Visiting Artists Take Up Long-Term Residence

Visiting artist residencies give students the chance to study with—and draw inspiration from—their role models. During the 2023–2024 academic year, Boston Conservatory began ongoing partnerships with two leading-edge artists: the polymathic composer-scientist Lei Liang, who has been honored as a Guggenheim Fellow and Pulitzer Prize finalist in composition, and the in-demand choreographer Aszure Barton, whose insightful works have been performed by Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, American Ballet Theatre, and Nederlands Dans Theater (among many other groups). Thanks to donor support, Liang and Barton will be returning to campus for several more years, through 2028 and 2027, respectively.

Liang is the chancellor’s distinguished professor of music at the University of California San Diego, where he founded Lei Lab in 2023 with support from Berklee trustee and Boston Conservatory legacy trustee (Snow) Dan Qin. The newly instituted Lei Lab@Berklee brings the composer to Boston Conservatory’s campus to teach private lessons and seminars with composition students, coach contemporary classical music ensembles, and cocurate the school’s annual New Music Festival. This partnership also will result in two newly commissioned compositions.

During his spring 2024 residency, Liang worked closely with students of Associate Professor of Flute and Contemporary Music Sarah Brady (a longtime friend and collaborator), workshopping two of his compositions and coaching students through improvisation exercises based on Arctic Ocean sound recordings. Among his many accolades, Liang received a prestigious Grawemeyer Award for A Thousand Mountains, A Million Streams, which was performed at Carnegie Hall in 2023 by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project with Brady as principal flutist. 

In March 2024, Aszure Barton began a new partnership with Boston Conservatory that will bring the choreographer and her creative team to campus for two weeks every spring semester through 2027. She will teach dance students at all levels, from first-years through seniors, and will choreograph a new work or reconstruct a previous one in collaboration with students for the Dance Division’s annual spring concert, Limitless. Barton’s residency has been supported by donors Ann and Joshua Tolkoff, Marcia Head, Xiaohang Quan and Jeffrey Ellis, Kitty Flather, Larry and Valerie Post, and Rosamond Vaule.

Barton has teamed up with Boston Conservatory students before, staging her work for Limitless performances in 2017, 2023, and 2024. ˮCollaborating with the Dance Division on a deeper level seemed like a good fit because of the department’s institutional knowledge of the art form and commitment to nurturing young dancers,ˮ she says. And a longer-term relationship with students felt imperative. “You can’t communicate all these things in just a few days or a few weeks. I’m more interested in partnerships that go deeper because then there’s a little bit more time for things to seep in,” Barton says.

READ: STAGES 2025

“Visiting Artists Take Up Long-Term Residence” first appeared in the 2025 issue of STAGES, Boston Conservatory’s annual magazine.