2010-11: A Year in Pictures

A Season of New Alliances, New Faces, and Old Traditions

It's both hard and easy to believe that another school year has just about gone by. It was a year of changes in many ways. New alliances were formed—between Juilliard Opera and the Metropolitan Opera, and between the fledgling Historical Performance program and its counterpart at Yale, among others. The Juilliard String Quartet welcomed a new member and the Juilliard Orchestra added a new director of conducting and orchestral studies. Jazz Studies kicked off its 10th anniversary. The Drama Division produced a fourth-year repertory cycle for the first time in a number of years, and Dance took on a classic work that hadn't been seen in New York City in decades—and several brand-new ones as well.

Photo by Peter Schaaf

The Juilliard Orchestra performed 14 concerts this season, under the batons of faculty members James DePreist, director of conducting and orchestral studies; Alan Gilbert, William Schuman Chair in Musical Studies; and Jeffrey Milarsky, music director of the Axiom ensemble, as well as seven guest conductors: John Adams (who led the orchestra’s only Carnegie Hall concert of the season), David Effron, James Gaffigan, Nicholas McGegan, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Imre Pallo, and Xian Zhang. Pictured: Gilbert, who assumes the title of director of conducting and orchestral studies in September, led a performance of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony in Avery Fisher Hall on April 15. Maestro DePreist leads the annual Commencement Concert on May 19 in Alice Tully Hall (see "James DePreist Looks Back—and Forward").

Photo by Rosalie O’Connor

In December, Juilliard Dance premiered four commissions for New Dances: Edition 2010. They were by choreographers Matthew Neenan, Raewyn Hill, Luca Veggetti, and Stijn Celis for each of the division’s four classes. Earlier that month, Composers and Choreographers (a.k.a. ChoreoComp) featured six pairs of student composers and choreographers. In March, Juilliard Dances Repertory series featured three works: the first New York production in more than two decades of Bronislava Nijinska’s Les Noces (“The Wedding”), set to music by Stravinsky; Eliot Feld’s Skara Brae, set to traditional Irish, Scottish, and Breton music (pictured are Ingrid Kapteyn, left, and Lilja Ruriksdottir); and Mark Morris’s Grand Duo, set to Lou Harrison’s Grand Duo for Violin and Piano. 

Two annual events showcasing the fourth-year class—last month’s Senior Dance Production and this month’s Senior Dance Showcase (on May 16)—close the season with a focus on student choreography.

Photo by Michael DiVito

Juilliard’s newest department, Historical Performance, completed a distinguished second year, which saw its first collaboration with Juilliard Opera (see Vocal Arts). Two renowned early-music specialists returned to Juilliard this season: In November, conductor Nicholas McGegan led the student period-instrument ensemble Juilliard415 and guests from Vocal Arts in an Alice Tully Hall concert; in December, for his annual residency, William Christie and members of his ensemble, Les Arts Florissants, joined Juilliard415 for a performance of French Baroque music. Pictured: British conductor Christopher Hogwood led Juilliard415 in a March 19 concert that included the contemporary premieres of three concerti grossi by Geminiani. To cap the season, Juilliard Historical Performance teams up with the Yale Institute of Sacred Music for Bach’s St. Matthew Passion in early May.

Photo by Hiroyuki Ito

Juilliard Jazz kicked off its 10th-anniversary celebrations on March 31 with a “Swingin’ Alumni Reunion,” hosted by alumnus, bassist, and Juilliard Jazz artist-in-residence Christian McBride, and guest saxophonist David Sanborn. Pictured: The evening featured a big band made up of 16 Jazz Studies alumni, including (clockwise from front) Jennifer Krupa, trombone; current student Riley Mulherkar, trumpet; Dominick Farinacci, trumpet; and James Burton, trombone. Other season highlights included the debut performance of the Juilliard Jazz Quintet, which opened the Juilliard performance season in September; guest bassist Jon Clayton’s appearance with the Juilliard Jazz Orchestra in October; and the orchestra’s performance in February of the Gil Evans arrangement of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, conducted by Bob Stewart, with trumpeter Jon Faddis.

Photo by Hiroyuki Ito

New Music by Japanese composers was highlighted in two performances, both part of Carnegie Hall’s JapanNYC festival. On March 29, the Juilliard Percussion Ensemble, under its director, Daniel Druckman, presented “Ceremony and Ritual.” Pictured: Among the performers were percussion majors Charles Rosmarin (left) and Joshua Vonderheide. On April 8, Joel Sachs led his New Juilliard Ensemble in a program called “The New Japan.” 

Other standouts included the annual weeklong Focus! festival in January and “Polish Modern,” which featured the music of contemporary Polish composers. In December, Axiom, under its music director, Jeffrey Milarsky, honored alumnus Steve Reich’s 75th birthday with a concert of his music, and in February, as part of Lincoln Center’s inaugural Tully Scope Festival, the ensemble played works by Morton Feldman and Gyorgy Kurtag, marking what would have been the composers’ 85th birthdays. The 11th annual Beyond the Machine series of multimedia and electronic music, in March, highlighted Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du Soldat.

Photo by Sabrina Tanbara

Numerous student activities added spice to the school year, beginning with new-student orientation, convocation, and the opening-day picnic. Annual events sponsored by the Office of Student Affairs, such as dances and gatherings, Winter Chill Week, and this month’s Stress Less Week, ensured that students had plenty of opportunities for fun and relaxation. In January, current dance, drama, and music students and alumni joined forces for the annual M.L.K. Celebration, which took King’s idea of “the beloved community” as its theme. Pictured: For the fifth consecutive year, under the auspices of ARTreach, a group of students spent spring break in New Orleans, where they led outreach programs and built a house with Habitat for Humanity. 

Photo by Hiroyuki Ito

Chamber Music recitals were plentiful. In the fall, doctoral students introduced “The Other Mendelssohn,” a three-concert series devoted to chamber works by Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel. Pictured: The American Brass Quintet commemorated its 50th anniversary in October with a Daniel Saidenberg Faculty Recital in Tully Hall. That same month, cellist Bonnie Hampton was joined by fellow faculty members violinists Robert Mann and Earl Carlyss, violist Nicholas Mann, and pianist Seymour Lipkin for a recital in Paul Hall, where the New York Woodwind Quintet also appeared in February. The Juilliard String Quartet’s last concert at the School with violinist Nick Eanet took place in December in Tully Hall. (In October, the J.S.Q. announced that that Joseph Lin would become the group’s new first violinist, replacing Eanet, who left the ensemble for health reasons.) Juilliard students were joined in January by colleagues from the Paris Conservatory and the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna for the 10th annual ChamberFest. The season ends this month with the Afiara String Quartet concluding its final season as Juilliard’s graduate resident quartet with the annual Lisa Arnhold Memorial Recital on May 3 in Alice Tully Hall.

Photo by Jessica Katz

The fourth-year Drama season bowed in October with Lorraine Hansberry’s groundbreaking play, A Raisin in the Sun. Pictured: Corey Antonio Hawkins, as Walter Lee Younger, and guest artist Brenda Pressley as Lena Younger (“Mama”). The season continued in November with David Auburn’s Proof. The following month, the students tackled Chekhov’s classic play The Seagull. For the first time in recent years, the fourth-year season concluded in February with three plays in repertory: David Mamet’s Boston Marriage, Bruce Norris’s Clybourne Park (which won a 2011 Pulitzer Prize), and Shakespeare’s Henry V. 

In the fall semester, third-year actors were onstage for three plays: Clifford Odets’s Golden Boy, Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls, and Georges Feydeau’s The Girl From Maxim’s. Following tradition, to end the season, the third-year actors can be seen this month in two Shakespeare plays (see "Putting Training to the Test With Shakespeare").

Photo by Nan Melville

Vocal Arts had a landmark year. In September, the department was renamed the Ellen and James S. Marcus Institute for Vocal Arts in honor of a transformative gift from the Marcuses. In February, three performances of Smetana’s The Bartered Bride, conducted by James Levine and directed by Stephen Wadsworth, marked the first joint production of the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program and Juilliard Opera. Pictured: In the lead roles of Jenik and Marenka were Juilliard alumnus Paul Appleby and the Met’s Layla Claire (center). 

Other opera highlights included a November production of Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea (the first collaboration between Juilliard Opera and the Historical Performance program); in December, Poulenc’s gender-bending Les mamelles de Tirésias was staged. Rounding out the season were an undergraduate production of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas and a double bill of Ravel’s L’heure espagnole and Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, both in April.