American Symphony Orchestra · CC BY-SA 4.0

A conductor and musicologist who served as president of Bard College for over four decades starting in 1975, transforming a small liberal arts school into an institution with genuine international reach. As a conductor he championed neglected and forgotten orchestral repertoire, building programs around composers overlooked by the standard concert circuit. His long tenure at Bard ended under a cloud after it emerged he had maintained a friendly relationship with the financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein between 2011 and 2018.