Bard’s Gehry-ish new Concert Hall
Annandale has upstaged Manhattan, 90 miles to the south, with the opening of the Fisher Center at Bard College. The Frank Gehry-designed performing arts center has won raves for both architecture and sound -- and has given Los Angelinos a preview of their new hall.

The tiny liberal arts college in the Hudson Valley has made a big splash with its $62million Fisher Center for the Arts, which debuted at the end of April. Bard president Leon Bothstein, who does double duty as the conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra, sought to integrate performing arts into campus life, and he has done so with a flourish. The new hall has gotten numerous and overwhelmingly glowing press coverage from both architecture and cultural media around the world.

In the April 23, 2003 New York Times, for example, Herbert Muschamp writes, "Inside many a thin building is a fat one straining to get out. Frank Gehry lets it out. [The Fisher Center is] a Balanchine dancer with the build of a Victorian banker… [it] ripples across a sylvan setting." Okay, we don't know what that means, either, but taking the article as a whole, Muschamp clearly was mighty impressed.

The Los Angeles Times (April 28) was more straightforward, calling the building "an alluring beauty" and "not a building as much as a seduction." Other articles at the LA Times suggest that the Fisher Center "bodes well for LA… hinting at what Disney Hall might achieve." The Disney Hall, designed by the identical team of architect Frank Gehry and acoustician Yasuhiro Toyota, is scheduled to open as the Los Angeles Philharmonic's new home starting in October 2003.

Other coverage has used the terms "acoustical marvel," ethereal design magic," and "on silver wings."

Bard students are mixed. Some have protested the cost of what they call the "alien space egg," while others buy Bothstein's vision of the arts as a central part of a quality higher education.

According to Bothstein, Bard hired Gehry even before his well-known Bilbao project for the Guggenheim Museum opened in 1997. In recent years, the Gehry name also has been on Seattle's Experience Music Project (Paul Allen's massive homage to Hendrix and rock music) and the business school at Case Western Reserve University, in Cleveland, all sporting his signature folds, swoops and curves of titanium and steel.

The opening week celebration, programmed by Fisher Center director Jonathan Levi, was similarly audacious and innovative, capturing the fun and eclecticism that Bothstein has envisioned for his college. The initial performances in the 900-seat Sosnoff Theatre included appearances by Elvis Costello, the Charles Mingus Orchestra, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, the Kronos Quartet, and of course the American Symphony Orchestra.

This year's SummerScape series will test the new hall in a great variety of bold and engaging works, promises Levi. Scheduled productions include the world premiere of Don Juan in Prague (an innovative retelling of Mozart's Don Giovanni); an opera by Leoš Janácek; The Bard Music Festival; and much more.

Visit the Fisher Center online, where you can explore the numerous press reviews of the new space, see pictures of the hall, and learn more about the upcoming SummerScape program.

Preview the Disney Concert Hall project, future home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic

See more of Frank Gehry's work, including the Experience Music Project in Seattle

Learn more about master acoustician Yasuhiro Toyota of Nagata Acoustics