Shelter in Music

On this quiet Monday, we, the team at Bard Music West, are sheltering in place with a lot on our minds. 

How is our community doing?

How are we each moving through this life-changing time, as individuals, as artists, as neighbors?

What will the world look like after this is all over?

Inside the music world, tumult and necessity-driven creativity have become the new normal. Orchestras around the world are temporarily laying off their musicians. Live music is on hold indefinitely. Musicians are figuring out how to live-stream, record, and patch together ensembles digitally. No doubt, new ways of presenting music online will grow out of this experience. 

We will adapt, we will still play, but we miss you.

At Bard Music West, we are thinking up programs to give you the next time we can meet in person. As always, we want to give you something relevant. We are exploring mindfulness and catharsis, and gathering what we find beautiful and healing. 

When the fog lifts, we will have something special for you. Meanwhile, we wanted to share a comforting truth:

At this moment, just a mile or two away,

a musician is playing, hoping to connect with you. 

We decided one thing we could do would be to make a place for you to listen to Bay Area and BMW musicians. Through the duration of Shelter in Place, you can go to the new Shelter in Music page on our website to hear some of the new outpourings of streamed and recorded music from the Bay Area and BMW music community. We're highlighting just a few each week, and we hope that you will find some solace, inspiration, and maybe even some new favorite musicians to follow. 

And, if we may gently suggest, if a particular musician moves you, you can keep our rich cultural scene alive by supporting them in your capacity: Follow them, share their music with your friends, and donate if you're able. It's an uncertain and difficult time, and we need each other more than ever. 

As always, our community is the most important thing for us at BMW. If you'd like, please let us know how you are (yes, you can reply to this email, and we will read it!). We are sending our very best wishes to you and your family, and looking forward to a time when we can all create and experience live music together again!

With love,

Allegra, Laura, Mika, Jo, and the rest of the BMW Team

Visit Our YouTube Channel

Dive into our Bard Music West YouTube channel. We have more than 80 videos available for viewing from past shows. 

2019 in Review

A Year in Review

Happy New Year from Bard Music West!

As the year comes to a close, we'd like to take a moment to reflect on our season and share some milestones with you. It's certainly been a very busy year for us!

In 2019 we:

• Presented 31 artists 

• Featured 3 living composers in person 

• Commissioned a new piece of music

• Launched our new concert series, Bard Music West Plays

• Performed 40 pieces of music, HALF of which were composed by women!

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Bard Music West Plays

In March, we launched our emerging composers series, Bard Music West Plays, created so you can get to know the most exciting voices of our time. You got to join in the music-making and heard chamber music, toy piano, and improvisation games all in the same concert. Our composers Gabriella Smith and Danny Clay loved meeting you. And we heard from so many of you that it was one of the most entertaining and interesting concerts you’ve been to. 

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The World of Grażyna Bacewicz

““Discovering and performing Polish repertoire through Bard Music West is a highlight not just of my 2019, but of my greater experience unearthing art songs. I have fallen in love with an entirely new world of music.”

— Sara LeMesh, soprano”

In October, we made history with the first festival in the United States devoted to the great composer, Grażyna Bacewicz. And, let’s be honest, it was one of very few festivals devoted entirely to a female composer anywhere. With a film screening, amazing chamber, solo, and choral music performances, storytelling, and more, Bacewicz became a new favorite composer for many people who had never before heard of her.

“Working with Bard Music West is like creating a magical spider web: you meet a special artist at each crossing point and your collaboration opens infinite new paths. I will be forever grateful for the gift of trust and support I received as composer. What a joy to have been part of such a boldly creative festival!”

- Mélanie Clapiès

We also commissioned a wonderful Bay Area composer and violinist, Mélanie Clapiès. Her trio for violin, viola and cello was a big hit at our second program, From War to Warsaw Autumn.
 

The Bacewicz Festival received rave reviews and was recently named a highlight of Bay Area 2019 classical and new music events by San Francisco Chronicle’s music critic, Joshua Kosman. 

“We were delighted to be invited to perform two Bacewicz quartets at Bard Music West this year. We immediately fell in love with the music at our first rehearsal, and the Bacewicz festival was a wonderful opportunity for us to dive deep into her musical world. We were eager to program the quartets on other concerts this season as well and look forward to playing more of her music in the future.”
- Tesla Quartet

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Meet Our Growing Team

This season, we were thrilled to add two new members to the Bard Music West team: Advisory Board member, Scot Moore and Artistic Coordinator, Mika Nakamura. 
 

Scot Moore has performed and taught as both a violinist and violist, working in a variety of musical genres and with such artists as Natalie Merchant, Dawn Upshaw, Aki Takahashi, Amanda Palmer, Hunter Hunt-Hendrix, Joan Tower and Ian Flanigan, among others. He has appeared worldwide in venues such as the Mariinsky Theater, Berlin Konzerthaus, Prague Rudolfinum, NCPA Beijing, Carnegie Hall, David Geffen Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Library of Congress, Greek Theater, Santa Barbara Bowl, and Chicago Theater, among numerous others. Scot can be found on records and sound tracks released by PBS, Albany Records, Navona Records, Nonesuch Records, Recorded and Freed, Mantralogy, and numerous self releases from independent artists. He has premiered new music in collaboration with Contemporaneous, Bang On a Can All-Stars, Shattered Glass, Stereo Hideout and works as both production coordinator and personnel manager for Darcy James Argue's Secret Society and Tyshawn Sorey. 

Scot earned his BA, BM, MA, and Performance Certificate from Bard College and held the co-principle position of The Orchestra Now from 2015-2018. He currently works in account management at Touch of Modern, a men’s lifestyle startup in San Francisco.

Mika Nakamura is a freelance musician and production coordinator in the Bay Area. Born and raised in southern California, she began studying percussion at age eighteen. An avid orchestral and chamber performer, she has collaborated with various artists and organizations including the Magik*Magik Orchestra, Switchboard Music, Bard Music West, One Found Sound Chamber Orchestra, eighth blackbird, yMusic, Yarn/Wire and Sō Percussion in venues throughout the US, including Davies Symphony Hall.

In 2019, she directed the 10th Annual Hot Air Music Festival, an all-day new music marathon celebrating contemporary classical repertoire written within the last fifty years. The season included over 80 artists from across the country and held one of the Festival's most successful fundraising campaigns to headline the program with Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians, which featured an ensemble of SFCM students, staff and alumni led by Nakamura.

Mika is a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Her mentors include Mitchell Peters, Raynor Carroll, Theresa Dimond, Jacob Nissly, Trey Wyatt, Jack Van Geem and Ed Stephan. 

In her spare time, Mika also enjoys cooking, baking and running.

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“Bard Music West is redefining the concert experience. Listeners aren’t just encouraged to listen, they are challenged to engage.”

— James Haber, audience member”

Thank you again for making all that we do possible. Wishing everyone a healthy, restful holiday season and new year, and we look forward to seeing you at our next show! If you haven’t made a donation this year and would like to, please consider supporting us at our new donation page.
 

Warmly,

Allegra and Laura

Program One: A Rising Star

The World of Grażyna Bacewicz

Noe Valley Ministry, 1021 Sanchez St., San Francisco

1: A Rising Star

Friday, October 18, 7:30pm

Special Event: Film Screening

Saturday, October 19, 3pm

2: From War to Warsaw Autumn

Saturday, October 19, 4pm

3: Evolution and Persistence – Her Legacy

Saturday, October 19, 8pm

Program 1: A Rising Star

Hear Bacewicz’s brilliant early works from her days as a young virtuoso violinist and rising star. Get to know her formative influences including her Polish predecessors; Paris; neoclassicism; early choral music; and her teacher, the great Nadia Boulanger.

Featured Artists:

Mélanie Clapiès, violin
Yu Eun Kim, violin
Jessica Chang, viola
Laura Gaynon, cello

Bill Kalinkos, clarinet
Jeffrey LaDeur, piano
Allegra Chapman, piano
EQV, vocal quintet

Program:

Grażyna Bacewicz: String Quartet No. 1 and Piano Quintet No. 1

Claudio Monteverdi: Nine Madrigals (selections)

Claude Debussy: Études for piano

Karol Szymanowski: Mazurkas for piano

Nadia Boulanger: Vers la Vie Nouvelle for piano

Igor Stravinsky: Three Pieces for clarinet

Ignac Paderewski: Nocturne for piano

Get to Know Bacewicz:

“I acquired an internal peace…I see myself, as well as others, going back and forth like ants on this, our otherwise interesting and lovely, globe – bustling about supposedly very important matters, while in reality it is always about one thing: #1 about bread, #2 about being first. I understand the first – the other I do not. No one shares my theory. In this case I am weird.”

• October 23, 1957, Grażyna Bacewicz in a letter to her brother