Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College opens.

May 1, 2003

April 25th marked the gala opening of the Frank Gehry designed Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College in Annandale-on- Hudson, New York. The $62 million Center includes the 900-seat multi-purpose Sosnoff Theater, the 200-seat multi-form Theatre Two, and four rehearsal studios.

Theatre Projects served as theatre consultant for world-renowned architect Frank Gehry, developing the concept designs and advising on the physical designs for the two theatres and four studio spaces.

Leon Botstein, president of Bard College, says "The new center will provide a forum for a wide range of artistic expression, to be experienced not only by Bard students, but all audiences. We are especially proud of the 900-seat Sosnoff Theater, a distinctive setting where works large and small will be brought to the stage in a highly personal and intimate manner. This house, with its seating size, configuration, and capability for both audio and video broadcast and documentation, is designed to be a place where new work can be made, presented, documented and communicated throughout the world."

The inaugural season began with a sold-out performance of Mahler's Symphony No. 3 by the American Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leon Botstein.

"The choice of Mahler for the opening concert was a daring but very successful test of the amazing acoustics of the 900-seat Sosnoff theatre. It was a dramatically intimate aural experience that totally matched the visual intimacy the design team was striving for. Designed as a multipurpose room, the two balconies and side boxes wrap the audience around the performers reinterpreting in a very Gehry way the traditional opera house. Appropriate, as one of its many lives will be for opera when the tall, unique, TPC engineered orchestra shell seamlessly changes the room from a perfect concert hall into a perfect opera/dance theatre," explains Brian Hall, Director of Design, Theatre Projects Consultants.

The Sosnoff Theatre has an adjustable orchestra pit capable of holding a large Wagnerian-style orchestra. The theatre is designed to suit programs from intimate chamber music to opera. New York Times theatre critic, Anthony Tommasini, called the Sosnoff Theater "an inviting and intimate place to hear music. The simple décor is handsome, with smooth concrete walls, wood-paneled balconies and soft-hued wooden proscenium (retractable to accommodate the staging of opera and theater works)."

Theatre Projects led the design team in the theatre planning and also designed and specified an extensive concert shell, the stage lift and chair wagons, the drapery, and the theatre equipment systems including lighting; motorized and manual stage rigging, pipe grids, and portable rigging systems; sound, communications, and video systems with associate consultant, Engineering Harmonics; Toronto, Canada.

Both theatres have fully equipped stage houses and trap rooms below stage. The support spaces are extensive, including dressing rooms, Green Room, faculty and staff offices, storage and four rehearsal spaces shared by the Dance and Drama Departments.

The TPC team was led by project manager John Tissot and theatre designer Brian Hall.

The Richard B. Fisher Center for Performing Arts will be the home of the Bard Music Festival and also serve a wide range of educational needs for the college.

The College has scheduled two weekends of opening events including the Emerson String Quartet, Selections from 13 Years of the Bard Music Festival and the Charles Mingus Orchestra with special guest Elvis Costello; World Premieres by composers Joan Tower, Harold Farberman, and Richard Teitelbaum, and by Choreographer Peter Pucci for Ballet Hispanico; New York Premiere of JoAnne Akalaitis's Phèdre by Jean Racine; East Coast Premiere of dance by Merce Cunningham with music by John Cage performed by the Kronos Quartet, among others.