The Juilliard School appoints Baroque violinist and early music specialist Monica Huggett as artistic director of the School's new historical performance program
The Juilliard School announced today the appointment of Baroque violinist and early music specialist Monica Huggett as Artistic Director of the School’s new Historical Performance program, which begins in the fall of 2009. With a newly appointed studio faculty of considerable expertise, the program’s focus will be the historically-informed performance of music composed between 1600 and 1828. In addition to her role as Artistic Director, Ms. Huggett, who has been a central figure of the early music scene in Europe and the United States for almost 30 years as soloist, chamber musician, and leader, will teach studio lessons. Juilliard will enroll 12 to 14 instrumentalists into each class of the two-year graduate-level Historical Performance program, for a total of 24 to 28 instrumentalists on Baroque violin, Baroque viola, Baroque cello, Baroque double bass/violone, Baroque flute, Baroque oboe, Baroque bassoon, and harpsichord. Students accepted into the new program will receive full-tuition scholarships. Singers will participate via Juilliard’s existing Vocal Arts department.
Juilliard also announces a distinguished list of new appointments to the School’s Historical Performance program faculty, specially chosen for their global reputations and their expertise in this specialized field. (See complete faculty bios at the end of this release.) Early music experts Cynthia Roberts (violin and viola); Phoebe Carrai (cello); Robert Nairn (double bass/violone); Sandra Miller (flute); Gonzalo Ruiz (oboe); Dominic Teresi (bassoon); Kenneth Weiss (harpsichord) and violinist Robert Mealy (chamber music coach) begin teaching at Juilliard in the fall of 2009 after participating in the audition process scheduled for January 28 and 29, 2009 in Paris and March 1 and 2, 2009 in New York City at Juilliard. During the auditions, prospective students will be asked to perform solo and chamber music, will be interviewed, and will participate in coachings of the required repertoire. Applications for fall 2009 entrance to Juilliard’s Historical Performance program are due by December 1, 2008. Juilliard’s web site will carry complete information at www.juilliard.edu/historicalperformance.
In announcing the appointment of Ms. Huggett as Artistic Director of the Historical Performance program, Juilliard President Joseph W. Polisi remarked, “We feel enormously fortunate to have Monica Huggett as the Artistic Director of our new program in Historical Performance. Monica brings to her new position a wealth of experience and creativity that ensures Juilliard’s new venture in historical performance studies will be grounded in a dedication to performance excellence and scholarly integrity. Along with her distinguished colleagues who make up the faculty of our new program, we look to Monica to create an environment at Juilliard that will allow the serious study of music from 1600 to the early-19th century to flourish throughout the institution.”
According to Ms. Huggett, who currently is performing in London, “It is an honour and responsibility to be given the Artistic Directorship of the new Historical Performance program at The Juilliard School. I hope that my colleagues and I can create a new generation of brilliant and inspired Juilliard-trained instrumentalists who can take the performace of Baroque and Classical music to a new level.”
Praised for her expressive and impassioned performances in Europe and the United States, Monica Huggett has close relationships with numerous ensembles and orchestras, as well as a long list of outstanding recordings on EMI, Harmonia Mundi, Philips, Virgin, Erato and Decca with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Academy of Ancient Music, Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, Hanover Band, and Raglan Baroque Players. She has a special relationship with the British ensemble Sonnerie, which she directs from the violin. Ms. Huggett started performing on the Baroque violin during her student days at the Royal Academy of Music in London, and it has remained her instrument since. In 1980, she started the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra with Ton Koopman and was its concert master until 1987. Ms. Huggett is artistic director of the Portland Baroque Orchestra in Portland, Oregon, and the Irish Baroque Orchestra in Dublin. She will remain in all of these positions while leading the department at Juilliard. (Please see longer bio at the end of the release.)
Juilliard began preparation for the Historical Performance program almost two years ago, acquiring appropriate period instruments, and creating a March 2008 residency with William Christie and members of Les Arts Florissants. Ms. Huggett presented her first master class to Juilliard string players in February 2008, and Juilliard invited several other members of the new faculty to provide pre-residency coachings for participating students, as it learned first hand the specific administrative and artistic requirements of creating such a department. In addition to Juilliard’s 13 existing harpsichords, a fortepiano, and a selection of period string instruments – existing and newly refitted ones -- the School has purchased two new traverso flutes, oboes, bassoons, a new Baroque double bass, a second fortepiano, and a host of Baroque bows. These instruments are being built for the School by an international roster of instrument makers, all of whom supply leading soloists, ensembles, and conservatories with period instruments. Juilliard’s new program in historical performance is being funded by individual donors. Juilliard is particularly grateful to its Chairman, Bruce Kovner, for his leadership in putting this funding in place.
The residencies and master classes that began last season will continue. Mr. Christie and members of Les Arts Florissants return Monday through Friday, March 23 – 27, 2009, for a second residency at Juilliard, culminating in a public master class on Friday, March 27, 2009. The residency will focus on the music of Handel. Viol player and conductor Jordi Savall also gives a master class on Baroque solo and chamber music, featuring mostly cello, on February 24, 2009. (For complete details see the corresponding press release from Juilliard.) Both Mr. Christie and Mr. Savall have agreed to be regular guest teachers at Juilliard.
Twelve to fourteen instrumentalists will be enrolled in Juilliard’s Historical Performance program for its first season, beginning in the fall of 2009. The program is open to master of music degree and Graduate Diploma candidates and offers comprehensive study focusing on the period between 1600 and 1828. Applications (due December 1, 2008) are welcome from accomplished instrumentalists whose experience with historical performance may vary greatly -- from those having a considerable background with period music, to those with traditional training who wish to develop the technical skills and historical knowledge necessary for period performance. The program is aimed at fostering informed, vital interpretations of period works, combined with a level of technical excellence and musical integrity for which Juilliard is known. Students will work closely with this roster of internationally respected teachers, and performance will be the mainstay of the program. Joint projects and collaborations with the School’s other divisions of dance and drama, and with musicians outside the Historical Performance major, will be encouraged. Some Historical Performance courses will be offered as elective to the graduate student population as a whole, as will limited secondary studio lessons -- instruments to be provided by Juilliard.
Juilliard’s master of music degree in Historical Performance requires a two-year residency; the Graduate Diploma program with a major in Historical Performance is a two-year, non-degree course of study. Along with weekly lessons and frequent performances, the curriculum also includes core classes covering a broad range of issues related directly to performance, including style and interpretation, historical and cultural contexts, analytical methods and treatises, historical dance, improvisation, continuo improvisation/figured bass reading, and ornamentation. Guest residencies will be part of the program’s annual schedule, as will master classes with experts from around the world.
The application deadline for the Historical Performance Program is December 1, 2008, and auditions will be held in Paris, France, at the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Paris (CNSMDP), on Wednesday and Thursday, January 28 and 29, 2009 and in New York City at Juilliard, Sunday and Monday, March 1 and 2, 2009. For further information, contact Juilliard’s Admissions Office at
(212) 799-5000, ext. 223 or visit www.juilliard.edu/admissions.
FACULTY BIOS
Monica Huggett (violin, Artistic Director of Historical Performance at Juilliard) World-renowned for her expressive and impassioned performances, Monica Huggett is currently artistic director of the Portland (Oregon) Baroque Orchestra and the Irish Baroque Orchestra. She became artistic director of The Juilliard School’s new Historical Performance program on July 1, 2008. During the past four decades, she has co-founded, with Ton Koopman, the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra; founded her own London-based ensemble, Sonnerie; worked with Christopher Hogwood at the Academy of Ancient Music, and with Trevor Pinnock and the English Concert; and toured the United States in concert with James Galway. She has served as guest director of the Arion Baroque Orchestra, Montreal; Tafelmusik, Toronto; the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra; Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, San Francisco; the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra; Orquestra Barroca de Sevilla; and Concerto Copenhagen. She also performs frequently as a solo violinist all over the world. Education of young performers is important to Ms. Huggett, who has given master classes in Banff, Dartington, Vicenza, Dublin, The Hague, and Medellín; and has been professor of Baroque violin at the Hochschule für Künste, Bremen. Ms. Huggett holds an honorary fellowship in the Royal Academy of Music. Her expertise in the musical and social history of the Baroque Era is unparalleled among performing musicians. This huge body of knowledge and understanding, coupled with her unique interpretation of Baroque music, has made her an invaluable resource to students of the Baroque violin. Among her recent prizes are Gramophone magazine’s Editor’s Choice Award, 1997, for J.S. Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin; the Vantaa Baroque Energy Prize (Finland), 2005; and Gramophone’s Best Instrumental Recording Award for Heinrich Biber’s Violin Sonatas, 2002. Ms. Huggett’s discography numbers in the hundreds and is on various labels – EMI, Harmonia Mundi, Philips Virgin, Erato, and Decca. She currently is working on reviving some of these recordings, which now are out of print. Born in London, Ms. Huggett began her violin studies at age six and entered the Royal Academy of Music in London at age sixteen, where she was a student of Manoug Parikian. It was there that she discovered her affinity for Baroque violin and the performance of period music.
Cynthia Roberts (violin/viola) is one of America’s leading performers on the Baroque violin, serving as concertmaster of the New York Collegium, Apollo’s Fire, and Concert Royal, and appearing as soloist and recitalist throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia. At the invitation of William Christie she recently appeared as concertmaster of Les Arts Florissants. She has appeared regularly with Tafelmusik and the American Bach Soloists, and is a principal player in the Carmel Bach Festival. Ms. Roberts has appeared with the London Classical Players, Taverner Players and Smithsonian Chamber Players. Her violin playing was featured on the soundtrack of the film Casanova, which was released in 2005. Ms. Roberts serves on the faculties of the University of North Texas and the Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute. Her recording credits include Sony Classical, Analekta, BMG/Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, and Eclectra. She made her debut at age 12 with Chicago’s Grant Park Symphony, performing the Mendelssohn Concerto, and later appeared as soloist with the Boston Pops. Her principal teachers were Joseph Silverstein, Josef Gingold and Stanley Ritchie.
Phoebe Carrai (cello) lives in the United States and performs with the Arcadian Academy and the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra (Nicholas McGegan), Ensemble Arion (Claire Guillment), Les Musiciens du Louvre (Marc Minkowski) and the Handel and Haydn Society (Grant Llewellyn). She is a member of the faculties of the University of the Arts in Berlin, Germany and the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Ms. Carrai also is a founding member and co-director of the International Baroque Institute at Longy School of Music. In 1983, she joined the chamber music ensemble Musica Antiqua Köln and worked with them for ten years. At that time she also taught at the Hilversum Conservatory in Holland. She studied at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston where she earned both her bachelor and master of music degrees, and in 1979, she undertook post-graduate studies in Historical Performance Practice with Nikolaus Harnoncourt at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria. Ms. Carrai performs on an anonymous Italian cello from c. 1690. She has recorded for Aetma, Deutsche Grammophon, Harmonia Mundi, Telarc, Decca and BMG.
Robert Nairn (double bass/violone) is a versatile performer on the double bass with a career that has spanned Europe, the U.S. and Australasia. As a specialist in Historical Performance for more than 14 years, Mr. Nairn studied with Chi-Chi Nwanoku and has worked with the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, the Aulos Ensemble, the Handel and Haydn Society, the Washington Bach Consort, the English Baroque Soloists and performed in London regularly for 10 years as a member of Florilegium (Baroque Ensemble-in-Residence at Wigmore Hall) and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. He has performed at a number of international festivals including Salzburg, Baden-Baden, Aldeburgh, Glyndebourne, and the London ‘Proms’ with conductors such as Sir Simon Rattle, Leonard Bernstein, Kurt Masur, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Sir Christopher Hogwood, Mariss Jansons, Sir Roger Norrington, André Previn, Sir Charles Mackerras, Christoph Eschenbach, Lorin Maazel, Kent Nagano and Frans Brüggen. As soloist he has performed several concerti with the Australian Chamber Orchestra and the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra (including Bottesini's Passiona Amorosa with bassist Gary Karr) and has given many recitals in Europe, the U.S., and Australia. He has recorded for Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, Sony, EMI, Virgin, ABC Classics, and Channel Classics. Mr. Nairn was appointed to the faculty at Penn State University in the U.S. in 1999 and promoted to the rank of Associate Professor in 2003. Apart from teaching double bass and coaching chamber music, he formed and is director of the University’s Baroque Ensemble. In 2003 he won the Principal Double Bass position with Boston’s prestigious Handel and Haydn Society, the oldest continuous performing arts organization in the U.S. and an internationally respected period-instrument ensemble. A native of Australia, Mr. Nairn received his bachelor of music with distinction from the Canberra School of Music and a post-graduate diploma from the Berlin Musikhochschule with the assistance of a two-year DAAD German Government Scholarship.
An early fascination with the music of Johann Sebastian Bach led Sandra Miller to the Baroque flauto traverso. She frequently is invited to perform and record with many well known period-instrument ensembles, including the American Classical Orchestra, the Clarion Music Society, Sinfonia New York, the New York Collegium, Boston’s Handel and Haydn Society, Tafelmusik, and American Bach Soloists. As a founding member and Associate Director of the ensemble Concert Royal, she has toured throughout the United States and in Canada, England, Germany, Brazil and Mexico. For many years professor of music (now emerita) at the Purchase College Conservatory of Music (SUNY), Ms. Miller also has taught at the Mannes College of Music, in City University of New York’s doctoral program, at the New England Conservatory of Music, and as Kulas Visiting Artist at Case Western Reserve University. Her solo recordings include the complete Bach flute sonatas and, on six- and eight-keyed classical flutes, the three Mozart concertos. Trained at the North Carolina School of the Arts and the Curtis Institute of Music as a traditional woodwind player, she instead chose period music performance based in New York City, where her appearances include a variety of chamber music, solo, and orchestral concerts. Ms. Miller was winner of the Concert Artists Guild Competition, the Erwin Bodky Competition for Early Music, and a Solo Recitalist’s Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Gonzalo Xavier Ruiz has appeared both as principal oboist and concerto soloist with most of the leading period instrument groups in America and has performed widely in the U.S. and Europe with conductors such as Christopher Hogwood, Nicholas McGegan, Jordi Savall, Gustav Leonhardt, Reinhard Goebel, Andrew Manze, and Mark Minkowski. His playing is featured on numerous recordings of solo, chamber, and orchestral repertoire. Equally accomplished on the modern instrument, he has acted as principal oboist of the Buenos Aires Philharmonic, and the New Century Chamber Orchestra. Mr. Ruiz was a prizewinner at the Bruges Early Music Competition in Belgium and for many years has been professor of oboe at Oberlin Conservatory's Baroque Performance Institute and the University of North Texas. He also has taught at the Longy School in Cambridge and given master classes at Indiana University. An active chamber musician, he has made several reconstructions and arrangements, notably from the works of Bach and Rameau. Mr. Ruiz is an acknowledged expert in historical reedmaking techniques, and more than two dozen of his pieces are on permanent display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Mr. Ruiz also is active in the field of contemporary music and was awarded the 2000 ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming.
A native of California, Dominic Teresi is principal bassoon of the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, with whom he performs and records worldwide, and shares leadership of Chiaroscuro, an ensemble of early music specialists dedicated to 17th-century music. In demand on the dulcian and Baroque, Classical and modern bassoons, he also has played with Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra, Le Concert d'Astrée, Chatham Baroque, Toronto Consort and Spiritus Collective, among others. Mr. Teresi recently was invited to be a featured artist on CBC Radio’s New Generation Series, performing a live radio concert of bassoon concertos and chamber music. He is a featured soloist on Tafelmusik’s Concerti Virtuosi CD, nominated for a 2006 Juno award; upcoming CD releases include music from the 17th-century collection Prothimia Suavissima with Chatham Baroque. Mr. Teresi teaches at the Tafelmusik Baroque Summer Institute and Amherst Early Music Festival and is a member of the faculty of the University of Toronto. He holds a master of music degree and an Artist Diploma in modern bassoon from Yale University, a medaille d'or from the Conservatoire National de Région de Bordeaux, France, and is a doctoral candidate at Indiana University.
Kenneth Weiss (harpsichord), a faculty member of the Paris Conservatory, performs harpsichord recitals and Baroque chamber music in numerous festivals and concert halls around the world. From 1990 to 1993, he was musical assistant to William Christie at Les Arts Florissants, participating in numerous opera productions and recordings. Most recently, Mr. Weiss directed revivals of Dido and Aeneas and the Combbatimento of the Lille, Bordeaux and Monte Carlo operas; a Handel program with The English Concert, including Handel organ concertos in France and Spain, and a new staged production of two Tonadillas Escenicas, late-18th-century Spanish works by Esteve and de Laserna at the Almagro Festival near Madrid. Mr. Weiss’ latest recording, Scarlatti’s Essercizi per gravicembalo on the Satirino label, co-produced with the Madrid Caja Bank’s Spanish music label Los Siglos de Oro, was released in November 2007. He also performs as a soloist with Europa Galante led by Fabio Biondi and with the Collegium Vocale de Ghent, directed by Philippe Herreweghe, and since 2005 gives Bach recitals with Fabio Biondi, including concerts at the Aix en Provence Festival and the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris. Born in New York City, Mr. Weiss graduated from the High School of Performing Arts and received his bachelor of music degree from Oberlin Conservatory of Music. He also studied with Gustav Leonhardt at the Sweelinck Conservatorium in Amsterdam.
One of America’s leading Baroque violinists, Robert Mealy (chamber music coach) has recorded more than 50 CDs of early music for all the major labels, ranging from Hildegard of Bingen with Sequentia, to Renaissance consorts with the Boston Camerata, to Rameau operas with Les Arts Florissants. A resident of New York, he is a frequent leader and soloist with the New York Collegium, Early Music New York, and the ARTEK early music ensemble. In 2004, Mr. Mealy was appointed concertmaster of the internationally-acclaimed Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra, and led them in their recent Grammy-nominated recording of Conradi’s Ariadne, as well as the critically-hailed premiere of Mattheson’s Boris Godenouw. Mr. Mealy regularly appears at music festivals worldwide. A devoted chamber musician, he is a member of the celebrated Renaissance violin band The King's Noyse, which records for Harmonia Mundi USA, the new 17th-century ensemble Spiritus Collective, and Fortune’s Wheel. He served for more than a decade as an instrumental soloist and leader with the Boston Camerata. A keen scholar as well as a performer, Mr. Mealy has lectured and taught historical performance techniques at Columbia, Brown, Rutgers, Oberlin, and University of California at Berkeley. He recently was appointed director of the Yale Collegium, and also directs the Harvard Baroque Chamber Orchestra. For his work with both institutions, he received Early Music America's Binkley Award for outstanding teaching and scholarship. Mr. Mealy served for several years as the Hogwood Fellow of the Handel and Haydn Society, advising on scholarship and performance, and he regularly teaches historical improvisation and technique at workshops across North America.