Symphonic Ensembles

The mainstay of The Juilliard School’s performing ensembles, the Juilliard Orchestra performs frequently in its own New York City series of a dozen concerts each season, and is a strong supporting partner to Juilliard’s operatic and dance performances as well. During the School’s 2005-2006 centennial season, the Juilliard orchestra traveled even farther, to six European cities – Aldeburgh, Berlin, Helsinki, Leicester, London, and Lucerne – and six major symphony halls in the United States – Chicago’s Symphony Center, Dallas’s Meyerson, Irvine’s Barclay, Los Angeles’s Walt Disney, San Diego’s Copley, and Washington D.C.’s Kennedy Center. Principally led by the school’s Director of Conducting and Orchestral Studies James DePreist, the Orchestra also appears with prominent guest conductors including, this season, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Pierre Boulez, James Conlon, Dennis Russell Davies, James Levine, Anne Manson, Stephan Sanderling, and Emmanuel Villaume.

The 101st season introduced two new ensembles in their first full season addition to the Juilliard Orchestra and the New Juilliard Ensemble – the conductor-less Juilliard Chamber Orchestra, and a new student-run new music chamber ensemble AXIOM.  Coached by members of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the Juilliard Chamber Orchestra is based on the Orpheus model of collaborative leadership, where students select repertoire, coordinate personnel, and plan rehearsal schedules. From methods of musical communication to administrative problem-solving, the program provides students with instruction and experience in crucial arts leadership skill sets, By creating a working environment where students are empowered to make artistic and career decisions, Orpheus and Juilliard are together training a new generation of music entrepreneurs who will be prepared to lead in an evolving 21st-century arts marketplace. Formed by student initiative in 2005, AXIOM is comprised of current Juilliard students and recent graduates, and directed by Juilliard alumnus Jeffrey Milarsky, all devoted to performing classics of the 20th-century repertoire. 

Juilliard's symphonic ensembles have been featured on PBS’s Live From Lincoln Center, as well as the opening concert of the Mozart Bicentennial at Lincoln Center. The Juilliard Orchestra has recorded three albums of works by modern American master composers for New World Records, and is featured, along with members of the Juilliard Opera Center, in a Delos recording of two operas by William Schuman, The Mighty Casey and A Question of Taste. The Juilliard Orchestra also has recorded on the EMI Classics label, the violin concerti of J.B. Accolay, Charles Beriot, Iscar Reiding, Fredrich Seitz, and Giovanni Battista Viotti, with Itzhak Perlman as soloist, led by Lawrence Foster.

The Juilliard Orchestra has toured Japan and France, and performed a series of concerts at the Bermuda Festival. In 1987 it was the first Western conservatory ensemble allowed to visit and perform at the opening up of the People's Republic of China. The orchestra’s Far East tour with Stanislaw Skrowaczewski included stops in Tokyo and Osaka, in Japan, and Hong Kong, with violin soloist Midori. The Juilliard Orchestra was resident ensemble at the Evian Festival in 1992, and twice at the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, Italy in 2003 and 2004.

Juilliard Orchestra Reviews and Timeline

“If your lights burned noticeably brighter around 10 Tuesday night, blame THE JUILLIARD ORCHESTRA. That's when, finishing up the Bartók Concerto for Orchestra, the crack student ensemble was setting off enough sparks to raise voltages for miles around.  It was an exhilarating close to a concert that inspired hope for the future of classical music … The New York school, now celebrating its centenary, is audibly still attracting top-notch talent and training it superbly. In every section, this was orchestral playing on a high professional level.”

-Scott Cantrell/The Dallas Morning News

“James Conlon led THE JUILLIARD ORCHESTRA in a sweeping, detailed and altogether admirable rendition of this vast symphony (Mahler’s Third) in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall. … The young people who attend The Juilliard School are already as technically proficient as seasoned pros. Yet they are still testing their limits, with the result that they bring a fresh, emotional urgency to anything they play. They not only know how to create magic with their instruments, but they are also still susceptible to being moved by it themselves. In short, nobody played as though this were just another gig: THE JUILLIARD ORCHESTRA was striving for the metaphysical, and grasping it.”

-Tim Page/The Washington Post

“The salient feature of the performance (Einojuhani Rautavaara ‘s Manhattan Trilogy, Webern’s Six Pieces for Orchestra and Schubert’s Symphony No. 9) was the fluidity and seamlessness with which these young players moved through the constantly changing textures. … The playing was vigorous and secure, with a transparency that suited Mr. Dennis Russell Davies’s conception of the work as a picture of late Classicism on the cusp of the Romantic revolution.”

-Allan Kozinn/The New York Times

“The concert began with Webern’s Six Pieces for Orchestra, composed four years after Juilliard was founded … The Webern pieces require alertness, simplicity, musical poise. All of these qualities were present. The power of these pieces lies in their quietude, and disquietude. That power was felt. Mr. Davies understands this music, and he built the pieces hauntingly. The orchestra was gratifyingly precise … Every solo performer stepped up to the plate. I should single out the French-horn player, who was brave and accurate.”

-Jay Nordlinger/The New York Sun

“The flagship of The Juilliard School, THE JUILLIARD ORCHESTRA, managed to include in its European tour, the first ever guest performance in Finland with the Sibelius Academy as its local host – and not a day too early.  Little wonder that American orchestras can maintain their sky-high standards when the students – from 45 countries – sound like this.”

-Mats Liljeroos/Hufvudstadsbladet

“The student musicians, led by James DePreist, gave performances of Brahms's Third Symphony and German Requiem … The symphony's opening bars could hardly have been couched in grander gestures or a richer sound, and as the first movement unfolded, the orchestra's huge string body showed considerable flexibility.  The woodwinds used their spotlight at the start of the Andante to fine effect as well, introducing an invitingly warm reading. And Mr. DePreist drew shapely accounts of the final two movements … In their best moments the orchestra and the huge Choral Union produced a beautifully focused and surprisingly clear-textured sound that got to the heart of this intensely emotional and personal score.”

-Allan Kozinn/The New York Times

“In truth, I found it more rewarding to reencounter these familiar works (Beethoven Symphony No. 8) at the Juilliard concert on December 11, 2000.  There is an extra something in the atmosphere when student musicians perform the standard repertory, and it goes back to the historic role played by the conservatory, a role that has been increasingly taken for granted since the middle of the 20th century. …it was refreshing to hear well-known works performed without the sleek gloss that often mars the work of major orchestras.  The JUILLIARD ORCHESTRA can do just fine by a Beethoven symphony, just as the school’s Opera Theater can present an enjoyable production of Rossini’s “Cenerentola,” as it recently did.”

-Anthony Tommasini/The New York Times