By DAVID PRATT

When the Institute of Musical Art was founded in 1905, certain qualified students not enrolled in degree programs took private lessons and selected courses for credit. These were Juilliard's first extension students—though the term, which designated the pure profit derived from their enrollment, would not be formally applied until 1933.

Stanley Wolfe (second from left) was the first head of the Evening Division. He is pictured with his wife (far left) and Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Hardy at a reception in November 1962. (Photo by Impact Photos)

In 1956, Juilliard President William Schuman appointed one of his administrators, Stanley Wolfe, to handle the needs of a division that now offered courses specifically for extension students. In 1968, master classes by prominent performing artists were added, in order to increase public participation at Lincoln Center, Juilliard's new home, and bring in extra revenue. Over the next 20 years, the Extension Division grew to 25 courses attended by about 250 students per semester.

The Extension Division was renamed the Evening Division in 1989. Aggressive advertising and more accessible registration increased enrollment 100 percent over the next three years. Today, long after the move to Lincoln Center, with some 800 students per semester enrolled in 25 performance courses for credit and 41 noncredit courses—all taught by some of the greatest teachers, performers, and composers of our time—the most evocative and telling moniker of all appears on the cover of Juilliard's Evening Division catalogs: "Juilliard at Night."

For Juilliard now stands, of course, at Broadway and 65th Street, by day an unassuming if busy neighborhood, which at night comes gloriously, uniquely alive—thanks not only to performers, but perhaps most of all to the devotees of the performing arts. All day Lincoln Center hums with artists rehearsing, administrators overseeing, and students learning, but it is at night that the faithful come and transform the plazas and halls. And one building, the Juilliard building, is transformed in a way most others are not. For Juilliard at night is filled not just with audiences, but with students. And not just conservatory students. Juilliard at night is filled with Evening Division students, many of whom are well past conservatory age and who, regardless of their levels of technical knowledge or facility, are fulfilling long-deferred desires to make music, to know music, to hear music more deeply, and to uncover, experience, and comprehend the forces, in themselves and in others, that seek transcendence through musical expression.

Kendall Briggs, pictured in 2002, who teaches The Elements of Music. (Photo by Henry Grossman)

The composer Kendall Briggs, who has taught in the Evening Division for nearly a decade, speaks of what students bring to Juilliard. "Their passion for music and art is keen, and they are willing to work incredibly hard to achieve their goals. Their ability to now engage in the process of learning music in a way they have always dreamed is truly a dream come true for many."

"Every teacher knows that the best class to teach is the noncredit Evening Division type," says opera composer Scott Eyerly, who has taught Music Orientation, a noncredit Evening Division course, for 15 years. "The students are doing it by free will. They don't need it to graduate or because it will look good on their résumé."

Katherine Gertson, the Evening Division's director for 10 years, praises Eyerly and his course—"he has a great sense of humor and wonderful energy; Music Orientation is always full"—and describes what inspires Evening Division students: "We get calls from people who just retired, or they're in a position in their job where they have more time, or they've had a crisis in life and want to find something that grounds them. Music was a big part of their life—until life took over. Now they want to get back to it."

Noted choreographer Michael Uthoff, center, a former Extension Division student, is shown performing the premiere of Anna Sokolow's The Question in April 1964 with Ze'eva Cohen (Dip. '66), left, and Martha Clarke (B.F.A. '65), right, and other members of the Juilliard Dance Ensemble. At that time, properly qualified Extension Division students could enroll in many classes offered in the Regular Division of the School. (Photo by Merlin Petroff)

Gertson recalls one student, a former music teacher, who came to Juilliard after retirement to study again. Three months later she learned she had liver cancer. Though she was going through chemotherapy, she told Gertson, "I need these classes. It's a goal for me to get to Juilliard and hear music and learn more about music. It gets me through my treatments." The woman returned the next year, cleared of liver cancer, but then was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She continued classes—and chemo—beat the pancreatic cancer, and signed up for Evening Division last fall, but succumbed finally to a recurrence of the liver cancer. Gertson marvels at how "she was so determined. Juilliard was the one positive thing in her life. She had only so much energy, but it meant so much to her."

Few Evening Division students must swim against such strong currents just to get to class, but the hunger and determination, and the profound sense of personal fulfillment desired and achieved, are common themes.

Leslie Brerton describes herself as being a "born-again piano student," thanks to Juilliard's Evening Division. A self-described "mediocre" music student as a child, Leslie stopped the piano at 17. She returned to lessons 30 years later, but her newfound devotion exhausted the resources near her home in Pennsylvania. With her children gone, her parents recently deceased, and her career as a nurse winding down, Leslie looked eastward.

Inside the division's catalog, Leslie found "all kinds of classes that interested me." She and her husband already had an apartment in New York, so she committed to a weekly two-hour trip from Pennsylvania, staying two days in the city each time, and taking two classes for credit at Juilliard: Piano III, a group class; and Introduction to the Elements of Music, taught by Kendall Briggs, "an unbelievable teacher," who made the heretofore difficult subject of theory manageable and interesting for Leslie.

David Dubal, pictured in 1984, leads the popular World of the Piano. (Photo by Peter Schaaf)

Subsequently, having read writer and broadcaster David Dubal's Evenings With Horowitz, Leslie signed up for one of Dubal's courses, The World of the Piano, where Juilliard conservatory students often perform in class as guests. There, Leslie met and befriended a young Juilliard-trained pianist, Jung Lin, whose style she particularly loved. Leslie invited Jung Lin to give a private recital in her home in Pennsylvania, which triggered an invitation for the young virtuoso to play Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 last fall with the Northeastern Pennsylvania Philharmonic. Ms. Lin has since made her Alice Tully Hall debut, and she plays there again this month.

As for Ms. Lin's patron, as a result of friendships made with fellow Evening Division students, Leslie helped to found a piano club. Meetings rotate among members' apartments, with each member playing a new piece each month, and thus developing a small repertory of 5 to 10 pieces. "I have made wonderful friends at Juilliard," Leslie enthuses. "It's so nice to be with people who have similar interests and goals."

And Leslie exhibits another classic Evening Division trait: course addiction. Every year since 1998 she has taken courses with opera composer Michael White, including one called Mozart's Last Year and, in 2005-06, The Legacy of Bach. She has also taken Kendall Briggs's The Mozart Operas, and courses on Schubert and Schumann, and Debussy and Ravel.

"I can not praise the Evening Division enough," Leslie says. "For Juilliard to open up and allow anybody to benefit from their faculty I think is wonderful. Every teacher I've had has been incredible."

According to Katherine Gertson, "the secret to the Evening Division's success is the faculty. They show great patience, because adult students often ask the same question three different ways to make sure they've got it, whereas it may not occur to a younger person to ask at all. And the faculty here have to deal with great diversity. You have people with a lot of musical experience versus some with very little. The teachers must meet everyone's needs, and discuss complicated musical ideas in clear ways. Our faculty are wonderful educators and wonderful people, and that's our secret here."

Lisa Kovalik, pictured in 1997, teaches the Two-Piano Ensemble course. (Photo by Henry Grossman)

If Juilliard at night is a glorious playground for the dedicated amateur, is it not also, with its courses for credit, a gateway to professional careers?

Yes, perhaps, although Gertson cautions against seeing the Evening Division as a stepping stone to the conservatory. "The Evening Division does not 'feed' the conservatory," she says. "One must get into the conservatory on one's own merit. A few have done this—a handful." And many others have graduated from Juilliard's Evening Division into conservatory programs elsewhere.

The pianist Frank Daykin not only prepared for conservatory study in the Evening Division but, one might say, met his destiny at Juilliard. Frustrated after an unproductive stint at another conservatory, Daykin came to Juilliard in 1979 at age 21 to study piano privately. He also auditioned for Lisa Kovalik's Two Piano Ensemble evening class. "I entered the room," Daykin recalls, "and Lisa was there with some people who had taken her class previously. One of the veterans, Millette Alexander, was next to Lisa. Lisa paired us and said, 'Here, sight-read this.' I looked at Millette and she looked at me, and we sat down and did it. There was incredible magic. Everyone in room got goose bumps." Alexander and Daykin formed a professional piano duo that, over the next quarter century, would record and play around the world to glowing reviews.

"I would like the Evening Division to get even more notice than it does," Kovalik says. "More and more people are choosing other professions because they can't earn a living as musicians, but I have a terrific group of advanced pianists who are at a very high level. I give them nothing short of what they would learn in the conservatory."

In 1980, Daykin entered the degree program at the Manhattan School of Music, but continued with Kovalik at night. "It conquered the isolation of the professional track," Daykin says, "when every week I got to go and experience the social aspect of the piano, instead of just the practicing-alone-in-my-room aspect. Getting the degree was deadly serious, versus feeding my soul and the sense of fun and pleasure in music-making in Lisa's class."

The Evening Division course catalog and registration information is available online at www.juilliard.edu/evening or by calling the Evening Division office at (212) 799-5000, ext. 273.

In 1989, Daykin returned to the Evening Division as the teacher of an art-song master class, and would find the fun and the soul feeding still there: "The students were all very collegial and enthusiastic, just wonderful people—regular people singing unusual repertory that doesn't get done too often. No one was a professional, but I didn't compromise the subject matter. I held them to the same high standards, which they embraced willingly and happily."

Now, Daykin is back as a student again, in Kovalik's Chopin Étude Lab. And all the enthusiasm, dedication, and collegial feeling are still there. And if, on some weekday evening, you pass the corner of Broadway and 65th Street, don't be fooled by the appearance of the crowd. At night, Lincoln Center draws not just tuxedoed maestri and patrons in furs and jewels. Running against this crowd are men and women—perhaps a minute or two late because adult life, after all, has its demands—en route to feed their souls in a way that goes beyond holding a ticket to A101, and that produces rewards that the relentlessly touring, negotiating, recording professional may experience all too rarely.

And that is what is happening at Juilliard, at night.

David Pratt is a freelance arts writer living in New York City. In addition to The Juilliard Journal, he has written for The New York Times, Playbill, and many other publications.