Name: Program Six • I live with God ever before me: Mozart’s Religion
Start: 2026-08-13T19:00:00
Location: Church of the Messiah Epscpl

Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College

Choreographed by rising artists in the Bard College Dance Program, this concert of Senior Projects represents the culmination of four years of intensive choreographic inquiry and research. Their concepts have been realized with the support of a professional staff of designers.

2026 Spring Senior Dance Concert

Fisher Center at Bard

After a string of successful tone poems, An Alpine Symphony was Richard Strauss’s first such composition after nearly a dozen years of focusing on opera. Written for a massive orchestra that includes such rarities as the heckelphone, thunder sheets, a wind machine, and other unusual effects, this gloriously opulent masterpiece takes listeners through the ascent and descent of a mountain in the Alps, with meadows, streams, storms, and vistas along the way. Also on the program are Strauss’s Burleske for Piano and Orchestra, performed with Blair McMillen, and the vivacious Die Tageszeiten (Times of the Day), a setting of four nature poems by Joseph von Eichendorff. Hear this program at the Fisher Center just days before TŌN performs it at Carnegie Hall.

Strauss’s “Alpine Symphony”

Celebrated for their “multifaceted artistry” and “brilliantly idiomatic” programming (New York Times), the Poiesis Quartet is the winner of the 2026 Cleveland Quartet Award and the First Prize and Commission Prize recipients of the 2025 Banff International String Quartet Competition. They will perform works from the canon by Joseph Haydn and Sergei Prokofiev alongside contemporary works by Sky Macklay, Chickasaw classical composer Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate, and a newly commissioned work by Kevin Lau.

Poiesis Quartet

With performances acclaimed for both “high-octane” excitement (The Strad) and “dusky lyricism” (New York Times), the Aeolus Quartet has been awarded prizes at nearly every major competition in the United States and performed across the globe with showings “worthy of a major-league quartet” (Dallas Morning News). Their program features works by Wolfgang Amadé Mozart, Felix Mendelssohn, Grażyna Bacewicz, and a newly revised version of Joan Tower’s Wild Summer.

Aeolus Quartet

Four remarkable artists with a passion for chamber music have come together to form an exciting new piano-and-strings quartet, destined to become an audience favorite.  For decades, violinist Jaime Laredo and cellist Sharon Robinson, together with their piano trio partner the late Joseph Kalichstein, were hailed as “chamber music royalty” (Washington Post), a distinction that equally applies to their ESPRESSIVO! partners—the stellar violist Milena Pájaro-van de Stadt, a founding member of the Dover Quartet, and the award-winning pianist Anna Polonsky, one of chamber music’s most sought-after collaborators.  Their program includes favorites by Beethoven and Schumann and a reprise of Richard Danielpour’s Book of Hours, co-commissioned by the Hudson Valley Chamber Music Circle and premiered on our series at Olin Auditorium in 2007.

Espressivo!

A thrilling new opera based on Tennessee Williams’s fever-dream of a play about a family secret, and a mother’s desperate attempt to silence the truth.

Suddenly Last Summer

Underground System is a shape-shifting, larger-than-life force in New York City’s dance music scene, fusing Afrobeat, punk, and disco into a sound that’s as unpredictable as it is infectious. The band’s debut LP, What Are You, earned cult status for its “David Byrne meets Soulwax” (KCRW) energy and propelled them onto global stages like Eurockéennes and Fusion Festival. Led by Domenica—returning to Bard SummerScape after playing flute for Illinoise in 2023—Underground System launches the Spiegeltent season with an unforgettable night of “exuberant dance music that blooms out into countless directions” (Rolling Stone).

Underground System

Lucinda Childs, a defining force in American dance, returns to Bard SummerScape with a one-of-a-kind program of new and iconic works.

Lucinda Childs: Momentary Reprise

Andy Monk of Queer Conspiracy hosts and co-curates this year’s After Hours series, with a DJ lineup featuring fresh faces and returning favorites.

After Hours 2026

Pastoral is the latest world premiere from Fisher Center LAB Choreographer in Residence Pam Tanowitz at Bard SummerScape, in a major new collaboration with composer Caroline Shaw and visual artist Sarah Crowner.

Pastoral

Comedian and actor James Austin Johnson makes his Spiegeltent debut with a stand-up set showcasing the sharp wit and chameleonic impression skills that have made him one of today’s most exciting comedians. Named “one of SNL’s most versatile celebrity impressionists” by The New York Times, Johnson is widely recognized for his uncanny portrayal of Donald Trump, and is currently in his fourth season as a cast member on the show. Fresh off appearances in film (A Complete Unknown, Inside Out 2), television (Barry, Better Call Saul), and podcasting, Johnson brings a bold, unpredictable night of comedy to the Spiegeltent.

James Austin Johnson

The Fretliners are a band defined by their songwriting—stories carried by powerful harmonies, dynamic arrangements, and a sound that feels both timeless and new. Their music leans into the tradition of acoustic string instruments but reaches well beyond genre, resonating with listeners through honesty and craft.