella Jr. and William Bozzetto

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Robert A. Meister

Liza Parker and Frank Migliorelli

Samuel and Ellen Phelan

Ted Ruthizer and Jane Denkensohn

Myrna B. Sameth

David Schulz

Gail Shneyer and Abraham Nussbaum, MD

Donors to the Bard Music Festival

Leadership Support

Kathleen Vuillet Augustine

Bettina Baruch Foundation

Estate of Clyde Talmadge Gatlin

Jane W. Nuhn Charitable Trust

Dr. Barbara Kenner

Felicitas S. Thorne

Millie and Robert Wise

Golden Circle

Helen and Roger Alcaly

Jeanne Donovan Fisher

New York State Council on the Arts

Denise S. Simon and Paulo Vieiradacunha

Director

The Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation

Anonymous, in honor of Stuart Stritzler-Levine

Michelle R. Clayman

Rachel and Dr. Shalom Kalnicki

Susan and Roger Kennedy

Edna and Gary Lachmund

Amy and Thomas O. Maggs

Drs. M. Susan and Irwin Richman

Ted Snowdon and Duffy Violante

Anthony and Margo Viscusi

Richard and Dee Wilson

Producer

Marstrand Foundation

Christina Mohr and Matthew M. Guerreiro

Stewart’s/Dake Family

Dr. Siri von Reis*

Patron

Anonymous

Elizabeth Ely '65

Dr. Sanford Friedman and Virginia Howsam

John Geller and Alan Skog

Helena and Christopher Gibbs

Elena and Fred Howard

Alison L. Lankenau

Martin L. and Lucy Miller Murray

Karl Moschner and Hannelore Wilfert

Jacqueline Royce

Janet and Michael Sirotta

Edwin Steinberg and Judy Halpern

United Way of the Capital Region

Olivia van Melle Kamp

Irene Zedlacher

William C. Zifchak, Esq.

* Deceased

List current as of September 14, 2021

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Boards

Bard College

Board of Trustees

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Emily H. Fisher, Vice Chair

George F. Hamel Jr., Vice Chair

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Mostafiz ShahMohammed ’97

Jonathan Slone ’84

Alexander Soros

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Carolyn Marks Blackwood

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Denise S. Simon, Chair

Roger Alcaly

Kathleen Vuillet Augustine

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Michelle R. Clayman

David Dubin

Robert C. Edmonds ’68

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Administration

Bard College Senior Administration

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Fisher Center Administration

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Liza Parker

Artistic Director

Gideon Lester

Administration

Brynn Gilchrist ’17, Executive Assistant

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Caleb Hammons, Director of Artistic Planning and Producing

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Development

Alessandra Larson, Director of Development 

Kieley Michasiow-Levy, Individual Giving Manager 

Michael Hofmann VAP ’15, Development Operations Manager  

Elise Alexander ’19, Development Assistant

Production

Jason Wells, Director of Production

Stephen Dean, Orchestra Production Manager

Allison Hannon, Associate Production Manager

Andrea Sofia Sala, Production Administrator

Rick Reiser, Technical Director

Josh Foreman, Lighting Supervisor

Moe Schell, Costume Supervisor

John Gasper, Interim Video Supervisor

Lex Morton, Audio Supervisor

Communications

Mark Primoff, Associate Vice President of Communications

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Rachael Gunning ’19, House Manager

David Bánóczi-Ruof ’22, Lead Assistant House Manager

Ash Fitzgerald ‘24, Assistant House Manager

Maya Miggins 23, Assistant House Manager

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Erik Long, Box Office Supervisor

Jardena Gertler-Jaffe VAP ‘21, Box Office Supervisor

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Mark Crittenden, Facilities Manager

Ray Stegner, Building Operations Manager

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Chris Lyons, Building Operations Assistant

Robyn Charter, Fire Panel Monitor

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Bard Music Festival

Executive Director

Irene Zedlacher

Artistic Directors 

Leon Botstein

Christopher H. Gibbs

Associate Director

Raissa St. Pierre ’87

Scholar in Residence 2021

Jeanice Brooks

Program Committee 2021

Byron Adams

Leon Botstein

Jeanice Brooks

Christopher H. Gibbs

Richard Wilson

Irene Zedlacher

Director of Choruses

James Bagwell

Vocal Casting

Joshua Winograde

Producer, Staged Concerts

Nunally Kersh

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