The Juilliard School
A brief overview
Having celebrated its centennial with 47 newly commissioned dance, theatrical and music works, and orchestral tours to Europe and across the U.S., The Juilliard School continues building an extraordinary future as it commences its second century of excellence in providing education for aspiring dancers, actors, and musicians. Most of the way through a 39,000 square-foot expansion of its facilities due for completion later this year, Juilliard's building renovation includes state-of-the-art studios, theaters, rehearsal halls, centers for music technology and writing/communication, and a secure home for the priceless Juilliard Manuscript Collection. The School continues to educate thousands of aspiring artists and expand its mission to instill a strong sense of activism, outreach, and arts advocacy in its students.
Since opening in October 1905 with the name Institute of Musical Art, and a first‑year class of close to 500 students, Juilliard has set this country's standard for education in the performing arts. Today's Juilliard continues to represent such excellence, growing with and responding to the needs of a thriving cultural community in New York City, the U.S., and abroad, with more than 800 dance, drama, and music students drawn from 39 states and 46 foreign countries. The school offers degree programs from bachelor to doctorate, as well as highly selective and competitive diploma programs in jazz, opera, performance, a string quartet residency, and playwriting, and starting in the Fall, instrumental studies in Historical Performance. Juilliard alumni are working artists who carry with them the highest standards of the performing arts profession worldwide. Instrumentalist-alumni constitute 50% or more of Lincoln Center's (and New York City's) established orchestras, and approximately 20% of the members of America's ‘big five' ensembles. In May/June 2008, the Juilliard Orchestra returned to the People's Republic of China, 21 years after their first tour of that country, and in recent seasons have travelled to major concert halls in Europe and across the US. Each school year Juilliard presents 700 dance, drama and music events in their own five auditoriums and elsewhere in metropolitan New York, including Avery Fisher, Alice Tully, and Carnegie halls; most are free.
During the Juilliard presidency of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer William Schuman (1945-62), the School established Juilliard's Dance Division (1951), with equal dance instruction in both contemporary and ballet techniques. In 1968, a four-year Drama Division was added, and in 1969 Juilliard became part of Lincoln Center, for which it was the sole academic constituent.
In 1983, Dr. Joseph W. Polisi was appointed Juilliard's sixth president beginning with the 1984-85 academic year. He begins his 25th season as Juilliard's president starting in the fall of 2009 and his tenure has been a time of vitality, with the establishment of new student services; alumni programs; revised curriculum; new emphasis on liberal arts; greater interaction between the three Juilliard divisions of music, dance, and drama; new emphasis on humanities, community outreach, and the arts in education; creation of a CD-ROM to teach music to children; and the development of a comprehensive long-range plan for the school to guide it through the 21st century.
Beginning in 2001, Juilliard expanded its educational programs as well. Undergraduate and graduate study in jazz includes the pre-professional Juilliard Institute for Jazz Studies, a collaboration with Jazz at Lincoln Center. The Juilliard Jazz All Stars toured Japan and Korea in the summer of 2008, have returned to the Vitoria, Spain Jazz Festival, and regularly appear at jazz heritage festivals in New Orleans, Detroit, and elsewhere. Along with the 2009 start of Historical Performance, Juilliard is planning for its joint training program with the Metropolitan Opera - the Metropolitan Opera Lindemann Young Artist Development Program in Partnership with The Juilliard School - whose first young artists will enter in Fall 2010.
Juilliard's current funding campaign, a $300 million Second Century Fund, supports and enhances student and faculty funding, and helps initiate important artistic and academic projects. Juilliard offers pre-college programs in music, a continuing education program for adults, community outreach programs for students in New York City and elsewhere, and specialized music programs for children from under-represented populations.