At Juilliard's commencement on May 23, the happy assemblage of graduating students will include the first recipients in the School's history of the Artist Diploma in Jazz Studies. The relationship between jazz and Juilliard has come a long way in the four years since President Joseph W. Polisi gave an "intriguingly evasive" answer to a question about the future of jazz at the School in a New York Times article on May 23, 1999. At the time, President Polisi noted that, "We don't want to do anything that we can't do really well or that we can't relate to everything else." Now that the Juilliard Institute for Jazz Studies has been operational for two years, it is clear that those criteria have been not only met, but brilliantly surpassed.

For those who may not be familiar with the program's scheduled sequence of development, the introduction of the Artist Diploma program in jazz studies in September 2001 was the first of two stages of implementation. The second phase will take place in September 2003 with the addition of a Bachelor of Music degree program in jazz to the curriculum. Seven students will receive an Artist Diploma at this year's commencement, while three students who entered the program in 2002 will continue their studies for a second year. Reflecting admirably on the program's success, all 13 of the current jazz students who don't already possess an undergraduate degree from another institution will return in the fall to complete the requirements for Juilliard's new Bachelor of Music program in jazz. Seven prospective students have been offered admission for the 2003-04 academic year (five for the bachelor's degree program and two as Artist Diploma candidates).

Students in the first class of Juilliard’s Institute for Jazz Studies posed with the program’s director, Victor Goines (foreground), in spring 2002. Photo by Peter Schaaf

Faculty member Loren Schoenberg, whose jazz history class was the only place outside of rehearsals where all the jazz students came together, remarked: "It was an education for me as a teacher to see the ease with which the jazz students interacted with their peers in the jazz program and other disciplines, especially given that many of them came from environments in which they were relatively isolated in terms of having opportunities to perform with classmates at their same level of skill. At Juilliard, the common goal of achieving artistic excellence, regardless of the genre, established an immediate bond among the jazz students as well as with their fellow students in other disciplines."

Jazz studies students have had numerous opportunities to strengthen that bond in collaborations with their colleagues in other divisions and programs. The Juilliard Jazz Orchestra teamed up with the Juilliard Orchestra for its inaugural performance in Alice Tully Hall, and music students from outside the jazz program have regularly appeared as guests on subsequent Jazz Orchestra concerts. Jazz students performed as part of a Drama Division production of Laurence Fishburne's Riff Raff in the fall of 2001, and the Jazz Orchestra performed a score commissioned from Victor Goines, director of the jazz program, for choreographer Robert Battle's Base Line on a program celebrating the Dance Division's 50th anniversary in February 2002. Jazz students also participated in a joint Juilliard Percussion Ensemble/Music Technology Center concert in October 2001, the Composers and Choreographers workshop in January 2003, and the Beyond the Machine electronic/interactive music concerts last month. "That was a great aspect of my learning experience here, because when I composed music for dance or spoken word, it really made me feel that every note and nuance was important," comments tenor saxophonist Ryan Redden, who collaborated with choreographer Yin-Ling Lin for a work on Beyond the Machine.

Many of the jazz students also had the opportunity to interact with other members of the Juilliard community through their participation in the Juilliard Colloquium, a one-semester course required of all first-time college students in the Music, Dance, and Drama Divisions. As a Colloquium leader, Loren Schoenberg observed that students from other disciplines were greatly impressed with the jazz students' level of musicianship, especially in areas of improvisation and composition. Schoenberg expressed his hope that the curriculum will eventually include still more educational "cross-pollination" between jazz and other programs.

"We've worked hard to build a strong foundation. Now we need to raise the bar even higher in terms of excellence, with more performances, more collaborations, and more community involvement."

As director of the Institute for Jazz Studies, Victor Goines is pleased that the program has fulfilled its goal of helping students move into professional careers, citing several current Artist Diploma candidates as examples. Ryan Keberle was recently appointed artistic director of the New York Youth Symphony's newly formed Jazz Band Classic ensemble, and has commissioned his colleague Adam Birnbaum to write pieces for the group. Drummer Ulysses Owens has been performing with pianist Milgrew Miller, and bassist Matt Brewer is performing with alto saxophonist Greg Osby. Trombonist Jennifer Krupa has performed at the Kennedy Center with the Sisters in Jazz Quintet and with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra.

Reflecting on her two years in the program, Krupa observed that "the preparation that was required for the busy schedule of concerts and classes reflected a realistic approach to what we'll face in our careers, and helped us learn to manage our time effectively." One of the highlights of her experience was participating with the Jazz Orchestra in the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, which was "a wonderful way to experience what New Orleans had to offer. We weren't sure how we'd be received--there was some concern that the name Juilliard would conjure up an image of stuffiness--but the audience was impressed with our ability to swing and gave us a standing ovation."

Goines has also been successful in realizing his intention for students in the program to integrate an awareness of jazz history into their performance and composition. In his review of the Juilliard Jazz Orchestra's all-Ellington program last October in The Village Voice, Daniel King stated that "Ryan Redden must have discovered God (or a Powerbar) during intermission, because he returned for the second set, aimed his saxophone high and his ambitions higher, and belted chorus after chorus of furious prayer to John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, and Ornette Coleman." (Notwithstanding his praise for Redden, King offered a mixed review whose misidentification of Wycliffe Gordon as co-director of the jazz program and misspelling of Ellington's "Brasilliance" somewhat undermined its legitimacy.) Goines notes that a productive consciousness of jazz history is also evident in many of the student compositions to be featured on the Jazz Orchestra's May 6 program at Alice Tully Hall.

"In the world of jazz, musical knowledge comes in many forms," explains Literature and Materials of Music faculty member Kendall Briggs, who played jazz in his native Seattle and teaches the fundamentals of theory, harmony, and ear training for those students in the jazz program whose background was not as strong in those areas. "Because it is an art based on the foundation of improvisation, and learning the style is mostly through intensive listening and transcriptions from various recordings as well as passing playing techniques through an oral tradition, the essentials of understanding the language of music itself (traditional harmony, counterpoint, etc.) are sometimes missing. What we all discovered in the new students coming in was a high level of playing but a vastly different and divergent understanding of the basics of how music is put together." The challenge, says Briggs, was in creating a course that could accommodate the diversity in the students' musical backgrounds and training.

Briggs also notes that classical musicians, who rarely improvise or play by ear, benefit in their interactions with the jazz musicians, and he says he wants to develop courses "that can bring these two important musical styles and ways of playing together, which is essential in a school like Juilliard. The art of improvisation was once an important part of the classical tradition. The great composers of the past were also performers, whose praise and renown arose in part from the fact that they could improvise on the spot, working up compositions of great artistry without the benefit of preparation." For today's classical musician, he adds, "improvisation provides a freedom of playing essential to understanding earlier musical periods. It calls upon a knowledge of theory and harmony that is immediately usable in performance, not left only for analysis. This is especially important in cadenzas in concertos and in da capo arias for singers. The most exciting aspect for me is to be a part of this new synthesis and watch it naturally occur as classical and jazz students mix and share these two great traditions with each other."

As far as the future of the program goes, Goines says, "We've worked hard to build a strong foundation. Now we need to raise the bar even higher in terms of excellence, with more performances, more collaborations, and more community involvement." And more for everyone to look forward to.

Lisa Robinson is a writer for The Campaign for Juilliard