Bard SummerScape is set to kick off on July 8 and run through August 22.

As part of SummerScape, the 31st Annual Bard Music Festival will celebrate the life and works of one of the most important women in music history, Nadia Boulanger  (1878 – 1979). The festival will fete the Parisian polymath who taught composition to students such as Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson, Roy Harris, and shaped an entire generation of American musicians, with a series of themed concert programs, lectures, and panel discussions.

Alongside the “Nadia Boulanger and Her World,” events, Ernest Chausson’s “King Arthur” (“Le roi Arthus”) will have its first full-staged North American production. Chausson was a Boulanger compatriot and near-contemporary. His sole opera will be presented at the Fisher Center and conducted by the festival founder and co-artistic director Leon Botstein.

All SummerScape and Music Festival productions will be staged for limited in-person audiences at both indoor and outdoor venues in the picturesque Catskill Mountains of New York as a fitting backdrop to this performance arts showcase.

Gideon Lester, Artistic Director of the Fisher Center at Bard, stated, “SummerScape has adapted to current circumstances without downsizing the breadth of its programming. This is an ambitious festival, as our audiences have come to expect. From the Fisher Center’s main stage to the parkland of our Montgomery Place campus, this year the festival extends from traditional performance spaces to the stunning landscape of the Hudson Valley.”

The full SummerScape 2021 program will be announced in April, complete with details of all health and safety protocols.