Joel Sachs, Founding Director and Conductor of the New Juilliard Ensemble

Joel Sachs performs a vast range of traditional and contemporary music as conductor and pianist, and is co‑director of the internationally acclaimed new-music ensemble Continuum. Dr. Sachs has appeared in hundreds of performances in New York, nationally, and internationally. Foreign performances include festivals and concerts in a remarkable array of countries: Austria, Brazil, China, the Czech Republic, Denmark, El Salvador, England, France, Germany, Holland, Hungary, Iceland, Indonesia, Italy Korea, Mexico, Mongolia, Poland, Portugal, the Slovak Republic, Switzerland, Venezuela, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. He has held new-music residencies at the Shanghai Conservatory, in Berlin at the Hochschule der Künste, London at Trinity College of Music, Salzburg at the Hochschule Mozarteum, and at the School of Music and Fine Arts, and at the annual Oficina de Musica in Curitiba (Brazil).

During the last few years he conducted the distinguished Icelandic contemporary music ensemble Caput in a program of music from Ukraine, Uzbekistan, the United States, and Iceland, and a concert of music by Danish composer Hans Abrahamsen, and also recorded a CD of works by the Icelandic composer Askell Masson. In 2006 Sachs and other members of Continuum performed in Tajikistan and Kazakhstan, and then went to Mongolia for the fifth time. In December 2006 he conducted Continuum in Jakarta, Indonesia, where they presented Tony Prabowo's opera The King's Witch in full staging, his piano concerto Psalm - both of which were composed for and premiered by the New Juilliard Ensemble - and music by American composers. In May 2007 he conducted a concert of American music at the Shanghai Conservatory, including the Chinese premiere of Ives' Symphony No. 3. Keyboard appearances include numerous performances of John Cage's monumental Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano, most recently in Shanghai. In October 2007 Dr. Sachs conducted the Danube-Hudson Project, comprising works by Juilliard and Liszt Academy composition students, at the Liszt Academy in Budapest as part of the Budapest Autumn Festival. June 2008 marked his sixth visit to Mongolia. In March, 2009 he was in residence at the Sibelius Academy, Helsinki. In June 2009, he led the New Juilliard Ensemble in a week of events in Tokyo by Suntory Hall. He gave a recital of American music in the French Pyrenees in August 2009. Joel Sachs' recordings appear on the Advance, CRI, Naxos, New Albion, Nonesuch, and TNC labels. A CD of music of the Americas with La Camerata de las Americas (Mexico City) was released by Dorian. He also directs concerts by Juilliard students at MoMA Summergarden.

One of the most active presenters of contemporary music concerts in New York, Joel Sachs founded the New Juilliard Ensemble in 1993. He produces and directs The Juilliard School's annual FOCUS! festival, has been artistic director of Juilliard's concerts at the annual Summergarden festival at New York's Museum of Modern Art since 1993,  and also was a co-director of the Sonic Boom festival of contemporary music presented by a consortium of New York City's most prestigious new-music ensembles.

An active music historian, Dr. Sachs, who is a member of Juilliard's music history faculty and was the first chairman of its music history department, currently is writing a biography of the American composer Henry Cowell, to be published by Oxford University Press. He appears on radio as a commentator on recent music and has been a regular delegate to Netherlands Music Days and other international music conferences.