Placido Domingo to deliver Commencement Address at The Juilliard School's 103rd Commencement Ceremony on Friday, May 23, 2008 at 11 AM in Avery Fisher Hall

Ceremony Awards Juilliard Honorary Doctorates to Legends: jazz pianist Hank Jones, dancer/choreographer Carmen de Lavallade, philanthropist Charles Simonyi, playwright/author/actress Anna Deavere Smith, and pianist Mitsuko Uchida

The Juilliard School will honor six distinguished artists and cultural leaders at its 103rd Commencement Ceremony, to be held on Friday, May 23, 2008 at 11 AM in Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center. Legendary tenor Placido Domingo will deliver the commencement address and receive an honorary doctorate. Other honorary degree recipients include: jazz pianist Hank Jones; dancer, choreographer, actress, and educator, Carmen de Lavallade; philanthropist and software engineer Charles Simonyi; playwright, writer, and actress Anna Deavere Smith will receive their citations from Juilliard President Joseph W. Polisi.

Juilliard’s Commencement Concert features the Juilliard Orchestra with conductor James DePreist and takes place on Wednesday, May 21 at 8 PM in Avery Fisher Hall. The program includes William Schuman’s American Festival Overture, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 in F Major, Op. 68, ‘Pastorale’ and Brahms’ Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 73. Tickets are $20 and $10 and available beginning April 16 at the Avery Fisher Hall Box Office or through CenterCharge at (212) 721-6500. Free tickets for students and seniors are available only at the Box Office.

BIOGRAPHIES:

Tenor Placido Domingo has sung 124 different roles, more than any other tenor in the annals of music, with at least two more new roles planned in the next three seasons. His repertoire spans the gamut from Mozart to Verdi, from Berlioz to Puccini, from Wagner to Ginastera. He sings in every important opera house in the world and has made an unparalleled amount of recordings of which 101 are full-length operas, often recording the same role more than once, and for which he has earned nine Grammy awards, and two in the newly-established Latin Division. He has made more than 50 videos and 3 theatrically released films - Zeffirelli’s Traviata and Otello, and Francesco Rosi’s Carmen. His telecast of Tosca, from the authentic settings in Rome, was seen by more than one billion people in 117 different countries. By now, he has opened the Metropolitan Opera season a record-setting 21 different times, having by-passed in 1999, the old Caruso record of 17 opening nights. As a conductor, he has led opera performances in all the important theaters from the Metropolitan Opera to London’s Covent Garden and the Vienna State Opera and has conducted purely symphonic concerts with such renowned orchestras as the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic, London Symphony, and the Chicago Symphony, while also making recordings as a conductor. He is today the General Director of both the Washington National Opera and of the Los Angeles Opera. Both companies enjoy today special artistic acclaim and financial stability. Mr. Domingo has raised millions of dollars through special benefit concerts in order to help such causes as the victims of the 1985 Mexican earthquake, AIDS, and the victims of such other disasters as the Armenian earthquake, and the mud-slides of Acapulco. He has become one of the most decorated and honored artists before the public today; he was named one of the Kennedy Center Honorees; Commander of France’s Legion of Honor, a decoration rarely given to a non-French citizen; the recipient of the Honorary Knighthood of the British Empire; and of the highest decoration in the United States, the Medal of Freedom. (Honorary Doctor of Music)

Carmen de Lavallade, dancer, choreographer, actress, and educator, was born in Los Angeles and studied dance as a young child and at 16 received a scholarship to study with Lester Horton. She joined the Lester Horton Dance Theater in 1949 and was a lead dancer from 1950 to 1954. It was with Horton that she began her long association with Alvin Ailey. Ms. de Lavallade was seen by Lena Horne in Los Angeles, who had introduced the young dancer to filmmakers at 20th Century Fox, and between 1952 and 1955, Ms. de Lavallade appeared in four movies, including Carmen Jones (1955). During the filming, she met Herbert Ross, who asked her to appear as a dancer in the Broadway musical, House of Flowers (1954), which he choreographed. During the run, she met and married the dancer and actor Geoffrey Holder. Ms. de Lavallade succeeded her cousin, Janet Collins, as “prima ballerina” of the Metropolitan Opera in 1956. She also performed with New York City Opera. She staged musicals, plays, and operas, and later became a full professor at Yale and a member of the Yale Repertory Theater. Her involvement in arts education culminated in her appointment as the director of Adelphi University’s Dance Department in the late 1990s. She continues her dedication to the arts. (Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts)

Inducted as a “Jazz Master” by the National Endowment for the Arts, Hank Jones has had a long career as a jazz pianist and composer. He is the eldest surviving member of a prolific jazz musician family, which included the late drummer Elvin Jones, and trumpeter/composer Thad Jones. Hank Jones continues the legacy by recording and playing at concerts and festivals around the world. He is one of the few surviving jazz greats photographed in “A Great Day in Harlem.” Born in 1918 in Vicksburg, Mississippi, Mr. Jones grew up in Pontiac, Michigan. He started playing in local bands in Michigan, Ohio, and Buffalo before moving to New York City in 1943. His first job was with Hot Lips Page at the Onyx Club on 52nd Street, where in 1945, he joined Billy Eckstine’s big band. The following year, he joined Coleman Hawkins and from 1947 to 1951, he toured the world with Jazz at the Philharmonic accompanying Ella Fitzgerald. In 1952, he joined Artie Shaw and later worked with Johnny Hodges, followed by Tyree Glenn. In 1956, he joined Benny Goodman and in 1959, he was hired by CBS Studios as a staff pianist, a position he held for 17 years. Mr. Jones has played and recorded with the virtual who’s who of jazz history and has more than 500 albums and CDs to his name. Mr. Jones stays busy playing concerts and doing jazz master classes at universities, such as Harvard and NYU. (Honorary Doctor of Music)

Philanthropist and software engineer Charles Simonyi was born in Budapest, Hungary and earned his B.S. in engineering mathematics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1972, and a doctorate in computer science from Stanford University in 1977. From 1972 to 1980, he worked at Xerox Corporation’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), where he created the first WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you get) text editor called Bravo. He left PARC to join Microsoft Corporation, where he held the titles Director of Application Development, Chief Architect, and most recently, Distinguished Engineer. While at Microsoft, he hired and managed the teams that developed Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and other best-selling software applications. Mr. Simonyi left Microsoft to found Intentional Software Corporation, a software engineering company with an emphasis on productivity applications, where he is currently President and CEO. He founded the Charles Simonyi Fund for Arts and Sciences in late 2003 to support arts organizations, science programs, and educational institutions. Major gifts have been made to the Seattle Symphony, the Seattle Public Library Foundation, and the Karoly Simonyi Memorial Endowment Fund at Princeton University’s Institute for Advanced Study, presented in 2005 to honor his late father. As the fifth civilian space flight traveler, Mr. Simonyi’s April 2007 trip to the International Space Station was the latest destination in a life defined by exploration and discovery. He has been a member of the National Academy of Engineering since 1997. (Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters)

Anna Deavere Smith is an playwright, author, and actress. In 1996, she was awarded the prestigious fellowship by The MacArthur Foundation saying that she “has created a new form of theater – a blend of theatrical art, social commentary, journalism, and intimate reverie.” Ms. Smith is a tenured professor in the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU and is affiliated with NYU’s School of Law. As a playwright and performer, Ms. Smith has created a series of ongoing theatrical works during the past 19 years, which she calls On The Road: A Search for American Character. She is working on a new play for the series called Let Me Down Easy. Its subject will be the resilience and vulnerability of the human body. The play was inspired by Ms. Smith’s visiting professorship at the Yale School of Medicine, where she presented a performance for medical ground rounds called Rounding It Out (2000). As part of Ms. Smith’s preparation for Let Me Down Easy, she traveled to Rwanda to interview survivors of the Genocide and to Uganda and South Africa to do research on the effects of the AIDS pandemic. She also interviewed victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. Her latest book is entitled Letters to a Young Artist, and her articles have appeared in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, The New Yorker, and other publications. Looking at controversial events from multiple points of view, Ms. Smith’s theater and film work combines the journalistic technique of interviewing her subjects with the art of interpreting their words through her performances. Her play, Twilight: Los Angeles, examined the civil unrest following the Rodney King verdict, and played at venues throughout the country and on Broadway. Her most recent play, House Arrest, explores the mythic role that the presidency has played throughout American history. She has appeared on television in such shows as NBC’s West Wing and CBS’ Presidio Med, and ABC’s The Practice. She was featured in the movies in Ivan Reitman’s Dave, Rob Reiner’s The American President, Jonathan Demme’s Philadelphia, Robert Benton’s The Human Stain, and Christopher Columbus’ Rent. She is on the board of the Museum of Modern Art and chairs the Museum’s Committee on Film. (Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts)

Mitsuko Uchida is a performer who brings a deep insight into the music she plays through her own search for truth and beauty. She is renowned for her interpretations of Mozart and Schubert, but she has also illuminated the music of Berg, Schoenberg, Webern and Boulez for a new generation of listeners, and her recording of the Schoenberg Piano Concerto with Pierre Boulez and the Cleveland Orchestra won four awards, including The Gramophone Award for Best Concerto. Over the last two years she has been giving performances of Beethoven’s last three piano sonatas. Ms. Uchida performs throughout the world with many different partners. She is artist-in-residence at the Cleveland Orchestra, where she directed all the Mozart concerti from the keyboard over a number of seasons. She has been featured in the Concertgebouw’s Carte Blanche series. Her engagements this season include recitals in Vienna, Amsterdam, Köln, Rome, London and New York. She performs with the London Symphony and Boston Symphony Orchestras with Sir Colin Davis; with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Ensemble Intercontemporain with Pierre Boulez; and with the Cleveland Orchestra with Franz Welser-Möst. In the following season, she will be artist-in-residence with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. Ms. Uchida recently took part in the series of ‘Signature’ concerts marking the reopening of London’s Royal Festival Hall when she performed Mozart with Sir Charles Mackerras and the Philharmonia Orchestra. She records exclusively for Decca and her recordings include the complete Mozart piano sonatas and piano concerti; the complete Schubert piano sonatas; Debussy’s Etudes; the five Beethoven piano concerti with Kurt Sanderling; Mozart Sonatas for Violin and Piano with Mark Steinberg; Die Schöne Müllerin with Ian Bostridge for EMI; and the final three piano sonatas. A recording of Beethoven’s Opp. 101 and 106 (Hammerklavier) has just been released. Ms. Uchida has demonstrated a long-standing commitment to aiding the development of young musicians and is a trustee of the Borletti-Buitoni Trust. She also is Co-director, with Richard Goode, of the Marlboro Music Festival. (Honorary Doctor of Music)

ABOUT THE JUILLIARD SCHOOL:
The Juilliard School established this country’s standard for education in the performing arts, beginning with music in 1905. In 1951, its Dance Division was established, with combined training in contemporary and ballet technique. Juilliard became part of Lincoln Center in 1968, and added a four-year Drama program. In 2001, Juilliard broke new ground with the addition of its first Jazz Program. More than 800 young artists, from 47 states and 50 foreign countries, attend Juilliard; among its celebrated alumni are Pina Bausch, Van Cliburn, James Conlon, Miles Davis, Renée Fleming, Philip Glass, Kevin Kline, James Levine, Laura Linney, Patti LuPone, Yo-Yo Ma, Wynton Marsalis, Itzhak Perlman, Leontyne Price, Steve Reich, Leonard Slatkin, Kevin Spacey, Paul Taylor, Robin Williams, and many others. 

Highlights of Juilliard’s 2007-08 academic year include: an open rehearsal and performance of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 led by Vladimir Ashkenazy with the Juilliard Orchestra and Juilliard pianist Hong Xu; appearances by guest conductors Pierre Boulez, James Conlon, Dennis Russell Davies, Asher Fisch, James Levine, Jeffrey Milarsky, Emmanuel Villaume; appearances by Juilliard conductors James DePreist, Adam Glaser, and George Stelluto; jazz concerts with Paquito D’Rivera, Christian McBride, and Maria Schneider; four drama productions featuring the 4th-year acting class in August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Ibsen’s The Ghost, John Guare’s House of Blue Leaves, and The Greeks, Part Two: The Murders, adapted by John Barton and Kenneth Cavander; Juilliard Opera Center productions of Rossini’s Le Comte Ory and Ned Rorem’s Our Town (coming up in April); December Dance Creations with Juilliard dancers and the Juilliard Orchestra, conducted by James Conlon in newly-commissioned works by Nicolo Fonte, Adam Hougland, and Robert Battle and Dance Masterworks of the 20th Century featuring works by renowned figures from the Juilliard Dance Division’s early years: Martha Graham, José Limón, and Antony Tudor (coming up later this month); and a celebration of American composer’s Elliott Carter’s 100th year during Juilliard’s FOCUS! festival: All About Elliott.