Juilliard School

Subterms

    Latest story

    125 Shares199 Views

    Juilliard Receives $20 Million to Unite Disciplines and Support Jazz

    by

    The donations, from John and Jody Arnhold, will expand creative work across disciplines, help pay for an annual fall festival and support the jazz program.The Juilliard School is home to some of the best young musicians, dancers and actors in the world. But they rarely come together to create and perform across disciplines.Now the renowned conservatory hopes to change that: Juilliard announced on Wednesday that it had received a $15 million gift to help expand creative work across music, dance and drama. An additional $5 million gift will go to the school’s jazz program to support scholarships, performances and teaching.The gifts are from the investor John Arnhold and his wife, Jody, a dance educator; the $15 million will support the Creative Enterprise program, started in 2018 by Juilliard’s president, Damian Woetzel, to break down barriers between disciplines. That donation will also help pay for an annual fall festival, whose inaugural edition opens on Thursday.“We want to connect students tangibly with the changing professional world,” Woetzel said in an interview, “and to give them an innovative edge.”In the Creative Enterprise program, acclaimed artists, or creative associates, as they are known — including the musician Rhiannon Giddens, the actor Bill Irwin and the dancer Lil Buck — come to Juilliard for residencies. The school also produces interdisciplinary projects, like “Bolero Juilliard,” a video filmed during the pandemic that featured a variety of students and alumni performing to Ravel’s score.This year’s fall festival will feature an array of artists affiliated with the Creative Enterprise program. The composer Nico Muhly and the violist Nadia Sirota are helping shape an outdoor performance of an excerpt from Philip Glass’s opera “Satyagraha.” The flutist Claire Chase and the choreographer Pam Tanowitz are taking part in a performance exploring American experimentalism.“This is not a one-way street,” Woetzel said. “These artists get to work with each other. They get to try things that ordinarily they would not get to try.”John Arnhold said in an interview that he was inspired by Woetzel’s vision for strengthening interdisciplinary work.“When Damian has something in mind,” Arnhold said, “generally speaking it’s something that I want to get behind.”He added that he hoped the gifts would “bring further vibrancy to a school that has all of the tools to create the next generation of arts performers, arts educators, arts leaders.” More

    More stories

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Music

      Paul Sperry, Tenor Who Specialized in American Song, Dies at 90

      by

      He carved out a niche by singing songs by living composers from his own country, and was praised by critics at home and abroad.Paul Sperry, a tenor who championed little-known American art song and spiky contemporary works, and was praised for his incisive performances of the classics, died on June 13 in Manhattan. He was 90.His death, in a hospital, was caused by heart failure, his son Ethan said.In a discipline where his peers tended to stick to tried-and-true German and French classics from the 19th and 20th centuries, Mr. Sperry carved out a niche, singing songs by living composers from his own country. But he also took on some of the most difficult late-20th-century Europeans, like Karlheinz Stockhausen and Hans Werner Henze, who had been shunned by many singers. That boldness earned him steady work, his son recalled.Mr. Sperry, a Harvard Business School graduate who eschewed a career in real estate and turned to singing, his first love, in his late 20s, was a low-key performer who consistently earned high marks from music critics over three decades. They cited his intelligent approach to song, his understanding of texts, and his imaginative programs.“Paul Sperry is a true connoisseur’s singer — he may not have the most glamorous tenor voice imaginable, but he does some wonderful things with it, and his programing is always interesting and exploratory,” the critic Peter G. Davis wrote in The New York Times in 1975 about a recital of lieder, including by little-known 18th century composers who preceded Schubert.Mr. Sperry in 1985. After graduating from Harvard Business School, he turned to singing, his first love.via Sperry familyWhen critics found fault with his voice — Mr. Sperry was most comfortable in deeper registers — they still praised the intellect and musicianship behind it.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares139 Views

      in Music

      A Pathbreaking Singer Arrives at the Met, With Pearls and Tattoos

      by

      Dav­óne Tines, who stars in the oratorio “El Niño,” is challenging traditions in classical music and using art to confront social problems.The bass-baritone Dav­óne Tines, wearing Dr. Martens boots, a sleeveless black shirt and six vintage pearl rings, stood on a rehearsal stage at the Metropolitan Opera in Manhattan the other day and began to sing.“My soul’s above the sea and whistling a dream,” he sang, a passage from the Nativity oratorio “El Niño” by John Adams, in which Tines makes his Met debut this month. “Tell the shepherds the wind is saddling its horse.”Tines, 37, known for his raw intensity and thundering voice, has quickly become one of classical music’s brightest stars. He has won acclaim for performances of Bach, Handel and Stravinsky, and he has helped champion new music, originating roles in operas like Adams’s “Girls of the Golden West” and Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones.”Tines has also used his art to confront social problems, including racism and police brutality. In 2018, he was a creator of and starred in “The Black Clown,” a searing rumination on Black history and identity inspired by a Langston Hughes poem. In 2020, he released a music video after the police killing of Breonna Taylor, calling for empathy and action.During a rehearsal break at the Met, he described his art as cathartic, saying his aim was to “pick apart the complicated, contentious existence that is knit into the American landscape.”“It’s a blessing to be a performing artist because you get an explicit place to put your feelings,” he said. “It’s the blessing of having a channel.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 100 Shares199 Views

      in Theater

      Juilliard’s Top-Tier Graduate Acting Program Is Going Tuition-Free

      by

      Starting with the next academic year, the drama school will eliminate an “unrealistic burden” for graduate acting students.The Juilliard School, one of the world’s most elite conservatories, is making its top-notch graduate acting program tuition-free.School officials said they hoped that the move would make the drama division accessible to a broader array of students, and that it would make it easier for graduates to pursue careers in the arts because they will have less debt.“There’s a mythology around a place with a name like Juilliard, and I know too many people who didn’t apply because they thought, ‘I couldn’t afford it,’” said Damian Woetzel, the school’s president. “We recognize that talent is so much greater than opportunity.”Juilliard’s drama division, in which undergraduate and graduate acting students train together, was (once again) declared the best in the nation by The Hollywood Reporter earlier this year. The school’s alumni have included Robin Williams, Jessica Chastain, Adam Driver and Viola Davis.The acting program’s Master of Fine Arts track, established in 2012, is relatively new; previously, postgraduate acting students received a credential called simply a diploma. The master’s degree program, which currently has 35 students, is a four-year program — one year longer than most — and the fourth year has always been tuition-free to keep Juilliard competitive with three-year programs elsewhere.Juilliard’s tuition, for both undergraduates and graduates, is $53,300 per year. About 90 percent of undergraduate students receive some financial aid.“The expense of being educated these days is an unrealistic burden, particularly for young artists,” the actress Laura Linney, who is a Juilliard alumna and the vice chairwoman of the school’s board of trustees, said in an interview. “Members of my class were paying debt into their 40s. That doesn’t encourage young people to go into the arts.”Tuition for all graduate acting students will be free starting with the next academic year. To eliminate tuition, the school said it had raised $15 million, with key gifts from the commercial theater producers Stephanie P. McClelland and John Gore.McClelland, a Juilliard trustee, has been credited as a producer on 87 Broadway shows over the last two decades; she donated with her husband, Carter McClelland, a longtime Wall Street executive. Gore is a British producer whose many ventures include the touring behemoth Broadway Across America and the website Broadway.com. Other gifts, and existing scholarship funds, were combined to permanently replace tuition revenue.“Many of our M.F.A. students come in with significant undergraduate debt, and some have maxed out the federal loans they can take,” said Evan Yionoulis, the dean of Juilliard’s drama division. This will “allow them to be here without that financial weight on their shoulders, and allow them the freedom, when they graduate, to make choices to build their craft and to have the patience it takes to build their career.”Juilliard’s move comes two years after Yale University made its drama school, which is also top-ranked and is larger than Juilliard’s, tuition-free with a $150 million gift from David Geffen. James Bundy, the dean of what is now called the David Geffen School of Drama, said the waiving of tuition had already had a significant impact at Yale.“We’ve seen a rise in applications — we’ve had the two highest years in the school’s history, which tells me that a great many more people saw the school as financially accessible,” Bundy said. “We’ve had a substantial increase in the portion of the applicant pool that identified as Black, Indigenous, or people of color. And taking tuition out of the equation has enabled us to increase stipends for living expenses for students with need, which has the long-term impact of driving down indebtedness.”Juilliard already has several other tuition-free programs, including the drama division’s two-year playwriting program, which currently has eight students, as well as several specialized music programs. Once the graduate acting program goes tuition-free, 26 percent of all Juilliard students will pay no tuition to attend.But many music and dance students, as well as drama undergraduates, will continue to have some tuition obligations; the graduate acting program is going tuition-free now because there were donors who stepped forward to make that possible.“My aim is to make the school tuition-free — the ultimate artistic education deserves that access,” Woetzel said. “Wouldn’t that be something?” More

    • 88 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      Juilliard Fires Professor After Sexual Misconduct Inquiry

      by

      An investigation found “credible evidence” that Robert Beaser, a composition professor, had engaged in “conduct which interfered with individuals’ academic work,” the school said.The Juilliard School has fired a professor who had been accused of sexually harassing students after an independent investigation found “credible evidence” that he had “engaged in conduct which interfered with individuals’ academic work,” the school said in a letter to students, staff, faculty and alumni on Thursday.Juilliard said the professor, Robert Beaser, 69, who served as chair of the composition department from 1994 to 2018, had behaved in a manner that was “inconsistent with Juilliard’s commitment to provide a safe and supportive learning environment for its students.” The school did not elaborate, saying only that the investigation had found evidence of a past “unreported relationship” and that Beaser had “repeatedly misrepresented facts about his actions.”Richard C. Schoenstein​, a lawyer for Beaser, denied that his client had misled his employer. He said the relationship in question took place three decades ago, had been known to Juilliard since then and had been the subject of previous inquiries. He called the school’s findings “unspecific and unattributed” and said that Beaser would “pursue his legal rights in full.”“Dr. Beaser is shocked and dismayed by Juilliard’s conclusions and actions,” Schoenstein said.The inquiry was ordered after an investigation in December 2022 by VAN, a classical music magazine, that detailed accusations against Beaser and other Juilliard composition teachers. VAN, citing interviews with unnamed former students, said that Beaser had made unwanted advances toward students and engaged in sexual relationships with them.The accusations prompted an outcry among students, faculty and alumni, as well as prominent composers and musicians. Juilliard placed Beaser on paid leave during the inquiry.Juilliard said that it had also looked into complaints against Christopher Rouse, another professor named in the VAN investigation. While the school determined that these allegations were also credible, it said that the complaints could not be fully investigated because Rouse had died in 2019.In the letter on Thursday, Juilliard said administrators had previously investigated some of these accusations of sexual misconduct in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and again in the 2017-18 academic year. These investigations “were handled based on their understanding of the information provided at that time,” according to the school.Juilliard said it had ordered the latest inquiry because of new information in news reports, and that the investigation had determined that “some students, especially women, experienced an environment in the department that did not live up to the school’s values and expectations.”Juilliard’s leaders said they were “dismayed by the negative impact” the events had on students at the time. They vowed to strengthen oversight, with measures including banning all sexual relationships between students and professors, beginning this fall. While professors have long been barred from having romantic relationships with undergraduates, the school has sometimes made exceptions for relationships between faculty members and graduate students.Juilliard said it would also seek to clarify channels for reporting harassment and bias.“Juilliard is committed to providing a safe, supportive and welcoming environment for all members of our school community, and to addressing concerns past and present,” the letter said. “No form of discrimination or harassment is tolerated, and we take all allegations reported to us seriously.” More

    • 88 Shares149 Views

      in Music

      Matthias Pintscher to Lead Kansas City Symphony

      by

      He will take the podium in 2024, with a mandate to help draw new audiences to classical music.The German-born composer and conductor Matthias Pintscher didn’t know what to expect when he traveled to Missouri in March to lead a series of performances with the Kansas City Symphony. He had never been to the city, nor had he worked with its orchestra.But after a few days of rehearsing and performing works by Ravel, Ligeti and Scriabin, Pintscher felt a deep connection with the ensemble. “There was magic,” he said in an interview. “A willingness to really give the best.”The orchestra was impressed, too: On Tuesday, it announced that Pintscher, 52, had agreed to serve as its next music director, beginning with a five-year term in 2024. He will succeed Michael Stern, who has been the orchestra’s leader since 2005, and lead the orchestra for 10 weeks each season.Danny Beckley, the orchestra’s president and chief executive, offered Pintscher the job only a couple of days after his March visit. He described Pintscher’s relationship with the orchestra as “electric” and said he hoped Pintscher could help to get more people into the concert hall.“We are committed to making orchestral music more appealing to a far wider audience, and I think Matthias can really help make that happen,” Beckley said in a statement.Pintscher, who lives in New York City, rose to prominence as a composer, writing a range of music, for orchestra and chamber ensembles, as well as solo pieces for piano and voice. His compositions are often evocative and mysterious, showcasing the ability of instruments like the clarinet and the double bass to whisper.He has also won accolades as a conductor, serving as music director of the Ensemble Intercontemporain in Paris, a new music group, as well as the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra in Switzerland. (His tenure at the Ensemble Intercontemporain, which he has led for a decade, ends this season.) He is a member of the composition faculty at Juilliard.In Kansas City, he said, he felt a sense of belonging. He recalled chatting with a stranger at a supermarket; after he introduced himself, she immediately bought tickets to a concert.“It was such a warm welcome, by the city, the locals, the public, the musicians,” he said. “It was a happy arrival.” More

    • 163 Shares189 Views

      in Music

      In New York, Masks Will Not Be Required at the Opera or Ballet

      by

      Many arts groups, worried about alienating older patrons, have maintained strict rules. Now “the time has come to move on,” one leader said.Masks are no longer required in New York City schools, gyms, taxis and most theaters. But a night at the opera or the ballet still involves putting on a proper face covering.That will soon change. Several of the city’s leading performing arts organizations — including the Metropolitan Opera, Carnegie Hall, the New York Philharmonic and New York City Ballet — announced on Monday that masks would now be optional, citing demands from audience members and a recent decline in coronavirus cases.“The time has come to move on,” Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, said in an interview.The Met, Carnegie Hall and the Philharmonic will end mask requirements on Oct. 24, along with Film at Lincoln Center and the Juilliard School. The David H. Koch Theater, home to City Ballet, will follow on Nov. 1. Two venues on the Lincoln Center campus, the Mitzi E. Newhouse and Claire Tow theaters, will maintain their mandates.The decision is a milestone for classical, dance and opera institutions, which had been among the most resistant to relaxing mask rules — wary of alienating older patrons, who represent a large share of ticket buyers. As coronavirus infections have declined and masks have vanished from many other settings, arts groups are feeling pressure from audiences to make a change.At the Met, for example, only about a quarter of ticket buyers said in a survey last month that they would feel uncomfortable attending a performance if masks were optional. Over the summer, that number had been close to 70 percent.“People’s attitudes are changing,” Gelb said. He hoped that relaxing the rules would help make the Met more accessible to “younger audiences who really don’t want to wear a mask.” With the elimination of the mandate, the company will also reopen its bars, many of which have remained closed during the pandemic.Proof of vaccination, as well as masks, were required to gain entry to many venues starting last year, when arts organizations returned to the stage after a long shutdown. Over the summer, however, as hospitalizations and deaths declined, many groups began to ease their rules. Broadway theaters (with a few exceptions) dropped the vaccine requirement on May 1, and the mask mandate on July 1.While most classical, opera and dance groups eliminated the vaccine requirement this fall, many kept in place strict mask mandates on the advice of medical advisers. The question of masks posed a challenge for many groups; they risked alienating some ticket buyers, no matter how they proceeded.At the Met, stage managers have delivered announcements from the stage before each performance reminding audiences to keep masks on for the duration of opera. At Carnegie Hall, ushers have checked each row and called out people who were not wearing masks.Clive Gillinson, Carnegie’s executive and artistic director, said that the hall kept mask rules in place this fall because of lingering concerns about the virus among some medical advisers and audience members. But it decided to make a change after medical advisers said it could operate safely without masks, and after complaints from the audience were growing.“Ushers were finding it actually quite difficult because a lot of people were very annoyed having to still wear masks when in most of their lives they’re no longer doing so,” Gillinson said in an interview.By eliminating the mask rules, arts leaders hope they can help restore a sense of normalcy at a time when many groups are struggling to recover from the turmoil of the pandemic. While live performance is flourishing once again in New York and across the United States, audiences have been slow to return.Deborah Borda, the president and chief executive of the Philharmonic, said in an interview that the mask rules could change if the virus emerged as a deadly threat once again.“This is an ever-evolving situation,” she said. “We will stay on top of whatever the current medical protocol dictates.”But for now, she said, it is time to change focus.“We feel it’s important that we do our part to help the city return to a much more normal state of affairs,” she said, “and to encourage people to come back into the city and to reinvigorate the economy.” More

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in Music

      Joseph Kalichstein, Pianist of Subtlety and Refinement, Dies at 76

      by

      An acclaimed exponent of Schumann, Brahms and Mendelssohn, he was best known for his work as a member of the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio.Joseph Kalichstein, an Israeli American pianist whose subtle, refined approach made him an exemplary chamber musician, especially as a member of the esteemed Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, died on March 31 in Manhattan. He was 76.His son Avi said the cause was pancreatic cancer.Across his career of more than 50 years, critics agreed that Mr. Kalichstein had an uncommon naturalness, whether in his earliest solo recitals or his later appearances on the chamber music circuit with his piano trio, in which he was joined by the violinist Jaime Laredo and the cellist Sharon Robinson.Mr. Kalichstein had a sense of line and timing that set him apart even as a young virtuoso. His Carnegie Hall debut “carried enough impact to remind one of Horowitz, and that is not a small thing to say,” Donal Henahan wrote in The New York Times in 1967, adding that although there was still some brash impetuosity to Mr. Kalichstein’s playing, he could already sustain “a long, poetic arc as only a born musician can.”That innate musicality made Mr. Kalichstein a stylish exponent of Schumann, Brahms and Mendelssohn, whose solo, chamber and concertante works he recorded with an apt balance of delicacy and drive.Mr. Kalichstein’s credentials as a soloist were never in question after his 1969 victory in the prestigious Leventritt Competition, which led, among other appearances, to dates with the New York Philharmonic and the Cleveland Orchestra under the conductor (and Leventritt juror) George Szell. But he found particular admiration as a chamber musician.The venerable Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio came together by accident, after Mr. Kalichstein appeared as a late substitute for another elegant pianist, Rudolf Firkusny, in a program of Dvorak with his future partners — who were already husband and wife — and other musicians at the 92nd Street Y in 1976.Mr. Kalichstein in an undated photo. His credentials as a soloist were never in question after his 1969 victory in the prestigious Leventritt Competition, but he found particular admiration as a chamber musician.“In the end,” Mr. Kalichstein later recalled of that concert, “we all remarked how easy the performance was. We seemed to phrase together, breathe together, sing together. Sharon and Jaime came to me and said, ‘Maybe we should play together.’”Their official debut as a trio came in 1977, in unusually auspicious surroundings: the East Room of the White House, during the inauguration festivities for President Jimmy Carter, who hired them on the advice of the conductor Robert Shaw.From the start, the trio drew strong reviews for its poise and blend. Mr. Henahan suggested in 1978 that “while predictions as to its longevity and success would be pointless just yet,” the trio’s balance and evident good sense still brought to mind artists of the stature of the Guarneri String Quartet or, more to the point, the then-dominant Beaux Arts Trio.The Beaux Arts lasted 53 years in name, but its initial membership endured for little more than a decade. The Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, arguably its successor in stature in concert halls if not on record, still had its original personnel at its last concert, in Phoenix on March 17 — 45 years after its debut.Joseph Chaim Kalichstein, later known as Yossi to his friends, was born on Jan. 15, 1946, in Tel Aviv, the third child of Yitzhak and Mali (Bendit) Kalichstein. Fervent Zionists, they had tried to settle in Palestine in the 1920s, returning to Poland only to flee the fate that befell much of the rest of their family in the Holocaust.Mr. Kalichstein played the piano from a young age and took lessons from Joshua Shor in Israel. He enrolled at the Juilliard School in New York in 1962, studying with Eduard Steuermann and Ilona Kabos. For his Carnegie Hall debut, he paid tribute with two works by Mr. Steuermann, a rarely heard Schoenberg acolyte who died in 1964.After graduating in 1967, Mr. Kalichstein received a master’s degree from Juilliard in 1969 and considered doctoral work before his solo career took off. Sponsored by the Young Concert Artists after 1967, he played Beethoven in one of Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts with the New York Philharmonic, in 1968, broadcast on CBS.European as well as American performances followed. The Musical Times noted after Mr. Kalichstein’s European debut in 1970 that the impression he made in Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto — with the London Symphony and André Previn — “was not of the extreme brilliance and confidence expected from a young virtuoso so much as thoughtful, sensitive musicianship.”Allan Kozinn of The New York Times in 1999 bracketed Mr. Kalichstein with pianists like Alfred Brendel and Richard Goode, as “a musician who searches beyond the dots on the page, recognizes the breadth of possibilities within a work and has the technique to give those possibilities life.”Mr. Kalichstein was by then primarily known as a chamber musician, above all for his work with the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, with which he cultivated a style of polished ease.The trio recorded much of the core repertoire, including the complete Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn and Brahms trios, as well as an exquisite set devoted to Ravel, for which Mr. Kalichstein contributed a moving account of the solo “Pavane Pour une Infante Défunte.” The trio commissioned works from such living composers as Arvo Pärt, André Previn and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, whose piano concerto Mr. Kalichstein recorded.Mr. Kalichstein consulted for the Kennedy Center after 1997 and was artistic director of its chamber music series until his death. He became a member of the piano faculty at Juilliard in 1983 and added a chair in chamber music studies in 2003.The pianist Emanuel Ax, a colleague at Juilliard, said in an interview that Mr. Kalichstein was “a remarkably direct and openhearted musician, in the best sense uncomplicated and natural.” He added that Mr. Kalichstein was a warm, witty teacher who did not impose his own views on his students, but “would think about the way someone was looking at a piece of music and try to help him or her attain the best possible of version of that.”In addition to his son Avi, Mr. Kalichstein is survived by his wife, Rowain (Schultz) Kalichstein; another son, Rafi; and three grandchildren.His wife had resolved to marry him before she had even met him, after being captivated by a recital he gave at Washington Irving High School in Manhattan in 1971. They were married later that year and were longtime residents of Maplewood, N.J., until moving to Rhode Island last year.In 1994, a reporter for The Los Angeles Times asked Mr. Kalichstein whether he and the other members of the trio enjoyed greater fame as individual soloists or as a collective.“It could very well be the trio,” he responded. “I certainly cannot complain if it’s one or the other. I hope people know me as someone with two different hats.”“I want to have that balance,” he added. “In fact, that is my ideal.” More