DANCE

Dance Division music advisor Jerome Begin, a native of Cleveland, earned degrees in music composition and audio production from Ohio University, where he studied composition with Mark Phillips. While there, he met and began studying piano and dance accompaniment with André Gribou and became fascinated with the relationship between music, movement, and the theater. Mr. Begin has composed scores for dance and theater as well as concert works. His music has been performed throughout the U.S. and internationally. Commissions include works for Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, The Juilliard School, Sacramento Ballet, Richmond Ballet, Alabama Ballet, Zephyr Dance, Santa Cruz Ballet Theater, Crash, Burn and Die Dance Company, San Jose Dance Theater, Utah Regional Ballet, Monsterless Actors, and Ohio University. Mr. Begin has served as a dance accompanist and teacher of music for dancers at dance festivals, universities, and dance schools throughout the U.S. and abroad, and was music director for the Regional Dance America Craft of Choreography conference for several years. A founding member of the Left Hand Path Ensemble, Mr. Begin is a freelance composer and performer in New York City.

Milton Myers, who will teach modern dance, was born in Kansas City, Mo. He became interested in dance while he was a math major at the University of Missouri and organized Black Exodus, an all-black company of modern dancers. In 1973 he moved to New York, where he met Alvin Ailey’s assistant, Joyce Trisler, who invited him to join the company she formed in 1974. Mr. Myers also served as Trisler’s assistant choreographer from 1975 to 1980. In 1977 Mr. Myers joined the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater while still assisting Trisler; he made dances for both companies, creating Echoes in Blue (1975) for Ailey and assisting Trisler in developing Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring (1974) and Hindemith’s Four Temperaments (1976). When Trisler died in 1980, Mr. Myers left Ailey to take over the helm of the Trisler Danscompany. Among his dances for the company are Timesteps (1981), to the music of Stravinsky and Duke Ellington, and Movin’ (1983), set to the music of the Talking Heads. In 1991 Mr. Myers left the Trisler Danscompany to become the resident choreographer of Philadanco. His pieces for that company include Ebony Concerto (1991), to Stravinsky, and Love ‘n’ Pain (1992), set to the songs of Aretha Franklin.

Sara Pearson, who will teach dance composition, is co-artistic director (with her husband, Patrik Widrig, who also joins the Dance faculty) of Pearson Widrig Dance Theater. She has toured extensively throughout the U.S. and has taught, choreographed, and performed throughout Europe, North Africa, India, Japan, Latin America, and New Zealand, as well as performing at New York’s major dance venues. In 1990, Ms. Pearson received an American Choreographer Award, and in 1996 received (along with Widrig) a Rising Visionaries in the Arts Award from SUNY-Stony Brook. She has collaborated on many projects with composers including Carter Burwell, Robert Een, Andy Teirstein, and Carman Moore. As a teacher of sentient technique, improvisation, and choreography, she has conducted numerous residencies around the country and internationally. Before 1987, Ms. Pearson was co-artistic director of the Sara and Jerry Pearson Dance Company and toured with the Murray Louis Dance Company (during which time she performed with Rudolf Nureyev in Paris, London, and New York), the Nikolais Dance Theater, Hanya Holm, and the Nancy Hauser Dance Company in her native Minneapolis.

François Perron, who will teach partnering, is managing artistic director of Studio Maestro in Manhattan. He is a graduate of the Paris Opera Ballet School and comes from a family of dancers—his aunt Lycette Darsonval was an étoile of the Paris Opera Ballet (of which his mother was also a member) and was in the original cast of  Balanchine’s Symphony in C, while his uncle Serge Perrault was a principal with Roland Petit. Before moving to the U.S. in 1984, Mr. Perron danced with La Scala and was invited by Maurice Béjart to Brussels as part of Les Ballets du XXe Siècle. In 1980 he became principal with the Northern Ballet Theater of England and later with Ballet du Nord. Principal roles with the Joffrey Ballet in New York led him to join the New York City Ballet, where he danced for six years. After briefly dancing with American Ballet Theater in 1993, Mr. Perron has since freelanced, appearing with DanceGalaxy, Dances Patrelle, New York Theater Ballet, Ruth Page’s Nutcracker, Los Angeles Chamber Ballet, Ballet Concierto de Puerto Rico, and the Colorado Chamber Ballet, among others. He is regularly invited to guest teach at major dance schools and is also part of the Eugene Lang College/New School University faculty.

Clifton Taylor, who will teach stagecraft, has designed for the Juilliard Dance Division since 1995 (most recently for Dark Elegies and There Is a Time). His work is frequently seen at New York City Center, the Joyce Theater, on and off Broadway, and around the world. His dance credits include work for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, American Ballet Theater, San Francisco Ballet, Elisa Monte Dance, Ron K. Brown’s Evidence, Philadanco, Buglisi Dance Theater, and Karole Armitage Gone!, among many others. His Broadway credits include Jay Johnson: The Two and Only (L.A. Garland Award, L.A. Drama Critics Circle and Ovation nominations), Hot Feet (Henry Hewes nomination), and Frozen (Lucille Lortel nomination). Recent Off-Broadway credits include the City Center Encores presentation of Face the Music and Theaterworks production of Anne of Green Gables. Regional theater credits include the American Repertory Theater (Cambridge, Mass.), American Conservatory Theater (San Francisco), Alley Theater (Houston), Cleveland Playhouse (where he was resident lighting designer), Irish Repertory Theater (N.Y.C.), Westport Country Playhouse (Conn.), and New York’s MCC Theater. Opera credits include Peter Sellars’s New Crowned Hope Festival in Vienna, Austria; Tanglewood Music Center; and the Opera de Lorraine in Paris.

Patrik Widrig, who will teach dance composition, is co-artistic director of Pearson Widrig Dance Theater as well as a videographer and photographer. Known for work that is mysterious, subversive, and intimate, Pearson Widrig Dance Theater has toured extensively throughout the U.S. and Europe, India, Japan, Latin America, and New Zealand, as well as performing at New York’s Joyce Theater, the City Center Fall for Dance festival, Central Park SummerStage, Lincoln Center, Dance Theater Workshop, the Kitchen, Danspace Project, P.S. 122, and Dancing in the Streets. Mr. Widrig (who is seen in the photo next to Sara Pearson) has collaborated with composers including Carter Burwell, Robert Een, Philip Hamilton, Andy Teirstein, and Carman Moore. He has been on the faculties at the Bates Dance Festival, New York University, Virginia Commonwealth University, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Montclair State University, Hunter College, and Movement Research, and currently teaches at Queens College. As a videographer, he has created numerous works that challenge habitual relationships to space, place, memory, and history through their unexpected visual, kinetic, and emotional impact. As a photographer, he has been documenting the astounding (and rapidly vanishing) hand-painted advertisements on walls, billboards, and vehicles on the streets of Maharashtra, India, as well as in New Orleans.

DRAMA

Musical vocal coach Julie McBride received a B.M. in piano performance from the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and an M.M in collaborative piano, with an emphasis in vocal coaching, from the Mannes College of Music. She is a recitalist, music director, vocal coach, and accompanist at the New York City Opera, the Renata Scotto Opera Academy, Centro Studi Lirica, the Discovery Orchestra of New Jersey, Ensemble 212, Stamford Symphony Orchestra, and for several Broadway and Off-Broadway productions. Most recently, Ms. McBride was the associate music director of the new musical Next to Normal at the Second Stage Theater (directed by Michael Greif), and musical director of Inner Voices: Solo Musicals at the Zipper Factory Theater (starring Jennifer Damiano, Victoria Clark, and Barbara Walsh). Ms. McBride has been a member of the MAP faculty at Juilliard since 2005.

Combat teacher Mark Olsen is an authority on mime, masks, stage combat, and theatrical movement. He specializes in ensemble and devised works. He has appeared on Broadway and toured internationally with Mummenschanz, and has acted in numerous regional theater productions. He has directed more than 45 productions in professional and university settings and has worked as movement coordinator and fight director for productions at the Houston Shakespeare Festival, Hartford Stage Company, Long Wharf Theater, Theaterworks, Westport Country Playhouse, Alley Theater, Houston Grand Opera, New York Shakespeare Festival, and New York’s Public Theater. Mr. Olsen is currently a professor of acting and movement at the Penn State School of Theater and has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Houston, Ryerson Theater School in Toronto, and New York Public Theater’s Shakespeare Lab. He is the author of The Actor With a Thousand Faces, The Golden Buddha Changing Masks, and Acting: Scene One (co-authored with Steve Broadnax).

JAZZ

Ron Carter, who presented a master class at Juilliard last February, joins the jazz faculty to teach bass. With some 2,500 albums to his credit, he has recorded with many of music’s greats, including Tommy Flanagan, Gil Evans, Lena Horne, Bill Evans, B.B. King, the Kronos Quartet, Dexter Gordon, Wes Montgomery, and Bobby Timmons. In the early 1960s, he performed throughout the United States in concerts and nightclubs with Jaki Byard and Eric Dolphy. He later toured Europe with Cannonball Adderley; from 1963 to 1968, he was a member of the Miles Davis Quintet. He was named outstanding bassist of the decade by the Detroit News, jazz bassist of the year by Down Beat magazine, and most valuable player by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. Mr. Carter earned a Grammy award in 1993 for best jazz instrumental group (the Miles Davis Tribute Band), and another Grammy in 1998 for Call Sheet Blues, an instrumental composition from the film ’Round Midnight. Mr. Carter earned a B.M. from the Eastman School of Music and an M.M. in double bass from the Manhattan School of Music.

Pianist, composer, and arranger Xavier Davis will teach piano for non-pianists in the jazz program. Mr. Davis’s debut recording, Dance of Life, was released on Metropolitan Records in 1999, featuring Don Braden, Dwayne Burro, and Carl Allen. His second recording, Innocence of Youth, was released in 2002 by Fresh Sounds New Talent. The CD features E.J. Strickland on drums and Brandon Owens on bass. Mr. Davis has also worked with Betty Carter and Tom Harrell, and has performed and/or recorded with Freddie Hubbard, Sonny Fortune, Abbey Lincoln, Joe Lovano, Donald Byrd, Nnenna Freelon, Steve Turre, and Russell Malone, among others. In 2005, Mr. Davis became the first person to receive the “New Works” grant twice from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation under the auspices of Chamber Music America. He was musical director of the Boys Choir of Harlem in 1999-2000 and played keyboard for the Cosby television series. He received his bachelor’s degree from Western Michigan University.

Bassist Ray Drummond, who will teach jazz improvisation, has for the past 30 years worn the hats of composer, arranger, bandleader, educator, and producer. The son of an army colonel, he attended 14 different schools around the world. His musical studies began at 8 with the trumpet, then the French horn; at 14, he was persuaded to play the bass. Mr. Drummond holds a B.A. in political science and attended Stanford Business School. While in the San Francisco area, he worked with Bobby Hutcherson, Tom Harrell, and Eddie Marshall. In 1977, he left California and moved to New York City, where he quickly became a first-call bassist. His solid rhythmic and harmonic innovations landed him gigs with artists including Betty Carter, Wynton Marsalis, Woody Shaw, Hank Jones, Jon Faddis, Milt Jackson, Kenny Barron, Pharoah Sanders, and George Coleman. He can be heard on more than 300 recordings with artists including Art Farmer, Stan Getz, Kenny Burrell, Kevin Mahogany, Toots Thielemans, Benny Golson, David Murray, Houston Person, and Ray Bryant. He has led his own groups for the past 29 years. Mr. Drummond was assistant professor of jazz, theory, and practice at California State University Monterey Bay.

In a new expanded role, Rodney Jones, who was appointed to the jazz faculty last season as a guitar instructor, will add small ensemble class to his schedule and will become one of the instructors for the Artist Diploma group. During the spring semester, he will lead the ensemble practicum class, which is designed to prepare jazz students for today’s demanding and diverse industry. Some of the topics covered include putting together set lists, learning performance practices and rehearsal techniques, getting to know how to communicate with an audience, and creating marketing materials. Mr. Jones brings to Juilliard extensive experience as a musician, educator, composer, and musical director for such artists as Dizzy Gillespie, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Bonnie Raitt, Lena Horne, Ruth Brown, and Maceo Parker, among others.

Frank Kimbrough joins the jazz faculty as a piano instructor. Active on the New York jazz scene as a pianist/composer for 25 years, he is currently a Palmetto recording artist. He has made more than a dozen recordings as a leader for the Palmetto, OmniTone, and Soul Note labels, and has appeared on nearly 50 more as a sideman. He has toured the U.S., Canada, Brazil, England, France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Macao. Mr. Kimbrough was a founding member and composer-in-residence of the Jazz Composers Collective (1992-2005), a nonprofit, musician-run organization dedicated to presenting original works by its resident and guest composers. He has held the piano chair in the Maria Schneider Orchestra since 1993 and has also toured and recorded with saxophonist Dewey Redman, vocalist Kendra Shank, and with fellow J.C.C. composers-in-residence Ben Allison, Ted Nash, Michael Blake, and Ron Horton, among others. Play, his latest trio CD featuring drummer Paul Motian and bassist Masa Kamaguchi, was released in 2006 on Palmetto. He taught at N.Y.U. from 1996-2001 and has conducted master classes at Juilliard, the New School, Oxford University, Oberlin, and elsewhere.

Ted Nash becomes the conductor of the Juilliard Jazz Orchestra. Born in Los Angeles, Nash was exposed to music by his father, trombonist Dick Nash, and uncle, reedman Ted Nash, and started playing the piano at 7. By 13, he played both the clarinet and alto sax. At 16, he played a week in Hawaii with Lionel Hampton and won an audition to play lead alto with the Quincy Jones band. By the time he was 17, Mr. Nash had toured Europe, appeared on three records, and was performing regularly with the likes of Don Ellis, Louie Bellson, and Toshiko Akiyoshi, as well as leading his own quintet. Moving to New York City, he recorded Conception (Concord), his first album as a leader. He worked with the Gerry Mulligan Big Band, the National Jazz Ensemble, and began a 10-year association with the Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra. A 1994 commission from the Davos Musik Festival in Switzerland led to Nash’s forming his group Double Quartet and subsequently recording Rhyme and Reason (Arabesque), followed by Still Evolved (Palmetto). Mr. Nash’s most recent release is In the Loop (Palmetto). In addition to leading his current group, Odeon, Mr. Nash has been active in the New York-based Jazz Composers Collective, a musician-run, non-profit organization dedicated to presenting the original works of composers pushing the boundaries of self-expression. For the last decade, he has also been involved with Jazz at Lincoln Center as a composer, educator, and member of the orchestra.

Steve Turre will teach trombone and small ensemble in the jazz program. As one of the world’s preeminent jazz innovators, trombonist and sea shell player Mr. Turre has consistently won both the readers’ and critics’ polls in JazzTimes, Down Beat, and JazzIz for best trombonist and for best miscellaneous instrumentalist (shells). He was born to Mexican-American parents and grew up in the San Francisco Bay area, where he absorbed daily doses of mariachi, blues, and jazz. While attending Sacramento State University, he joined the Escovedo Brothers salsa band, which began his career-long involvement with that genre. In 1972 Ray Charles hired him to go on tour. A year later, Woody Shaw brought him into Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. After his tenure with Blakey, Mr. Turre went on to work with musicians from the jazz, Latin, and pop worlds, including Dizzy Gillespie, McCoy Tyner, J.J. Johnson, Herbie Hancock, Tito Puente, Mongo Santamaria, Van Morrison, Horace Silver, and others. In addition to performing as a member of the Saturday Night Live Band since 1984, he had led several ensembles. His recordings include Lotus Flower on Verve and In The Spur of the Moment on Telarc; his latest release is Rainbow People on Highnote.

Kenny Washington will teach rhythm section and jazz history in the jazz program. One of the many young hard-bop revivalists to have arrived on the scene in the late ’70s and early ’80s, Mr. Washington has been in demand by more established musicians, playing with such legendary veterans as Lee Konitz, Betty Carter, Johnny Griffin, Dizzy Gillespie, Clark Terry, and Tommy Flanagan. Born in Brooklyn, Mr. Washington studied with Dizzy Gillespie drummer Rudy Collins, and attended the LaGuardia High School for Music and Art. A prolific freelancer, Mr. Washington has compiled an enormous discography. He has a strong interest in jazz history and has written liner notes for and/or helped prepare classic jazz re-releases by Art Blakey and Count Basie, among others. He has worked as an announcer at the New Jersey jazz radio station, WBGO.

MUSIC

Edward Klorman joins the Literature and Materials of Music faculty for the 2008-09 academic year, taking over an L&M I section and the graduate elective Teaching Music Theory. He holds a Bachelor of Music and a Graduate Diploma in viola from Juilliard. Active as both a performer and a scholar, he has presented lectures and master classes that unite musical performance, analysis, and the historical imagination at the Salzburg Mozarteum, the University of Montreal, the 36th International Viola Congress, and at Juilliard, where he serves at teaching assistant to viola professor Heidi Castleman. A dedicated chamber musician, he has collaborated with the Orion Quartet, Ying Quartet, pianist Claude Frank, and clarinetist Charles Neidich, and is a member of the Tessera Quartet. Committed to cultivating new audiences for classical music, Mr. Klorman is the founder of two innovative musical series: Music at the Bowery (at the historic St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery in Manhattan) and the Canandaigua Lake Music Festival, near his hometown of Rochester, N.Y. He was an invited guest speaker about community engagement and musical entrepreneurship for the Academy—A Program of Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard School, and The Weill Music Institute. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. from the City University of New York, supported by a Jacob K. Javits Fellowship. Mr. Klorman is also the chair of the Pre-College Division theory department.

Violinist Lara Lev, who joins the chamber music faculty, was born in Siberia, in the former U.S.S.R. She studied at the Kazan Special School of Music and later at the Moscow Conservatory, where she graduated in 1977 with highest honors. Continuing her studies at the Gnesin Institute, she graduated with honors in 1980. In the U.S.S.R., she performed as soloist with the Moscow Virtuosos under Vladimir Spivakov, the Moscow Soloists, and several symphony orchestras. She was also a soloist with the Odessa Philharmonia and first violin of the Odessa Conservatory Quartet. Since becoming a Finnish citizen in the 1990s, Ms. Lev has performed in Finland with symphonies and chamber orchestras, as well as in recital. She has done several recordings with pianist and Juilliard faculty member Matti Raekallio for the Finnish Broadcasting Company, featuring rarely played major works for violin and piano, and her repertoire includes many contemporary Finnish violin concertos. Ms. Lev now resides in Hanover, Germany. Her two-CD recording of the Complete Solo Violin Music of J.S. Bach was issued in 2002 by Warner Classics (Apex). In 2004, it was followed by a Finlandia Records/Warner Classics CD of the Complete Violin and Piano Sonatas by Ferruccio Busoni, with Mr. Raekallio (elected as a “Strad Selection” by The Strad magazine and given a five-star rating from BBC Music magazine). She has held teaching positions in Russia, Finland, and Germany; has given master classes in France, Poland, Israel, Germany, Slovakia, Finland, and Spain; and has been a jury member of international violin competitions (at which her students have won many prizes).

Jeffrey Milarsky, who joins the conducting faculty, has premiered and recorded works by contemporary composers including Charles Wuorinen, Fred Lerdahl, Milton Babbitt, Elliott Carter, Lasse Thoresen, Gerard Grisey, Jonathan Dawe, Tristan Murail, Ralph Shapey, Luigi Nono, Mario Davidovsky, and Wolfgang Rihm. In a wide range of repertoire, he has led groups including the American Composers Orchestra, the New York New Music Ensemble, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Manhattan Sinfonietta, Speculum Musicae, the Cygnus Ensemble, the Fromm Players at Harvard University, the Composers’ Ensemble at Princeton University, and the New York Philharmonic chamber music series. He is artistic director and conductor of the Percussion Ensemble at the Manhattan School of Music and the music director of Axiom, Juilliard’s newest contemporary music ensemble. A percussionist who has performed and recorded with the New York Philharmonic among many ensembles, Mr. Milarsky has been principal timpanist for the Santa Fe Opera since the summer of 2005. He is a professor at Columbia University, where he is the music director/conductor of the Columbia University Orchestra and of the newly formed Manhattan Sinfonietta. Mr. Milarsky substituted for James Levine at Carnegie Hall, conducting an all-Milton Babbitt concert in 2006, and made his debut with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra in Norway in 2004, conducting Ravel and Liebermann. He regularly conducts the Juilliard Orchestra, with whom he has premiered more than 150 works of Juilliard student composers over the past 15 years, and is also on the Pre-College faculty.

Wayne Oquin, who joins the Literature and Materials of Music faculty, has composed for the King’s Singers, the New York Concert Singers, the Juilliard Symphony, and the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble. Mr. Oquin’s music has earned the attention of WNYC Radio, Fanfare magazine, The American Record Guide, Time Out New York, and The Washington Post. Recent projects include a work for soprano and string orchestra written for members of the Austin Symphony; choral music premiered at the Library of Congress in conjunction with the 2004 presidential election; A Time to Break Silence: Songs Inspired by the Words and Writings of Martin Luther King Jr., premiered by baritone Sidney Outlaw at the Marilyn Horne Foundation in New York; and Reverie for organ, premiered by Paul Jacobs at Christ and St. Stephen’s Church in Manhattan. Mr. Oquin’s solo piano engagements have taken him from the Chopin Academy in Warsaw, Poland, to the Empire Theater in San Antonio, Tex. After completing a B.M. at Texas State University, receiving both the Lyndon Baines Johnson Award and the Alumni Achievement Award, Mr. Oquin continued his studies at Juilliard, earning an M.M. and a D.M.A. in composition. As a Juilliard teaching fellow, he helped develop a course curriculum for Juilliard students. He is also a member of the Evening Division faculty.

Joining the viola faculty is Robert Vernon, principal violist in the Cleveland Orchestra and head of the viola department at the Cleveland Institute of Music since 1976 (a position he will retain while teaching at Juilliard). An alumnus of Juilliard, Mr. Vernon has appeared as a soloist with the Cleveland Orchestra in more than 150 concerts, both in the U.S. and abroad. He has performed at chamber music festivals including Aspen, Blossom, La Jolla, Marlboro, Ravinia, Round Top, Sarasota, Tanglewood, and Yellow Barn. Mr. Vernon’s solo and chamber music recordings appear on Telarc, Innova, and Decca/London. His book on orchestral excerpts for viola, The Essential Orchestral Excerpts for Viola: The Keys to Winning an Audition, has just been completed. On the faculties of Kent/Blossom, the National Orchestral Institute in Maryland, and the New World Symphony in Miami, he has also given lectures and master classes in Europe, Canada, South America, and Asia, as well as at some of the leading North American schools and conservatories, including Juilliard, Curtis, Manhattan School of Music, Indiana University School of Music, and the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto.