Conductor Jeffrey Milarsky leads the Juilliard Orchestra in Annual Evening of New Orchestral Works by Juilliard Student Composers on Thursday, April 30 at 8 PM in Alice Tully Hall

Program features world premieres by Juilliard composers Elizabeth Lim, Gity Razaz, Eugene Birman, and Niccolo Athens

Conductor Jeffrey Milarsky leads the Juilliard Orchestra in the School's annual evening of new orchestral works by Juilliard student composers on Thursday, April 30 at 8 PM in Alice Tully Hall, 65^th Street and Broadway. The program features four world premieres: Elizabeth Lim's Paranoia; Gity Razaz's In the Midst of Flux; Eugene Birman's Tomorrow, at Dawn; and Niccolo Athens'
Five Tableaux.

Many of today's most respected composers received their education at Juilliard, and the School continues to provide a strong education in composition. Among the young composers whose works have been selected for past premieres at the annual spring concert are Mason Bates, Kenji Bunch, Jefferson Friedman, and Nico Muhly. The School offers bachelor, master and doctoral degree programs in composition. The current members of Juilliard's composition faculty are Samuel Adler, Robert Beaser, John Corigliano, and Christopher Rouse. Alumni of the program include Bruce Adolphe. Mason Bates, Kenji Bunch, Sebastian Currier, Richard Danielpour, Norman Dello Joio, Philip Glass, Laura Karpman, Lowell Liebermann, Nico Muhly, Steve Reich, Richard Rodgers, Ned Rorem, Peter Schickele, and Ellen Zwilich, among others.

FREE tickets are available beginning April 16 at the Janet and Leonard Kramer Box Office located at Juilliard, 155 West 65^th Street. Box Office hours are Monday through Friday from 11 AM - 6 PM. For further information, call the Juilliard Box Office at (212) 769-7406 or visit the Web site at www.juilliard.edu.

Elizabeth Lim's Paranoia is her first piece for orchestra since completing her senior thesis, Windfalls, a concerto for orchestra. She says of her work: "The opening of Paranoia plays with a metrical pattern of consecutive numbers, disrupting the natural fall of a beat; the numbers increase and decrease throughout the piece as a means of tantalizing the listener's sense of time. This pattern is married to a driving energy, which from the opening anxiously imprints itself on the listener. This energy can only be compared to an erratic, obsessive heartbeat. It is a musical incarnation of paranoia, seeping into one's subconscious like a psychological ghost."

Gity Razaz commented on her work, In the Midst of Flux: "The finished sketches for the structure of the piece [for large orchestra] came to resemble that of a monothematic tone poem in which a series of disruptive yet motivic sound events - lush melodies, bombastic and dry rhythmic screams, and chamber-like orchestrated passages - are born out of a startling bell-like chord. Their persistent recurrence drives the main theme of the piece (presented in the celli section for the first time), growing weaker and fainter repeatedly. The final presentation of the melody, this time stronger and louder as if in an attempt to push the disruptive bell-like chord away, brings the piece to an end."

Eugene Birman selected a poem by Victor Hugo for his work and tried to make sense of how to connect the words to the music, and hence, the listener. Mr. Birman says: "The poem, Tomorrow, at Dawn, talks about lifelessness and death in such an honest manner. Thus, the textures reflect this. There is no overt fast music in this piece, and neither is there a truly slow texture. But I have sought to portray the poetic movement within the languorousness of the music." Hugo was going through the death of his daughter when he wrote the poem.

Niccolo Athens' inspiration for his work was the art of Spanish painter Remedios Varo. Her work, earthy, but mystical, and detailed, but surreal struck him immediately as if it were something he had always known. His suite for orchestra, Five Tableaux, is divided into five movements, each one named after a different Varo painting. He says of the work: "The first movement, Roulotte, is very brief, but contains many vivid colors. A long legato line is carried by the orchestra throughout, punctuated by flourishes from the piano and celesta. The second movement, Papilla Estelar, is a brief canzona that unfolds over a blanket of mysterious harmonies. Third is Aprendiz de Ícaro, a miniature scherzo, fleet but rhythmically decisive. The fourth movement, Camino Árido, is the longest movement and the dramatic center of the piece. It is an almost post-romantic adagio, complete with distant funeral drums and a cataclysmic climax. The final movement, Microcosmos, is introduced by a distant horn call, which summons the full orchestra to a festive conclusion."

JUILLIARD COMPOSERS

Niccolo Athens is currently finishing his third year as an undergraduate at Juilliard, where he studies with Samuel Adler. A native of San Antonio, Texas, he began his studies in viola and composition. His music has been performed by the San Antonio Symphony and the Youth Orchestra of San Antonio. Last summer, he attended the Aspen Music Festival and School where he studied with George Tsontakis. This summer he will study composition at the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau and attend the Staunton Music Festival in Virginia, which has commissioned him to write a song cycle. In 2007, he received the prize in the emerging artist category of the American Art Song Competition for Composers. In 2006, he was awarded a BMI student composer award.

Eugene Birman currently studies with Christopher Rouse as a candidate for a master of music degree at Juilliard, having recently completed the graduation requirements for a bachelor's in economics from Columbia University. He holds a Diploma di Merito from the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, Italy and was composer-in-residence from February - March 2009 at the ISCM Visby International Centre for Composers in Sweden. Mr. Birman is a former student of John Adams, Samuel Adler, Luis Bacalov, David Conte, and Azio Corghi. He has received awards from the NFAA, ASCAP, SCI-ASCAP, Collage New Music, the Accademia Musicale Chigiana, Juilliard, and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, among others.

Elizabeth Lim hails from San Francisco and is currently a first year master of music degree student at Juilliard, where she is studying with Samuel Adler. While an undergraduate student at Harvard University, she was awarded the Hugh F. MacColl Prize in composition, the John Green Fellowship in composition, and the Louis Sudler Prize in the Arts. She was selected as one of three composers-in-residence for the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra as part of the Under Construction concert series, and her most recent accomplishments include commissions and awards from ASCAP, the Palo Alto Youth-to-Youth Commissioning Project, Harvard University Bach Society Orchestra, Brattle Street Chamber Players, Bellevue Youth Symphony Orchestra Composers Competition, as well as from the first national Iron Composer Competition, hosted by the University of Nebraska's Artsaha!.

Gity Razaz is completing her third year in undergraduate composition studies at Juilliard, studying with Samuel Adler. She has studied composition with John Corigliano at Juilliard and Robert Nelson at Moores School of Music (University of Houston). Her work on this program, In the Midst of Flux, won an ASCAP award. Her compositions have earned honorable mention from the Brian M. Israel Composition Prize in 2007 and 2008, and the Margaret Blackburn memorial composition competition in 2007. Ms. Razaz began her musical studies in piano at age seven in Tehran, Iran and began composing at age nine. Her formal training in composition began when she moved to Houston, Texas in 2002. In the fall of 2004, Ms. Razaz attended the University of Houston, double majoring in pre-medicine and music composition with a minor in piano performance. In 2006, after completing two years of pre-med, she transferred to Juilliard to focus on composition.

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American conductor Jeffrey Milarsky, known for his innovative programming and wide-ranging repertoire from Bach to Xenakis, has premiered and recorded works worldwide by contemporary composers, and led such accomplished groups as the American Composers Orchestra, MET Chamber Ensemble, the Milwaukee Symphony, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center,  New York New Music Ensemble, Manhattan Sinfonietta, Speculum Musicae, Cygnus Ensemble, Fromm Players at Harvard University, and the New York Philharmonic chamber music series. In the United States and abroad,
Mr. Milarsky has premiered and recorded works by groundbreaking contemporary composers, including Charles Wuorinen, Fred Lerdahl, Milton Babbitt, Elliott Carter, Gerard Grisey, Jonathan Dawe, Tristan Murail, Ralph Shapey, Luigi Nono, Mario Davidovsky and Wolfgang Rihm. 

Mr. Milarsky is professor in music at Columbia University, where he is the music director and conductor of the Columbia University Orchestra. Also at Columbia University, Mr. Milarsky is the music director and conductor of the Manhattan Sinfonietta, which focuses on 20^th and 21^st century scores. In addition, he is on the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music as Artistic Director and Conductor of the Percussion Ensemble. He is the music director of AXIOM, one of The Juilliard School's critically acclaimed contemporary music ensembles. In September of 2008 he was named to the conducting faculty of Juilliard.

This past summer, Mr. Milarsky was called to Tanglewood to substitute for Maestro James Levine in an all Elliott Carter program in honor of his 100^th birthday. In May of 2006 Mr. Milarsky substituted for James Levine at Carnegie Hall, conducting an all-Milton Babbitt concert of his chamber music.

A much-in-demand timpanist and percussionist, Mr. Milarsky has performed and recorded with the New York Philharmonic, The Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Pittsburgh Symphony, among other ensembles. In addition, Mr. Milarsky was named the principal timpanist for the Santa Fe Opera beginning in the summer of 2005. As an active chamber and orchestral musician, Mr. Milarsky performs and records regularly with the New York Philharmonic, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the American Composers Orchestra, the Stamford Symphony, and Concordia. He has recorded extensively for Angel, Bridge, Teldec, Telarc, New World, CRI, MusicMasters, EMI, Koch, and London records.

Jeffrey Milarsky received his bachelor and master of music degrees from Juilliard. Upon graduation, he was awarded the Peter Mennin Prize for outstanding leadership and achievement in the arts.  He regularly conducts The Juilliard Orchestra, with whom he has premiered more than 150 works by Juilliard student composers during the past fifteen years.