Juilliard Presents Special Events with President Damian Woetzel, Wynton Marsalis, Mitch Landrieu, Caroline Shaw, and Vijay Gupta

NEW YORK –– Juilliard presents a series of free public programs focused on the arts role in society, moderated by Juilliard President Damian Woetzel. This series features former mayor of New Orleans Mitch Landrieu in conversation with jazz legend Wynton Marsalis, composer and musician Caroline Shaw, and violinist and Juilliard Pre-College alumnus Vijay Gupta, who was just named a 2018 MacArthur Fellow. These events stem from Woetzel’s vision to build on the school’s tradition of excellence while encouraging deeper conversations about creativity, entrepreneurship, and collaboration in the arts and beyond.

The series opens with Voices of New Orleans: An Evening With Mitch Landrieu and Wynton Marsalis, on Wednesday, October 24, 2018, at 7:30pm in Paul Hall. The evening will celebrate the music, history, and culture of New Orleans as narrated by two of the city’s great leaders: lawyer, author, and former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu and jazz legend Wynton Marsalis, director of Juilliard Jazz and an alumnus of the school. The event will feature performances by Juilliard students and will explore how culture has infused and shaped the political and social fabric of one of the world’s most vibrant cities.

On Thursday, November 1, 2018, at 6pm in Paul Hall, Juilliard celebrates Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and 2018-19 Juilliard Creative Associate Caroline Shaw. This hourlong experience, In Harmony: Caroline Shaw in Conversation and Performance, curated and hosted by Shaw with Woetzel, will feature performances of Shaw’s compositions by Juilliard students and culminate in Shaw vocally leading a performance of her work By & By.

President Woetzel is joined by violinist and 2018 MacArthur Fellow Vijay Gupta, an alumnus of Juilliard’s Pre-College Division, on Wednesday, November 7, 2018, at 6pm in Paul Hall. Gupta has been a member of the Los Angeles Philharmonic since 2007. In 2010, he founded Street Symphony, which performs at jails, shelters, and transitional housing facilities. Each December, it gives a performance of Handel’s Messiah featuring both professional musicians and people from skid row.

Admission is free for these events, and tickets are required. For more information, please visit juilliard.edu/calendar.

In keeping with a tradition created by Juilliard President Emeritus Joseph W. Polisi, President Woetzel is teaching a course entitled The Arts and Society this fall. He has invited a series of guest lecturers from a wide variety of fields to speak on how the arts intersect with and shape the world today. Mitch Landrieu, Caroline Shaw, and Vijay Gupta will all participate in Woetzel’s course in conjunction with their visits to campus.

Juilliard’s creative enterprise programming, including the Creative Associates program, is generously supported by Jody and John Arnhold. These programs are also supported by the Joseph W. Polisi Artist as Citizen Fund.

About Mitch Landrieu
Mitch Landrieu was the 61st Mayor of New Orleans (2010-2018). When he took office, the city was still recovering from Hurricane Katrina and in the midst of the BP Oil Spill. Under Landrieu's leadership, New Orleans is widely recognized as one of the nation’s great comeback stories.

In 2015, Landrieu was named “Public Official of the Year” by Governing, and in 2016 was voted “America’s top turnaround mayor” in a Politico survey of mayors. He gained national prominence for his powerful decision to take down four Confederate monuments in New Orleans, which also earned him the prestigious John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award. In his New York Times best-selling book, In the Shadow of Statues: A White Southerner Confronts History, Landrieu recounts his personal journey confronting racism, and tackles the broader history of slavery, race relations, and institutional inequalities that still plague America. He recently launched the E Pluribus Unum Fund, which will work to bring people together across the South around the issues of race, equity, economic opportunity and violence. Prior to serving as mayor, Landrieu served two terms as lieutenant governor and 16 years in the state legislature. He also served as president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors. Mitch and his wife Cheryl have five children.

About Wynton Marsalis
Wynton Marsalis (’81, trumpet) is director of jazz studies at Juilliard and managing and artistic director at Jazz at Lincoln Center. A world-renowned trumpeter, composer, educator, and leading advocate for American culture, he was born in New Orleans in 1961 and made his recording debut as a leader in 1982. He has since made more than 80 jazz and classical recordings and has won nine Grammy Awards. In 1983 he became the first and only artist to win both classical and jazz Grammys in the same year. Today he is the only artist ever to win Grammy Awards in five consecutive years (1983–87).

Marsalis is the recipient of honorary doctorates from more than 25 of America’s top academic institutions including Columbia, Harvard, Howard, Princeton, Yale, and Juilliard. His creativity has been celebrated the world over. In 1997 he became the first jazz artist to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music for his oratorio Blood on the Fields. In 2001 he was appointed Messenger of Peace by Kofi Annan, secretary-general of the United Nations, and in 2005, received the National Medal of Arts, the highest award given to artists by the U.S. government. In 2016 he received the National Humanities Medal for his work inspiring music lovers everywhere to embrace America’s quintessential sound.

Marsalis has authored six books including Jazz ABZ: An A to Z Collection of Jazz Portraits, Moving to Higher Ground: How Jazz Can Change Your Life, and, most recently, Squeak, Rumble, Whomp! Whomp! Whomp! Marsalis helped lead the effort to construct Jazz at Lincoln Center’s home, the Frederick P. Rose Hall, which opened its doors in 2004.

About Caroline Shaw
Caroline Shaw is a New York-based musician—vocalist, violinist, composer, and producer—who performs in solo and collaborative projects. She was the youngest recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2013 for Partita for 8 Voices, written for the Grammy-winning Roomful of Teeth, of which she is a member. Recent commissions include new works for Renée Fleming with Inon Barnatan, Dawn Upshaw with Sō Percussion and Gil Kalish, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s with John Lithgow, the Dover Quartet, TENET, The Crossing, the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia, the Calidore Quartet, Brooklyn Rider, the Baltimore Symphony, and Roomful of Teeth with A Far Cry.

The 2018-19 season will see premieres by pianist Jonathan Biss with the Seattle Symphony, Anne Sofie von Otter with Philharmonia Baroque, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Juilliard 415. Shaw’s film scores include Erica Fae’s To Keep the Light and Josephine Decker’s Madeline’s Madeline as well as the upcoming short 8th Year of the Emergency by Maureen Towey. She has produced for Kanye West (The Life of Pablo; Ye) and Nas (NASIR), and has contributed to records by The National, and by Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed Parry. Once she got to sing in three part harmony with Sara Bareilles and Ben Folds at the Kennedy Center, and that was pretty much the bees’ knees and elbows. Shaw studied at Rice, Yale, and Princeton, currently teaches at NYU, and is a Creative Associate at Juilliard. She has held residencies at Dumbarton Oaks, the Banff Centre, Music on Main, and the Vail Dance Festival.

About Vijay Gupta
Vijay Gupta is a violinist, speaker, and passionate advocate for artistic voices at the center of social justice. Gupta joined the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2007 at age 19, after having completed an undergraduate degree in biology from Marist College and a master’s degree in violin performance from the Yale School of Music. As a 2011 TED Senior Fellow, Gupta founded and began directing Street Symphony, a nonprofit organization dedicated to engaging underserved communities experiencing homelessness and incarceration in Los Angeles through musical performance and dialogue. In 2017, Vijay Gupta was nominated and named one of six national Citizen Artist Fellows by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Vijay Gupta made his solo debut with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Zubin Mehta at age 11, and has performed as a recitalist, soloist, and chamber musician on an international scale since the age of 8. He has also performed as a guest concertmaster with the Los Angeles Opera and the UK’s acclaimed Philharmonia Orchestra. Gupta serves on the faculty of the Longy School of Music of Bard College Masters of Arts in Teaching (MAT) program, which prepares musicians to become agents of change through the study of performance, music pedagogy, and social justice. Gupta also serves on the board of directors of the D.C.-based national arts advocacy organization Americans for the Arts as well as Los Angeles’s beloved 24th Street Theatre, which serves to engage, educate, and provoke a diverse community with excellent theater and arts education. In 2015, Gupta was presented with an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters by the University of La Verne and in 2017, at age 29, was awarded the Leonard Bernstein Lifetime Achievement Award for the Elevation of Music in Society from the Longy School. In October 2018, he became a MacArthur fellow.

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