The Juilliard School Celebrates the Classes of 2023 With Commencement Ceremonies on May 19 and 20

NEW YORK–Juilliard will hold its 118th commencement ceremony in New York on May 19 at 11am at Alice Tully Hall, presided over by Juilliard President Damian Woetzel and Vincent Mai, chair of the board of trustees. It will also be livestreamed at juilliard.edu. The commencement program will celebrate over 250 Juilliard graduates and include performances by music, dance, and drama students. Juilliard board of trustees vice chair and drama alumna Laura Linney will deliver a welcome address to graduates and guests. As part of the ceremony, Juilliard will confer honorary doctorate degrees upon the following leaders in recognition of their outstanding contributions to the fields of classical music, jazz, modern dance, theater, film, and television: trailblazing orchestra industry leader Deborah Borda; innovative Martha Graham artistic director and Juilliard alumna Janet Eilber; groundbreaking Brazilian composer, arranger, and multi-instrumentalist Hermeto Pascoal; pioneering actor and Juilliard alumnus Wendell Pierce; and extraordinary music director and conductor Xian Zhang.

“We celebrate these artistic leaders for their extraordinary careers and for what they model and represent to our students as they take their next steps toward professional lives,” says President Damian Woetzel. “These five luminaries, including two Juilliard alumni, embody the excellence we aim to cultivate in our students--excellence rooted in creativity, inclusivity, and artistic citizenship. These honorary doctorate recipients have left an indelible mark on their respective fields, and we look forward to honoring their achievements at our ceremony on May 19.”

Juilliard’s campus in Tianjin, China, will host its second commencement ceremony Friday, May 19, at 10am China Standard Time (Thursday, May 18, 10pm ET), to honor its 35 graduates receiving Master of Music degrees. The commencement address will be given by world renowned violin virtuoso (and Juilliard faculty member and alumnus) Itzhak Perlman, whose work as a violin soloist, as well as a music educator through the Perlman Music Program and at Juilliard, helped earn him a Presidential Medal of Freedom, which he received from President Obama in 2015.

Juilliard’s Preparatory Division will hold a joint commencement for both Pre-College and Music Advancement Program (MAP) students on Saturday, May 20, at noon in Juilliard’s Peter Jay Sharp Theater. President Woetzel; Weston Sprott, dean and director of the Preparatory Division; Anthony McGill, MAP artistic director; Adam Meyer, provost (and alumnus); and Veda Kaplinsky, Pre-College artistic advisor (and alumnus) will present certificates of graduation to 95 Pre-College and MAP graduates. Maya Shankar, an alumna of the Pre-College violin program who’s also a cognitive scientist, host of the podcast A Slight Change of Plans, and former senior advisor in the Obama White House, will give the Preparatory Division commencement address. The Pre-College commencement concert will take place on Saturday, May 20 at 7:30pm. Conducted by David Robertson, the Pre-College Orchestra will perform Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Something for the Dark, John Adams’ The Chairman Dances: Foxtrot for Orchestra, and Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra.

The Commencement Concert will take place on Thursday, May 18 at 8pm at David Geffen Hall. Conductor David Robertson will lead the Juilliard Orchestra in a program featuring John Adams’ Harmonielehre and the New York premiere of Reena Esmail’s RE | Member. Adams recently met with conducting and composition students from the Preparatory and College divisions, and this spring, Juilliard’s The New Series presented five pieces by Esmail, a composition alumna.

About Juilliard’s 2023 Honorary Doctorates

Deborah Borda is the New York Philharmonic Linda and Mitch Hart president and CEO. Her expansive career has pushed the artistic, commercial, and technological boundaries of what an orchestra can be through progressive, thoughtful, and creative leadership. Upon her return to the New York Philharmonic, Borda worked with NY Phil and Lincoln Center leadership to complete the decades-long plans to transform David Geffen Hall and spearheaded the appointment of Gustavo Dudamel as music and artistic director beginning in 2026. In all her roles, from the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and the Detroit Symphony to the Los Angeles Philharmonic—where her 17-year tenure as president and CEO included the creation of Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles—she has reimagined and redefined how orchestras serve their communities. Borda was the first woman in recent history to manage a major American symphony orchestra when she was appointed CEO of the New York Philharmonic in the 1990s. She was also the first arts executive to join Harvard Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership and holds honorary doctorates from the New England Conservatory, Curtis Institute, and Manhattan School of Music.

Dancer, artistic leader, and dance educator Janet Eilber is the artistic director of the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance Company. Since 2005, her creative curation of the Graham legacy has expanded and diversified the company’s audiences by using contextual programming, new media, commissions, and unexpected partnerships and creative events. Eilber graduated from Juilliard and went on to dance with the Graham Company and work closely with Martha Graham, who was also a longtime Juilliard faculty member, for many years. She was directed by Graham in most of the major roles of that iconic repertory and had roles created for her by Graham. Eilber also danced for such greats as Agnes deMille, Tommy Tune, and Bob Fosse and received four Lester Horton Awards for her reconstruction of seminal American modern dance. She served as director of arts education for the Dana Foundation, guiding its support for teaching artist training, and is a trustee emeritus of the Interlochen Center for the Arts.

Award-winning actor and Juilliard alumnus Wendell Pierce has worked in theater, television, and film for more than three decades. Pierce has been praised for his roles on David Simon’s groundbreaking HBO series The Wire and Tremé and is starring in the Amazon Original series Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan. Pierce was most recently on Broadway last fall in Death of a Salesman in a historic portrayal of Willy Loman; he received a Laurence Olivier Award nomination for best actor for the role in London’s West End production. A 1981 White House Presidential Scholar in the Arts, Pierce is the recipient of numerous awards and co-owner of Equity Media, a 70-year-old legacy Black talk radio station in New Orleans and the oldest Black-owned radio station in Louisiana.

Hermeto Pascoal is a Brazilian composer, arranger, and multi-instrumentalist. A monumental figure in the history of Brazilian music, he is known for pushing musical boundaries, experimenting with unconventional sounds and instruments, and his orchestration and improvisation. Pascoal uses unconventional objects in his music such as kettles, children's toys, and animals as well as keyboards, button accordion, melodica, saxophone, guitar, flute, voice, and various brass instruments. He has formed multiple groups that fuse Brazilian music with jazz and has collaborated with Brazilian and international musicians including Juilliard alumnus Miles Davis.

Grammy-winning conductor Xian Zhang is in the seventh season of her tenure as music director of the New Jersey Symphony. She is the first woman conductor to be named music director of the NJSO. Zhang also holds the positions of principal guest conductor of Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and conductor emeritus of Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano, where she was the first woman to be named music director of an Italian symphony orchestra. As a guest conductor, she has worked with international orchestras including the Chicago Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Boston Symphony’s Tanglewood Festival, Philadelphia Orchestra, Orchestra of St Luke’s, Detroit Symphony, Mostly Mozart Festival, Montreal Symphony, Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo, London Symphony Orchestra, and Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. In 2015, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales (BBC NOW) announced Zhang’s appointment as its next principal guest conductor, effective with the 2016–17 season, making Zhang the first woman conductor named to a titled post with any BBC orchestra. Next season, Zhang will conduct Madama Butterfly at the Metropolitan Opera. Zhang first appeared with the Juilliard Orchestra in 2008 on the orchestra’s 10-day tour in China. She returned in 2010 to lead the orchestra and, in November 2020, Zhang was one of the first conductors to lead members of the orchestra in recorded performances in Juilliard’s orchestral studios, with ensemble players socially distanced and masked. In October 2021, Zhang was one of the first conductors to bring the Juilliard Orchestra back to in-person audiences.

Commencement is generously supported by the Joseph W. Polisi Artist as Citizen President’s Fund.

Bloomberg Philanthropies is the lead digital sponsor.

Juilliard’s livestream technology is made possible, in part, by a gift in honor of President Emeritus Joseph W. Polisi, building on his legacy of broadening Juilliard’s global reach.

About The Juilliard School
Founded in 1905, The Juilliard School is a world leader in performing arts education. The school’s mission is to provide the highest caliber of artistic education for gifted musicians, dancers, and actors, composers, choreographers, and playwrights from around the world so that they may achieve their fullest potential as artists, leaders, and global citizens. Led by President Damian Woetzel since 2018, Juilliard is guided in all its work by the core values of excellence; creativity; and equity, diversity, inclusion and belonging (EDIB). Juilliard is committed to enrolling the most talented students regardless of their financial background.

Located at Lincoln Center in New York City, Juilliard offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in dance, drama (acting and playwriting), and music (classical, jazz, historical performance, and vocal arts). Currently more than 800 artists from 43 states and 44 countries and regions are enrolled in Juilliard’s College Division, where they appear in more than 700 annual performances in the school’s five theaters; at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully and David Geffen halls and at Carnegie Hall; as well as at other venues around New York City, the country, and the world. The continuum of learning at Juilliard also includes nearly 400 students from elementary through high school enrolled in the Preparatory Division, including its Music Advancement Program (MAP), which serves students from diverse backgrounds often underrepresented in the classical music field. More than 800 students are enrolled in Juilliard Extension, the flagship continuing education program taught both in person and remotely by a dedicated faculty of performers, creators, and scholars. Beyond its New York campus, Juilliard is defining new directions in performing arts education for a range of learners and enthusiasts through a global K-12 educational curricula and graduate studies at The Tianjin Juilliard School in China.

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Image credit: Wendell Pierce, Xian Zhang, Janet Eilber, Hermeto Pascoal, Deborah Borda, courtesy Juilliard.

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