Arts Leaders Honored | Commencement 2019

In addition to almost 270 undergraduate and graduate students who will receive their degrees at Juilliard’s 119th commencement, the school will recognize three leaders of the arts world. Choreographer and dance teacher Alonzo King, composer Kaija Saariaho, and actress Rita Moreno will each receive an honorary doctorate at the May 24 ceremony, which will be streamed at juilliard.edu/live. Camille Zamora (MM '02, voice, Artist Diploma '04, opera studies), co-founder of Sing for Hope, will deliver the commencement address.

Alonzo King
Choreographer and dance teacher Alonzo King, the son of Civil Rights activists, grew up in Santa Barbara, and studied at, among others, the School of American Ballet and the Harkness School of Ballet. He performed with Dance Theater of Harlem and other companies before retiring and forming the contemporary ballet company Lines in 1982 with the goal of creating multidisciplinary performances that investigate the affinities between Western and Eastern classical forms. King calls his pieces “thought structures,” explaining that they are created by the manipulation of energies that exist in matter through laws, which govern the shapes and movement directions of everything that exists. “The term Lines alludes to all that is visible in the phenomenal world,” King has said. “There is nothing that is made or formed without a line. Straight and Circle encompass all that we see.” King’s work has been recognized in the company’s San Francisco home as well as by the dance world’s most prestigious institutions; it is in repertory at companies including the Royal Swedish Ballet, Frankfurt Ballet, Ballet Béjart, Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo, Hong Kong Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, and Hubbard Street. Named a master of choreography by the Kennedy Center in 2005, King is a recipient of an NEA Choreographer’s Fellowship, Jacob’s Pillow Creativity Award, U.S. Artist Award in Dance, “Bessie” Award, and National Dance Project Residency and Touring awards. In 2015 he received the Doris Duke Artist Award in recognition of his ongoing contributions to the advancement of contemporary dance. Joining other icons in the field, King was named an Irreplaceable Dance Treasure by the Dance Heritage Coalition. A former San Francisco commissioner and a writer and lecturer on humanity and art, King holds honorary degrees from Dominican University and California Institute of the Arts.

Kaija Saariaho
Prizewinning Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho was born in Helsinki, where her teachers at the Sibelius Academy included the pioneering modernist Paavo Heininen and Magnus Lindberg. She continued her studies in Freiburg and while at the IRCAM research institute in Paris, she developed techniques for computerassisted composition, acquiring fluency in working on tape and with live electronics. Saariaho was inspired by the French spectralist composers, whose techniques are based on computer analysis of the sound spectrum, to develop her own method for creating harmonic structures as well as the detailed notation using harmonics, microtonality, and detailed continuum of sound extending from pure tone to unpitched noise. Her work was heard most recently at Juilliard in December, when the Juilliard Orchestra played her soundscape Ciel d’hiver under the baton of John Adams. Saariaho’s vocal writing is characterized by modally oriented melody accompanied by repeating patterns. Her opera L’Amour de loin, with a libretto by Amin Maalouf, was directed by Peter Sellars and premiered at the 2000 Salzburg Festival, eventually winning the composer a Grawemeyer Award and a Grammy for best recording. When the Metropolitan Opera staged L’Amour de loin, in 2016, it was the first time the company had presented an opera by a female composer since 1903. Saariaho’s oratorio La Passion de Simone, portraying the life and death of the philosopher Simone Weil, formed part of Sellars’ international New Crowned Hope festival in 2006-07. In addition to Maalouf and Sellars, Saariaho has collaborated with, among others, conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, flutist Camilla Hoitenga, cellist Anssi Karttunen, soprano Dawn Upshaw, and pianists Emmanuel Ax (Pre-College ’66; Diploma ’70, Postgraduate Diploma ’72) and Tuija Hakkila. She is composing an opera scheduled to premiere in 2020.

Rita Moreno
Born in Puerto Rico, Oscar, Tony, Emmy, and Grammy winner Rita Moreno moved with her seamstress mother to New York at age 5 and soon began dancing lessons. By age 11, she was employed dubbing American films into Spanish, and she made her Broadway debut at 13. She went on to London’s West End; appear in more than 40 feature films and countless television shows; and perform in numerous regional theaters including the Berkeley Rep, which premiered her one-woman show, Life Without Makeup, in 2011. Among Moreno’s best-known movie roles was Anita in the 1961 film adaptation of West Side Story, for which she became the first Hispanic woman to win an Oscar, for best supporting actress. She is an executive producer for the Steven Spielberg remake of West Side Story, which is slated to begin filming this summer; she’s also co-starring, as Valentina, an updated, female version of Doc, the candy store proprietor. Moreno won her Grammy for the soundtrack album of Sesame Street spinoff The Electric Company (1972); Emmys for The Rockford Files (1974) and The Muppet Show (1976); and a best actress Tony for The Ritz (1975). Still busy as a performer, she stars in the Latino remake of Norman Lear’s classic sitcom One Day at a Time, will be on the upcoming live-action reboot of Carmen Sandiego after starring in the cartoon of the same name in the 1990s, and tours regularly with her band. Moreno has received lifetime achievement awards from the Kennedy Center (following the release of her bestselling memoir, in 2015) and the Screen Actors Guild (after her album Una Vez Más came out, in 2013). She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2004 and National Medal of Arts in 2009.