Composer
b. 1971

Hao Weiya is a highly respected composer best known for his ambitious completion of Puccini’s unfinished opera Turondot. Hao serves on the faculty of the Central Conservatory of Music, China, in addition to composing operas, symphonies, ballets, and film scores. His haunting chamber opera, Painted Skin, was premiered in Shanghai in 2019. The 2022 China Now Music Festival will present a new production of the opera with an American spin on October 13 at Hudson Hall in Hudson, NY, and on October 15 at Jazz at Lincoln Center.

Director, US-China Music Institute
Artistic Director, China Now Music Festival

Conductor Jindong Cai is the founding director of the US-China Music Institute and the founder of the China Now Music Festival. Cai came to Bard after spending many years at Stanford University. He has conducted orchestras throughout the US and abroad, especially in his native China. Cai is also a scholar with deep interest in the history and evolution of classical music in China. He will conduct all five concerts of the 2022 China Now Music Festival, in programs that present works of contemporary Chinese music never before heard in the US as well as classic works rarely performed that illustrate deep crosscurrents between Western and Chinese music and culture.

director, Painted Skin 画皮

Michael Hofmann is an opera stage director, administrator, performer, and artist based in Hudson, New York. His frequent experience with premiere works and devised performances has positioned him as a specialist in contemporary opera direction dedicated to genuine, engaging, and accessible storytelling. His directorial debut, a semi-staged performance of Bernstein’s Candide with The Orchestra Now in February 2017, was noted as "stunning in its brilliance, humor, and overall gestalt... an astonishing accomplishment" (Millbrook Independent). Hofmann has since directed or stage managed performances with the Kaufman Music Center’s Special Music School, University of Connecticut, Fresh Squeezed Opera, the Bard Music Festival, and the Bard College Music Program. Most recently, he directed Jillian Flexner’s world premiere chamber opera Self-Defined Circuits at HERE Theater in May 2022, a production praised for being “riveting... so artfully done, so sensitive and authentic” (Observer) and “particularly inventive in its use of technologies” (BroadwayWorld).

soprano

Holly Flack is a coloratura soprano with a unique range that extends beyond an octave above high C. Praised as an “explosive talent” with her warm, flowing middle voice, rippling coloratura and effortless trills, she “wields an impressive range, effortlessly reaching higher than high notes” with her stratospheric vocal extension.

She has traveled multiple times to China with the iSing! International Young Artists Festival for concerts in different cities around the country, and has performed on CCTV, Dragon TV, and Jiangsu Weishi TV for China’s National Day Celebration and the Chinese New Year. In 2022, she singularly represented the USA singing in a promotional video for the Beijing Winter Olympics.

Originally from Portland, Oregon, she holds a Bachelor's Degree in Vocal Performance from St. Olaf College, and a Master's Degree in Vocal Performance from the University of Kentucky, where she studied with renowned soprano Cynthia Lawrence.

Holly plays the role of the scholar’s wife in the China Now Music Festival production of Hao Weiya’s ghost story chamber opera, Painted Skin.

www.hollyflack.com

mezzo-soprano

Praised as “a fine actress with a deep, spacious sound” [Parterre], American mezzo-soprano Kristin Gornstein brings her “rich-voiced mezzo-soprano” and “lines of an uncannily silky legato” [New York Times] to her work, ranging from the traditional to the edgy and imaginative.

A frequent performer on the New York opera scene, Ms. Gornstein has appeared as Lucretia in Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia and Rosina in Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia with Loft Opera, as Mrs. Slender in Salieri’s Falstaff with Dell’Arte Opera, as Dulcinée in Massenet’s Don Quichotte with Utopia Opera, and as Romeo in I Capuleti e i Montecchi with Opera Modo. Never straying too far from the edgy and imaginative, she is an Associate Artist with Heartbeat Opera; appearing as Xantippe in Daphnis and Chloé, as featured soloist in Queens of the Night: Mozart in Space at Brooklyn’s National Sawdust and as part of the first fully staged opera pastiche ever performed on Manhattan’s High Line.

She performed in the ensemble of Michael Gordon and Deborah Artman’s groundbreaking opera Acquanetta, both in the 2018 world premiere at the Prototype Festival, and in its reprisal at the Bard Summerscape Festival in 2019.

Ms. Gornstein plays the role of the scholar in the China Now Music Festival’s production of Hao Weiya’s ghost story chamber opera, Painted Skin. www.kristingornstein.com

Kunqu opera singer

From the age of ten, Qian Yi studied classical Chinese opera (Kunqu) at the Shanghai Opera School. As a member of the Shanghai Opera Company, she became known for her leading roles in The Legend of the White Snake, The Water Margin and other standards of the classical Chinese opera repertoire. The New York Times described her as “China's reigning opera princess”. In 1998, Qian Yi was cast in the lead role of Lincoln Center Festival’s epic 19-hour production of The Peony Pavilion. The production toured internationally, playing at major international festivals in the United States, Europe, Asia and Australia.

Since coming to the U.S., she has starred in numerous re-workings of Chinese opera for a western theater context, including Ghost Lovers (Spoleto USA), The Orphan of Zhao (Lincoln Center) and Snow in June (American Repertory Theater). Qian Yi had her western opera premiere, singing a leading role in the San Francisco Opera’s new production of Amy Tan’s The Bonesetter's Daughter.

In addition to these performances, she appeared in several films, written two plays, and has brought her knowledge of Chinese traditional theater to American audiences in an academic context. She taught Chinese Opera movement at Barnard College, Columbia University, has given numerous lectures and demonstrations at universities and museums around the country and has participated in educational programs at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall.

Qian Yi plays the ghost the China Now Music Festival production of Hao Weiya’s haunting chamber opera, Painted Skin. www.qianyiarts.com

Comprised of students of the Bard College Conservatory of Music, the Bard Chinese Ensemble is an essential part of the US-China Music Institute’s curriculum for Chinese instrument majors at Bard, and offers an opportunity for students of Western instruments to play in a mixed ensemble and learn Chinese repertoire. During the 2022 China Now Music Festival the ensemble joins with special guests to form a 20-piece Chinese ensemble for the two performances of Hao Weiya’s haunting chamber opera Painted Skin at Hudson Hall on October 13 and Jazz at Lincoln Center on October 15.