Chamber music faculty member Audrey Axinn was appointed assistant dean at the Mannes College of Music in July. She performed fortepiano trio recitals in May and June with violinist Marika Holmqvist and cellist Christine Gummere at the Brooklyn Friends Meeting House, and at councilwoman Gail Brewer’s Make Music N.Y. celebration.
In April, trombone faculty member Per Brevig conducted the East Texas Symphony Orchestra (of which he is the music director) in Jay Greenberg’s (Pre-College ’04, composition) Concerto for Piano Trio and Orchestra at the University of Texas at Tyler. The Eroica Trio—which includes Erika Nickrenz (BM ’85, MM ’86, piano); violinist Susie Park; and Sara Sant’Ambrogio (’84, cello)—was featured in the work.
Dance faculty member Andra Corvino was a guest teacher at the Australian Cecchetti Conference that took place in Melbourne in July. She taught ballet technique, gave a lecture on methodology, and coached two young dancers for their participation in a Canadian competition.
Organ department chair Paul Jacobs presented the dedicatory concert of the new Schoenstein organ at Christ and St. Stephen’s Church in Manhattan in May; the program included the world premiere of L&M faculty member Wayne Oquin’s (DMA ’08, composition) work Reverie, commissioned for the occasion. Jacobs will perform an unpublished prelude and fugue for organ by Samuel Barber (heard only once before, in 1928) on September 12 at the 10th Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, in a dedication program for the church’s new four-manual Walker digital organ.
In May, Evening Division piano faculty member Julie Jordan (MM ’83, piano) joined her students as soloists with orchestra performing the concertos of Grieg, Chopin, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Mozart, and Jonathan Newell at the Advent Lutheran Church in New York. In April, Jordan performed Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with an orchestra conducted by resident conductor George Stelluto (Artist Diploma ’06, orchestral conducting) in Weill Recital Hall. This summer, she taught master classes in Paris and Tolentino, Italy, and gave recitals in Basel and Salzburg.
Piano faculty member Seymour Lipkin received the Curtis Alumni Award at the Curtis Institute of Music’s 75th commencement in May.
Piano faculty member Jerome Lowenthal received an honorary doctorate at the Cleveland Institute of Music’s 83rd commencement ceremony in May. Also at the ceremony, oboe faculty member Nathan Hughes received an Alumni Achievement Award.
Milica Paranosic participated in II Festival Internacional de Música Contemporânea at the Federal University of Bahia, in Salvador Bahia, Brazil, this summer with a new, evening-length, transmedia performance piece inspired by the work of Olivier Messiaen. The work was performed by a collective of chamber musicians, local Brazilian drummers and capoeirstas, dancers, and Paranosic.
Pre-College vocal coach Jorge Parodi has been engaged as music director of the undergraduate opera theater at the Manhattan School of Music. He spent his summer as a faculty member at the International Vocal Arts Institute programs in Puerto Rico and Israel, and at V.O.I.C.Experience in Tampa, Fla., directed by Sherrill Milnes.
Juilliard President Joseph W. Polisi gave the keynote address at the class day ceremony that was part of the alumni reunion at Tufts University’s Fletcher School in May. He was awarded the Dean’s Medal at the ceremony.
In August, L&M faculty member Behzad Ranjbaran’s (MM ’88, DMA ’92, composition) Persian Trilogy was performed by the Toronto Symphony, under the baton of JoAnn Falletta (MM ’83, DMA ’89, orchestral conducting), at Toronto’s Roy Thomson Hall, in conjunction with an international conference that was the world’s largest gathering of Iranian scholars. The multimedia performance included Persian scene-narrating (provided by Iran’s pre-eminent storyteller, Morshed Toabi) and projections of Persian miniature paintings from the Shahnamah, the 1,000-year-old epic poem on which Ranjbaran’s work is based.
Graduate studies faculty member Greg Sandow addressed the graduating class at the Eastman School of Music’s 83rd commencement in May.
In May, Drama Division faculty member Christina Sison traveled with the Ma-Yi Theater Company as stage manager for the production of The Romance of Magno Rubio at the International Theater Festival in Sibiu, Romania.
This summer, Drama Division faculty member Kate Wilson served as the dialect coach for Catherine Zeta-Jones in The Rebound, directed by Bart Freundlich. She also coached the American premiere of the musical Dirty Dancing—The Classic Story on Stage, which opens on September 28 in Chicago at the Cadillac Palace Theater and runs through December 7.
Jazz faculty member Ben Wolfe’s CD No Strangers Here was released in June on MaxJazz. Wolfe and his octet performed at the Jazz Standard in Manhattan in June. Members of the octet include Cyrus Beroukhim (MM ’01, DMA ’07, violin), Kenji Bunch (BM ’95, MM ’97, viola; MM ’97, composition), and Jesse Mills (BM ’01, violin)
