September 13, 2001 Contact: Paula Mlyn

Works include Stravinsky's Serenade in A Major; Glass' String Quartet No. 4 "Buczak" and
Metamorphosis II; Haydn's Sonata for Piano in G Major Hob. XVI: 39;
Brahms Piano Quartet No. 3 in C Minor, Op. 60;
And two world premiere works by Juilliard composers:
Nico Muhly's Music In Transition and Kati Agocs' All the Ends of the World
Commissioned especially for this performance.

Pianist and Juilliard alumnus and faculty member, Bruce Brubaker is the featured performer in the tenth annual Irene Diamond Concert on Tuesday, October 23 at 8 PM in Alice Tully Hall. Joining Mr. Brubaker will be violinist Joel Smirnoff, longtime member of the Juilliard String Quartet and Juilliard faculty member, as well as student performers and two Juilliard composers, Nico Muhly and Kati Agocs, who have written short works commissioned especially for this concert.

Programmed by Mr. Brubaker, the evening demonstrates how composers constantly engage our memories in many conscious and unconscious ways. Memory is the basis of how music engages us as listeners, both emotionally and conceptually. These short commissioned works will serve almost as modulations between some of the traditional music on the program. In the way early piano recitalists improvised harmonic transitions between the works on their programs, these new pieces will form stylistic bridges between pieces by Glass, Haydn, and Brahms. This concert includes a number of pieces that illuminate music's connection, dependence, and use of memory: the Philip Glass Quartet, was dedicated as a remembrance for a friend who died of AIDS, the other works use musical reference to invoke memory. For example, Mr. Muhly's Music in Transition uses material from the Philip Glass work as a starting point. All the Ends of the World, Ms. Agoc's work, takes its name from a piece of very early polyphony by Leonin, and uses musical material from prior works to "make a fresh start." Her piece serves as a prelude to the Brahms Quartet, which, according to Mr. Brubaker, is a musical recollection of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.

This annual concert honors Irene Diamond, who has developed significant and highly effective programs in the areas of medical research, minority education, and the arts. In an unmatched stream of benefactions over the past fifteen years, Irene Diamond has provided a level of support unprecedented in the history of The Juilliard School. Grants from the Aaron Diamond Foundation and The Irene Diamond Foundation as well as extraordinary personal gifts have totaled close to $21 million since 1986. These exceptionally generous gifts have added significantly to Juilliard's ability to pursue its mission of providing the finest artistic training and a superior education to gifted young actors, dancers, and musicians from around the world. Each year, musicians collaborate to help Juilliard express its gratitude to Mrs. Diamond, whose personal philanthropy has funded student scholarships, faculty salaries, and special projects at The Juilliard School.

FREE tickets are required for this concert and will be available at the Juilliard Box Office on October 9. The Juilliard Box Office is located at 60 Lincoln Center Plaza and is open from Monday through Friday from 11AM to 6 PM. For more information, please call (212) 769-7406.

Pianist Bruce Brubaker studied piano with Jacob Lateiner at The Juilliard School, where he was received his bachelor of music, masters of music, and doctor of musical arts degrees. He also was awarded the school's highest prize upon graduation. Mr. Brubaker joined the faculty at Juilliard in 1995, and went on to become the first recipient of the School's John Erskine Faculty Prize in 1998. He was the director of Piano Century, an acclaimed eleven-concert retrospective of twentieth-century piano music involving one hundred and one pianists that took place at Juilliard during the 1999-2000 season and the school's B-A-C-H series the following year. This season he is creating a new interdisciplinary performance project at Juilliard. His articles about music have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Piano Quarterly, Keyboard Classics, Chamber Music, and other magazines. A native of Iowa, Mr. Brubaker is the Artistic Director of SummerMusic, the chamber music festival that takes place there annually. Mr. Brubaker's most recent CD, Glass Cage, is a recording of music by Philip Glass and John Cage for Arabesque Recordings that was named one of the ten best releases of the year by The New Yorker magazine.

Known for his expertise in both traditional and modern repertoire, Musical America named Mr. Brubaker a "Young Musician of the Year." His subsequent London recital debut at Wigmore Hall led to his first broadcast concert on the BBC, an all-Brahms recital. Mr. Brubaker has premiered music by John Cage, Mark-Anthony Turnage, and performed Glass's piano music in concerts and broadcasts throughout the world. He has appeared with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Flemish Chamber Orchestra, New York's Orchestra of St. Luke's, at Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival, the Hollywood Bowl, and at Tanglewood. He has performed in Chicago, Boston, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco, St. Louis, Atlanta, Seattle, and New York, and toured England, France, Italy, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Latin America, and Asia.

Violinist Joel Smirnoff is a native of New York City and has been a member of the Quartet for nearly fifteen years - the last three as the ensemble's primaries. He was formerly the group's second violinist. Mr. Smirnoff attended the University of Chicago and The Juilliard School, and was a member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra for a period of six years. He won second prize in the International American Music Competition in 1983. In 1985 Mr. Smirnoff made his New York recital debut at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall. He has participated in the world premiere of many contemporary works, some of which were composed for him.

Kati Agocs was born in Windsor, Canada, of Hungarian and American descent, she is currently a Jacob Javits Fellow in The Juilliard School's master of music program. Ms. Agocs has studied composition with George Tsontakis, Robert Beaser, and Milton Babbitt. She is an alumna of the Aspen Music School, Pearson College of the Pacific, and Sarah Lawrence College (bachelor of arts, 1998). A composition fellow at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, the MacDowell Colony, and Yaddo, Agocs has also been named a Presser Scholar in Music by the Presser Foundation. In 2000 The Juilliard School's Literature and Materials of Music Department awarded her the inaugural William Schuman Prize, where she is currently a teaching fellow. In 1999 she was a winner of the Juilliard Composers' Competition and received honors in the Sorel Choral Composition Competition. Her works have been commissioned by such organizations as the Solo Flights Series (New York) and Metamorphosen (Boston), who premiered At First Light at Jordan Hall in 2000. Ms. Agocs also performs regularly as a soprano; in 2001, she sang the solo role in the New York premiere of Jennie Richee, a dramatization of the life and work of artist Henry Darger, which won an Obie award. Kati Agocs has been a voice student of Adele Addison since 1998.

Nico Muhly is attending Columbia University for English (focusing on Postcolonial literature and theory), and The Juilliard School for composition, where he is studying with Christopher Rouse. Before moving to New York, Nico lived, for the most part, in Providence, Rhode Island and studied composition with David Rakowski. Mr. Muhly's current projects include Fast Musics in Five Sizes, a series of five small chamber pieces, and Stack, for large chamber ensemble. He is also collaborating with architects in Northern Michigan on an installation piece, and working for M&Co, a design company in New York.