Tenor Maximillian Jansen and pianist Bethany Pietroniro return to Downtown Music at Grace for a recital including art songs by Franz Schubert, Lili Boulanger, and Benjamin Britten.

Concerts in the Village (CITV) opens its 2023 – 2024 season with a concert performance of Beethoven’s only opera, FIDELIO. A story of love and freedom, Fidelio celebrates the rescue of a political prisoner, Florestan (sung by tenor Eric Finbarr Carey), by his beloved wife, Leonore (sung by soprano Caroline Dunigan), who disguises herself as a prison guard named Fidelio in order to free her husband. The seven wonderful soloists will be joined by the Broad Street Orchestra, Broad Street Chorale, and speaker Wheelock Whitney in presenting this dynamic work.

Program Eleven presents Vaughan Williams’ opera, Sir John in Love, in a semi-staged production by American director Alison Moritz, whose projects have been called “raw, funny, surreal, and disarmingly human” (Opera News). Anchored by the American Symphony Orchestra, it is with this rare American presentation of Vaughan Williams’s opera that the 2023 Bard Music Festival draws to a satisfying close.

Program Four traces the evolution of a uniquely British sound through songs by the once-hugely-popular Maude Valérie White, Liza Lehrmann, and Roger Quilter; tragic figures George Butterworth and Ivor Gurney; occult-obsessed Peter Warlock; BBC music director Arthur Bliss; Vaughan Williams’s woefully underrated students Elizabeth Maconchy and Ina Boyle; and scions of the next generation Benjamin Britten and Gerald Finzi, whose Shakespearean song cycle, Let Us Garlands Bring, was written as a gift to the older composer. Vaughan Williams himself is represented by settings of verse by poets including his second wife, Ursula.

At 2:30pm on Sunday, April 30th in Kinderhook Reformed Church, Concerts in the Village offers a rare performance of Handel’s brilliant oratorio-ode L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato – “The Cheerful, the Thoughtful, and the Moderate Man.” As originally, the libretto is in English. Performing will be the Broad Street Chorale, the Broad Street Orchestra and three outstanding soloists, in all over fifty musicians. CITV Artistic Director David Smith will conduct.

The 13th Season 2022-2023 of Concerts in the Village (CITV) opens with Joseph Haydn’s magnificent oratorio The Creation, at Kinderhook Reformed Church, 2:30pm, Sunday November 13th. The Broad Street Orchestra, Broad Street Chorale and five outstanding soloists – in all 70 musicians – will perform this dramatic musical account of the world’s formation out of chaos and the arrival of Adam and Eve which followed. CITV Artistic Director David Smith conducts.

The Bard Conservatory Orchestra joins an exciting principal cast of singers in a semi-staged performance of Richard Strauss’s once infamous, now famous opera, Salome-a biblical story, with a twist.

As part of a month celebrating the Vocal Arts, tenor Maximillian Jansen is joined by Helena Baillie playing violin and viola, and organist Timothy Lewis for this program featuring the striking and rarely heard Four Hymns for Tenor and Viola of Ralph Vaughan Williams as well as the composer’s evocative Lark Ascending.

On October 24th at Van Buren Hall, works of Bach and Mozart celebrate vocal and instrumental marvels of the baroque and classical eras. Bach’s reassuring solo Cantata 170 marks mezzo-soprano Kameryn Lueng’s fifth CITV appearance. A graduate of Bard’s Graduate Vocal Arts Program and 2019 Tanglewood Vocal Fellow, Lueng is currently pursuing advanced studies in Cleveland. Solo Cantata 51, well-known for its vocal and trumpet fireworks, follows, and will feature Burmese-American soprano Robin Steitz, an Eastman School of Music Graduate and former Tanglewood Vocal Fellow. Two of the best-known concert arias of Mozart will be sung by soloists previously appearing in CITV’s 2019 performance of Bach’s Mass in B Minor. Both are graduates of Bard’s Graduate Vocal Arts Program. Soprano Jardena Gertler-Jaffe sings “Bella mia fiamma, addio” and tenor Maximillian Jansen sings “Misero! O sogno.” To conclude the October program the Broad Street Orchestra performs Mozart’s Symphony 29, a work of strength and elegance often regarded as the first of the composer’s mature symphonies.

As a part of their Sidney Krum Young Artists Concert Series, Maximillian will be presenting the world premiere of a Yiddish art song at the YIVO Insititute for Jewish Research.

Together with Jardena Gertler-Jaffe, Meg Jones, and Louis Tiemann, Maximillian will present the digital premiere performance of 4 new compositions engaging with Yiddish folksongs. The new works by composers Derek David, David Ludwig, Daniel Schlosberg, and Dan Shore were commissioned by YIVO and will be presented alongside archival recordings of the folksongs that they are reimagining.

The event will premiere on Facebook and YouTube.

Maximillian will sing four of his favorite art songs and arias in this uplifting program of song performed by students of the Bard Graduate Vocal Arts Program. The house’s East Porch will serve as the stage, and socially-distanced seating will be available on the lawn. Bring a mask (and something cozy to keep you warm if temperatures dip).

Seating is limited, so please reserve early.

Maximillian returns to Kinderhook, NY to sing Mozart Operatic Excerpts with Concerts in the Village, conducted by David Smith, as a part of their 10th Anniversary Season.

Will be rescheduled for 2020-2021 season due to covid-19 pandemic.

Maximillian sings the tenor solos in Bach’s Magnificat in D and Mozart’s Regina Coeli, K. 276 with The Orchestra Now, conducted by James Bagwell.

Cancelled due to covid-19 pandemic.

Maximillian will perform the role of Rodolfo in the Bard Vocal Arts Program opera production in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY. The opera production, entitled Rest in Pieces, was conceived by renowned opera singer Stephanie Blythe, who will also direct the piece. Blythe is joined on the artistic team by Maestro James Bagwell, who will conduct the production accompanied by the award-winning ensemble The Orchestra Now. This innovative work of devised theatre examines opera’s role in the 21st century, and will feature beloved favourites from the operatic repertoire by Mozart, Strauss, Bizet, Copland, and Puccini.

Maximillian will perform the role of Rodolfo in the Bard Vocal Arts Program opera production in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY. The opera production, entitled Rest in Pieces, was conceived by renowned opera singer Stephanie Blythe, who will also direct the piece. Blythe is joined on the artistic team by Maestro James Bagwell, who will conduct the production accompanied by the award-winning ensemble The Orchestra Now. This innovative work of devised theatre examines opera’s role in the 21st century, and will feature beloved favourites from the operatic repertoire by Mozart, Strauss, Bizet, Copland, and Puccini.

Maximillian performs the role of Acis in Handel’s Acis and Galatea with the Broad Street Orchestra, conducted by David Smith. This compact “semi-opera” was with good reason Handel’s most frequently performed work during his lifetime, and among his dramatic works the only one to remain continuously in the repertoire over more than three centuries.