Chamber Music at Juilliard

Chamber music holds a prominent and active place in the Juilliard curriculum and performance schedule. More than 100 participating student ensembles receive personalized coachings from leading chamber music performers on the School’s faculty, including members of the School’s ensembles-in-residence: the Juilliard String Quartet, the American Brass Quintet, and the New York Woodwind Quintet. Pianist Joseph Kalichstein holds the Edwin S. and Nancy A. Marks Endowed Chair in Chamber Music Studies. Prominent ensembles that have emerged from Juilliard in recent years include the Claremont Trio, Ariel Winds, Attaca String Quartet, Ebony Strings Quartet, N-E-W Trio, the Manhattan Piano Trio, ETA3, and the Toomai Quintet. Performances by Juilliard’s most outstanding student chamber ensembles take place all season in regularly scheduled concerts in Juilliard’s Paul and Morse halls. Free tickets are required for most of these events. In addition to these performances, students have the opportunity to participate in an intensive week of coaching with a faculty member (normally not part of their coaching schedule), as part of the School’s annual week-long ChamberFest. These performances feature student trios, quartets, and quintets.
    The Juilliard String Quartet, assistant dean and director of chamber music Bärli Nugent, and chamber music faculty member Nicholas Mann collaborate on the new Juilliard Chamber Music Master Class series. This series, which began in October 2005, features one master class for string ensembles and one class for piano-and-string ensembles each month, taught by Juilliard faculty members. 
       Juilliard presents free lunchtime concerts (no tickets required) every Wednesday throughout the academic year at the New York Society for Ethical Culture, until Alice Tully Hall reopens in February 2009. Wednesdays at One performances are at 1:00 PM and last for about an hour. Doors open at 12:30 PM. In addition, Juilliard regularly presents nighttime Evening Performances of Chamber Music featuring a variety of student ensembles. Juilliard’s chamber music concerts are not limited to the Lincoln Center area. Student ensembles have performed at the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage as part of The Conservatory Project since its inception in 2004. Also, student chamber music groups perform eight to ten community partnership concerts annually, known as the Chamber Music from Juilliard series, at unique venues throughout New York City, including the Williams Residence assisted living facility, Columbia University’s Faculty House, and St. Paul’s Chapel. Juilliard’s series of Liederabend and Sonatenabend concerts showcase the Juilliard musicians studying in the Collaborative Piano program, where they learn the art of coaching and analysis of the performance at hand, in addition to accompanying myriad Juilliard musicians in recital, lessons, auditions, and jury performances. Juilliard Songbook concerts present vocalists from Juilliard’s Department of Vocal Arts in the performance of song literature, paired with Collaborative Piano and Vocal Arts Department faculty.
       During the academic year, faculty members and students have the opportunity to perform together in chamber music concerts, and composition faculty members coach ensembles in their own works, as well as works by student composers.
       The annual Jerome L. Greene Concert honors the memory and the legacy of Jerome L. Greene, an individual who has had tremendous impact on Juilliard, the City of New York, and many institutions here and around the nation.
Mr. Greene was a Board member of The Juilliard School from 1985 to 1999. During his tenure he was one of the School’s most generous supporters, and helped guide the institution with his wise counsel and extraordinary business skills. This concert is dedicated exclusively to the performance of Baroque music.
       The Daniel Saidenberg Faculty Recital series features members of the Juilliard faculty, sometimes with guest artists, in performance throughout the academic year. The series also features annual concerts by the Juilliard resident faculty ensembles, including the American Brass Quintet, the Juilliard String Quartet, and the New York Woodwind Quintet. This season, pianist Seymour Lipkin celebrated the 60th anniversary of his winning the Rachmaninoff Piano Competition and was joined by friends, pianist Robert McDonald, violinist Ronald Copes, violist Samuel Rhodes, and cellist Joel Krosnick. Violist Samuel Rhodes also was jointed by pianist Robert McDonald for his recital this season, and bassoonist Judy LeClair and flutist Robert Langevin conclude the series.
       Currently in its 49th season, the American Brass Quintet has been internationally recognized as one of the premiere chamber music ensembles of our time. They have performed in Europe, Central and South America, the Middle East, Asia, Australia and in all fifty of the United States. Their commissioning projects have included works by Samuel Adler, Robert Beaser, William Bolcom, Elliott Carter, Robert Dennis, Jacob Druckman, Eric Ewazen, David Sampson, Gunther Schuller, Virgil Thomson, Joan Tower, and Pulitzer-winner Melinda Wagner, among others, along with the Quintet’s own editions of Renaissance and Baroque music, and forgotten 19th-century brass works. Last season, they premiered and toured a new work for brass quintet and piano by Grammy-winning composer-pianist Billy Childs. Commissioned by the Quintet with a grant from the New York State Music Fund, the work 2 Elements, had its New York premiere at Juilliard as part of the faculty series. Future plans include work on four new brass quintets from emerging composers inaugurated by the 2008 premiere of a work by Gordon Beeferman, supported by a multi-year grant from the Jerome Foundation. They will also premiere a new piece for brass quintet and organ by Justin Dello Joio and will complete their ninth recording for Summit Records to be released in celebration of the ABQ’s fiftieth-anniversary season in 2010. The American Brass Quintet, whose current members are Raymond Mase and Kevin Cobb, trumpets; David Wakefield, horn; Michael Powell, trombone; and John D. Rojak, bass trombone, has been the quintet-in-residence at Juilliard since 1987.
       Formed in 1946 as a resident teaching and performing ensemble at Juilliard, the Juilliard String Quartet (first violinist Joel Smirnoff, second violinist Ronald Copes, violist Samuel Rhodes, and cellist Joel Krosnick) has performed throughout the world in recitals, at music festivals, and with major symphony orchestras as concerto quartet-soloist. The Juilliard String Quartet performed three concerts at Juilliard in the 2007-08 season that included the world premiere performance of Ralph Shapey’s 2 for 5 (Concerto Grosso) with faculty clarinetist Charles Neidich and world premiere of a Clarinet Quintet by Elliott Carter, also performed by clarinetist Charles Neidich, and commissioned by Juilliard. The 2006-07 season marked the Quartet’s 60th anniversary, with a yearlong celebration distinguished by the ensemble’s performance of seven complete Bartók cycles in major cities throughout the U.S. and Japan. Recent highlights include a pair of concerts presented by the Los Angeles Philharmonic in Disney Hall, the world premiere of Ezequiel Viñao’s Quartet II, The Loss and the Silence, commissioned for them by Juilliard in honor of its 2006 centennial, and international performances of their own arrangement of Bach’s Art of the Fugue. In spring 2006, they were featured artists in the Live From Lincoln Center telecast of Juilliard’s centennial gala program. Beginning in July 2009, Juilliard alumnus and Met Opera concertmaster Nicholas Eanet becomes the Juilliard String Quartet’s 1st violinst. In the five decades of its association with The Juilliard School, the Quartet has trained some of the world’s foremost ensembles including the American, Amernet, Avalon, Brentano, Calder, Cassatt, Chiara, Colorado, Concord, Corigliano, Emerson, Essex, Flux, Lark, LaSalle, Mendelssohn, Miró, New World, Shanghai, St. Lawrence, Tokyo, Whitman and Ying String Quartets.
       For almost 60 seasons, the New York Woodwind Quintet has maintained an active performance schedule in the United States and abroad while also teaching the next generation of woodwind performers. The Quintet’s many commissions and premieres include Samuel Barber's Summer Music, and quintets by Gunther Schuller, Ezra Laderman, William Bergsma, Alec Wilder, William Sydeman, Wallingford Riegger, Jon Deak, and Yehudi Wyner. The Quintet honors the legacy of departed members by performing works such as Bach’s Art of the Fugue and the Scherzo from Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (transcribed by Samuel Baron), and the late Ronald Roseman’s Wind Quintet No. 2 and Sextet for Piano and Winds. Current NYWQ members flutist Carol Wincenc, clarinetist Charles Neidich, oboist Stephen Taylor, bassoonist Marc Goldberg, and French hornist William Purvis continue the Quintet's now 15 yearlong residency at The Juilliard School.
       The members of the Juilliard String Quartet serve as coaches to Juilliard’s graduate resident string quartet, a quartet residency funded through the generosity of the Arnhold family. The Biava Quartet is in their second and final year as Juilliard’s graduate resident string quartet. The Biava Quartet most recently served as graduate quartet-in-residence at the Yale University School of Music, where they were teaching assistants to the Tokyo Quartet. The quartet’s members are violinists Austin Hartman and Hyunsu Ko, violist Mary Persin, and cellist Jason Calloway. The members of the quartet, named Lisa Arnhold Fellows, receive free tuition and stipends, as well as regular ensemble coachings with the Juilliard String Quartet.
       As teaching assistants to the Juilliard String Quartet, the Arnhold Fellowship holders coach other ensembles and participate in the Juilliard String Quartet Seminar and present the annual Lisa Arnhold Memorial Concert at the New York Society for Ethical Culture. Previous resident quartets included: the Avalon, Calder, Cassatt, Chiara, Colorado, Corigliano, Essex, Lark, Maia, Miró, St. Lawrence, Shanghai, and Whitman quartets.
    During Juilliard’s renovation, performances will take place at various venues until the spring 2009 semester. Please check the Web site for the latest information at www.juilliard.edu.