A Piece of Juilliard’s Past

In hazy pre-internet days, Juilliard and its predecessor, the Institute for Musical Art, documented the community with scrapbooks that contained everything from news clippings to telegrams, photos, and letters about the school, the students, the faculty, and the staff. In 2021, the Leon Levy Foundation gave a generous two-year grant to support the digitization of historic production photos, programs, and more than 100 scrapbooks, including general volumes about the school (1920–54) and a separate set compiled by Martha Hill for the Dance Division (1951–91). At the time, Jane Gottlieb, vice president of library and information resources and director of the C.V. Starr doctoral fellows program, expressed gratitude on behalf of the school and noted that its history is “indelibly intertwined with that of the global performing arts field and the cultural landscape of New York City.”

These pages showing Duke Ellington giving Juilliard scholarships to New York public high school graduates “regardless of race, color, or creed” seemed particularly timely now since the Jazz Orchestra is paying tribute to Ellington this spring (May 9-12 at Dizzy's Club) and because one of the recipients, Elayne Jones (Diploma ’48, timpani; Postgraduate Diploma ’49, percussion)—who would become the first Black principal player in a major American orchestra when she joined the San Francisco Symphony, in 1972—recently died. (Jones changed the spelling of her first name after graduating from Juilliard.) Ellington’s own ties with Juilliard were strong—his son, Mercer (’40, trumpet), and granddaughter, Mercedes Ellington (BS ’60, dance), both attended the school. You can dive into this treasure trove here.