Juilliard Baroque: The Juilliard School's New Period-Instrument Faculty Ensemble Debuts on Tuesday, October 27 With An All-Bach Concert in the School's Paul Hall
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Juilliard Baroque brings together an exceptional group of early music performers. Ms. Huggett is world-renowned for her expressive and impassioned performances. She is artistic director of the Portland Baroque Orchestra and Dublin's Irish Baroque Orchestra. Ms. Carrai performs with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra from San Francisco, Les Musiciens du Louvre, and Boston's Handel and Haydn Society, among other ensembles. She also directs the Harvard Baroque Chamber Orchestra. Mr. Mealy is one of America's leading Baroque violinists and has recorded more than 50 CDs of early music for all the major labels. He is director of the Yale Collegium. Ms. Miller frequently is invited to perform and record with many well known period-instrument ensembles. She is a founding member and associate director of New York-based Concert Royal. Mr. Nairn has been a specialist in historical performance for more than 14 years and has a career that has spanned Europe, the U.S., and Australia. He is the principal bassist for the Handel and Haydn Society. Ms. Roberts serves as concertmaster of the New York Collegium, Apollo's Fire, and Concert Royal, and has appeared as a soloist and recitalist throughout the U.S., Europe, and Asia. At the invitation of William Christie, she recently appeared as concertmaster of Les Arts Florissants. Mr. Ruiz has appeared both as principal oboist or concerto soloist with most of the leading period instrument groups in the U.S., and has performed widely in Europe and the U.S. He is an expert in historical reedmaking techniques, and more than two dozen of his pieces are on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Mr. Teresi is principal bassoonist of the Toronto's Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra and shares leadership of Chiaroscuro, an ensemble of early music specialists dedicated to 17th-century music, also based in Canada. Mr. Weiss is a faculty member of the Paris Conservatory and performs harpsichord recitals and Baroque chamber music in festivals and concert halls around the world.
The ensemble makes its debut performance on Tuesday, October 27 at 8 PM in Juilliard's Paul Hall and opens the Historical Performance program's 2009-2010 season. The all-Bach program on October 27 features J.S. Bach's A Musical Offering, BWV 1079 and the Concerto for Oboe and Strings in F Major, BWV 1053.
Juilliard Baroque performs a second concert this season in collaboration with Music Before 1800 on Sunday, February 7 at 4 PM at Corpus Christi Church. The program features Bach's Brandenburg Concertos Nos. 3, 4, and 5.
In introducing Juilliard Baroque, Juilliard President Joseph W. Polisi remarked: "The Juilliard community looks forward with great anticipation to the inauguration of our new program in Historical Performance. I know that this new program will become a vital part of the artistic tapestry of the School and will add considerably to the educational environment for all our students in music, dance, and drama. In addition, the creation of ‘Juilliard Baroque' will allow the values of this special program to be experienced by audience members in New York and eventually around the world."
Monica Huggett, artistic director for Juilliard's Historical Performance program added: "My colleagues and I are delighted that Juilliard has embraced early music. I am particularly happy and honored to be leading Juilliard Baroque - the new ensemble composed of the nine superb faculty members of the Historical Performance program. As teachers, we are looking forward to training a new generation of Baroque musicians; and, as performing musicians ourselves, we look forward to giving a series of lively, passionate performances of 17th and 18th century music to New York audiences and, eventually, to audiences around the country."
Juilliard's Historical Performance student concert and master class schedule will be announced shortly in Juilliard's 2009-2010 season announcement.
JUILLIARD BAROQUE
BIOS
Monica Huggett (violin, artistic director of Historical Performance at Juilliard) is world-renowned for her expressive and impassioned performances. She currently is artistic director of the Portland (Oregon) Baroque Orchestra and the Irish Baroque Orchestra based in Dublin. Ms. Huggett became artistic director of The Juilliard School's Historical Performance program on July 1, 2008. During the past four decades, she has co-founded, with Ton Koopman, the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra; founded her own London-based ensemble, Sonnerie; worked with Christopher Hogwood at the Academy of Ancient Music, and with Trevor Pinnock and the English Concert; and toured the United States in concert with James Galway. Ms. Huggett has served as guest director of the Arion Baroque Orchestra, Montreal; Tafelmusik, Toronto; the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra; Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, San Francisco; the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra; Orquestra Barroca de Sevilla; and Concerto Copenhagen. She also performs frequently as a solo violinist all over the world.
Education of young performers is important to Ms. Huggett, who has given master classes in Banff, Dartington, Vicenza, Dublin, The Hague, and Medellín; and has been professor of Baroque violin at the Hochschule für Künste, Bremen. Ms. Huggett holds an honorary fellowship in the Royal Academy of Music. Her expertise in the musical and social history of the Baroque Era is unparalleled among performing musicians. This huge body of knowledge and understanding, coupled with her unique interpretation of Baroque music, has made her an invaluable resource to students of the Baroque violin. Among her recent prizes are Gramophone magazine's Editor's Choice Award, 1997, for J.S. Bach's Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin; the Vantaa Baroque Energy Prize (Finland), 2005; and Gramophone's Best Instrumental Recording Award for Heinrich Biber's Violin Sonatas, 2002. Ms. Huggett's discography numbers in the hundreds and is on various labels - EMI, Harmonia Mundi, Philips Virgin, Erato, and Decca. She currently is working on reviving some of these recordings, which now are out of print.
Born in London, Ms. Huggett began her violin studies at age six and entered the Royal Academy of Music in London at age sixteen, where she was a student of Manoug Parikian. It was there that she discovered her affinity for Baroque violin and the performance of period music.
Cynthia Roberts
(violin/viola) is one of America's
leading performers on the Baroque violin, serving as concertmaster of the New
York Collegium, Apollo's Fire (The Cleveland Baroque Orchestra), and Concert
Royal, and appearing as soloist and recitalist throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia.
At the invitation of William Christie she recently appeared as concertmaster of
Les Arts Florissants. She has appeared regularly with Tafelmusik and the
American Bach Soloists, and is a principal player in the Carmel Bach Festival. Ms.
Roberts has appeared with the London Classical Players, Taverner Players and
Smithsonian Chamber Players. Her violin playing was featured on the soundtrack
of the film Casanova, which was released in 2005. Ms. Roberts serves
on the faculties of the University
of North Texas and the
Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute. Her recording credits include Sony
Classical, Analekta, BMG/Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, and Eclectra. She made her
debut at age 12 with Chicago's
Grant Park Symphony, performing the Mendelssohn Concerto, and later appeared as
soloist with the Boston Pops. Her principal teachers were Joseph Silverstein,
Josef Gingold and Stanley Ritchie.
Phoebe Carrai (cello) lives in the United States and performs with the Arcadian Academy and the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra (Nicholas McGegan), Ensemble Arion (Claire Guillment), Les Musiciens du Louvre (Marc Minkowski) and the Handel and Haydn Society (Grant Llewellyn). She is a member of the faculties of the University of the Arts in Berlin, Germany and the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Ms. Carrai also is a founding member and co-director of the International Baroque Institute at Longy School of Music. In 1983, she joined the chamber music ensemble Musica Antiqua Köln and worked with them for ten years. At that time she also taught at the Hilversum Conservatory in Holland. Ms. Carrai studied at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston where she earned both her bachelor and master of music degrees, and in 1979, she undertook post-graduate studies in Historical Performance Practice with Nikolaus Harnoncourt at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria. Ms. Carrai performs on an anonymous Italian cello from c. 1690. She has recorded for Aetma, Deutsche Grammophon, Harmonia Mundi, Telarc, Decca and BMG.
Robert Nairn (double bass) is a versatile performer on the double bass with a career that has spanned Europe, the U.S. and Australasia. As a specialist in Historical Performance for more than 14 years, Mr. Nairn studied with Chi-Chi Nwanoku and has worked with the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, the Aulos Ensemble, the Handel and Haydn Society, the Washington Bach Consort, the English Baroque Soloists and performed in London regularly for 10 years as a member of Florilegium (Baroque Ensemble-in-Residence at Wigmore Hall) and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Mr. Nairn has performed at a number of international festivals including Salzburg, Baden-Baden, Aldeburgh, Glyndebourne, and the London ‘Proms' with conductors such as Sir Simon Rattle, Leonard Bernstein, Kurt Masur, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Sir Christopher Hogwood, Mariss Jansons, Sir Roger Norrington, André Previn, Sir Charles Mackerras, Christoph Eschenbach, Lorin Maazel, Kent Nagano and Frans Brüggen. As soloist, Mr. Nairn has performed several concerti with the Australian Chamber Orchestra and the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra (including Bottesini's Passiona Amorosa with bassist Gary Karr) and has given many recitals in Europe, the U.S., and Australia. He has recorded for Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, Sony, EMI, Virgin, ABC Classics, and Channel Classics.
Mr. Nairn was appointed to the faculty at Penn State University in the U.S. in 1999 and promoted to the rank of associate professor in 2003. Apart from teaching double bass and coaching chamber music, he is founding director of the University's Baroque Ensemble. In 2003 he won the Principal Double Bass position with Boston's prestigious Handel and Haydn Society, the oldest continuous performing arts organization in the U.S. and an internationally respected period-instrument ensemble. A native of Australia, Mr. Nairn received his bachelor of music with distinction from the Canberra School of Music and a post-graduate diploma from the Berlin Musikhochschule with the assistance of a two-year DAAD German Government Scholarship.
An early fascination with the music of J.S. Bach led Sandra Miller to the Baroque flauto traverso. She frequently is invited to perform and record with many well known period-instrument ensembles, including the American Classical Orchestra, the Clarion Music Society, Sinfonia New York, the New York Collegium, Boston's Handel and Haydn Society, Tafelmusik, and American Bach Soloists. As a founding member and associate director of the ensemble Concert Royal, she has toured throughout the United States and in Canada, England, Germany, Brazil and Mexico. For many years professor of music (now emerita) at the Purchase College Conservatory of Music (SUNY), Ms. Miller also has taught at the Mannes College of Music, in the City University of New York's doctoral program, at the New England Conservatory of Music, and as Kulas Visiting Artist at Case Western Reserve University. Her solo recordings include the complete Bach flute sonatas and, on six- and eight-keyed classical flutes, the three Mozart concertos. Trained at the North Carolina School of the Arts and the Curtis Institute of Music as a traditional woodwind player, she instead chose period music performance based in New York City, where her appearances include a variety of chamber music, solo, and orchestral concerts. Ms. Miller was winner of the Concert Artists Guild Competition, the Erwin Bodky Competition for Early Music, and a Solo Recitalist's Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Gonzalo Xavier Ruiz has appeared both as principal oboist and concerto soloist with most of the leading period instrument groups in America and has performed widely in the U.S. and Europe with conductors such as Christopher Hogwood, Nicholas McGegan, Jordi Savall, Gustav Leonhardt, Reinhard Goebel, Andrew Manze, and Mark Minkowski. His playing is featured on numerous recordings of solo, chamber, and orchestral repertoire. Equally accomplished on the modern instrument, he has acted as principal oboist of the Buenos Aires Philharmonic, and the New Century Chamber Orchestra. Mr. Ruiz was a prizewinner at the Bruges Early Music Competition in Belgium and for many years has been professor of oboe at Oberlin Conservatory's Baroque Performance Institute and the University of North Texas. He also has taught at the Longy School in Cambridge and given master classes at Indiana University. An active chamber musician, he has made several reconstructions and arrangements, notably from the works of Bach and Rameau. Mr. Ruiz is an acknowledged expert in historical reedmaking techniques, and more than two dozen of his pieces are on permanent display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He also is active in the field of contemporary music and was awarded the 2000 ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming.
A
native of California,
Dominic Teresi is principal bassoon
of the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, with whom he performs and records
worldwide, and shares leadership of Chiaroscuro, an ensemble of early music
specialists dedicated to 17th-century music. In demand on the dulcian and
Baroque, Classical and modern bassoons, he also has played with Boston Early
Music Festival Orchestra, Le Concert d'Astrée, Chatham Baroque, Toronto Consort
and Spiritus Collective, among others. Mr. Teresi recently was invited to be a
featured artist on CBC Radio's New Generation Series, performing a live radio
concert of bassoon concertos and chamber music. He is a featured soloist on
Tafelmusik's Concerti Virtuosi CD, nominated for a 2006 Juno award; upcoming CD
releases include music from the 17th-century collection Prothimia Suavissima
with Chatham Baroque. Mr. Teresi teaches at the Tafelmusik Baroque Summer
Institute and Amherst Early Music Festival and is a member of the faculty of
the University of
Toronto. He holds a
master of music degree and an Artist Diploma in modern bassoon from Yale University,
a medaille d'or from the Conservatoire National de Région de Bordeaux, France,
and is a doctoral candidate at Indiana
University.
Kenneth Weiss (harpsichord), a faculty member of the Paris Conservatory, performs harpsichord recitals and Baroque chamber music in numerous festivals and concert halls around the world. From 1990 to 1993, Mr. Weiss was musical assistant to William Christie at Les Arts Florissants, participating in numerous opera productions and recordings. Most recently, Mr. Weiss directed revivals of Dido and Aeneas and the Combbatimento of the Lille, Bordeaux and Monte Carlo operas; a Handel program with The English Concert, including Handel organ concertos in France and Spain, and a new staged production of two Tonadillas Escenicas, late-18th-century Spanish works by Esteve and de Laserna at the Almagro Festival near Madrid. Mr. Weiss' latest recording, Scarlatti's Essercizi per gravicembalo on the Satirino label, co-produced with the Madrid Caja Bank's Spanish music label Los Siglos de Oro, was released in November 2007. He also performs as a soloist with Europa Galante led by Fabio Biondi and with the Collegium Vocale de Ghent, directed by Philippe Herreweghe, and since 2005 gives Bach recitals with Fabio Biondi, including concerts at the Aix en Provence Festival and the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris. Born in New York City, Mr. Weiss graduated from the High School of Performing Arts and received his bachelor of music degree from Oberlin Conservatory of Music. He also studied with Gustav Leonhardt at the Sweelinck Conservatorium in Amsterdam.
One of America's leading Baroque violinists, Robert Mealy, has recorded more than 50 CDs of early music for all the major labels, ranging from Hildegard of Bingen with Sequentia, to Renaissance consorts with the Boston Camerata, to Rameau operas with Les Arts Florissants. A resident of New York, he is a frequent leader and soloist with the New York Collegium, Early Music New York, and the ARTEK early music ensemble. In 2004, Mr. Mealy was appointed concertmaster of the internationally-acclaimed Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra, and led them in their recent Grammy-nominated recording of Conradi's Ariadne, as well as the critically-hailed premiere of Mattheson's Boris Godenouw. Mr. Mealy regularly appears at music festivals worldwide. A devoted chamber musician, he is a member of the celebrated Renaissance violin band The King's Noyse, which records for Harmonia Mundi USA, the new 17th-century ensemble Spiritus Collective, and Fortune's Wheel. He served for more than a decade as an instrumental soloist and leader with the Boston Camerata. A keen scholar as well as a performer, Mr. Mealy has lectured and taught historical performance techniques at Columbia, Brown, Rutgers, Oberlin, and University of California at Berkeley. He recently was appointed director of the Yale Collegium, and also directs the Harvard Baroque Chamber Orchestra. For his work with both institutions, he received Early Music America's Binkley Award for outstanding teaching and scholarship. Mr. Mealy served for several years as the Hogwood Fellow of the Handel and Haydn Society, advising on scholarship and performance, and he regularly teaches historical improvisation and technique at workshops across North America.
About Juilliard's Historical Performance Program
Beginning this fall 2009, twelve students will be enrolled in Juilliard's Historical Performance program. The program is open to master of music degree and graduate diploma candidates and offers comprehensive study focusing on music from the High Baroque through the Early Classical eras. The performance-oriented curriculum fosters an informed, vital understanding of the many issues unique to period instrument performance with the level of technical excellence and musical integrity for which Juilliard is renowned. Joint projects and collaborations with the School's dance and drama divisions and Vocal Arts program, and with musicians outside of the Historical Performance program, will be encouraged. The master of music degree program requires a two-year residency; the graduate diploma program with a major in Historical Performance is a two-year, non-degree course of study. Along with weekly lessons and frequent performances, the curriculum also includes core classes covering a broad range of issues related directly to performance, including style and interpretation, historical and cultural contexts, analytical methods and treatises, historical dance, improvisation, continuo improvisation/figured bass reading, and ornamentation.
Guest residencies are an important part of the Historical Performance program's annual schedule, as are master classes with experts from around the world, and next season, Juilliard will present master classes with singer Emma Kirkby, viol player and conductor Jordi Savall, and early music specialist William Christie with members of his ensemble, Les Arts Florissants. (Dates to be announced.)
For further information, contact Juilliard's Admissions Office at (212) 799-5000, ext. 223 or visit www.juillard.edu/admissions. The next deadline date for applications is December 1, 2009.
JUILLIARD BAROQUE
Calendar of Events
Tuesday, October 27, 8 PM - Juilliard's Paul Hall, 155 West 65th Street, 1st Floor, NYC
J.S. Bach - A Musical Offering, BWV 1079
J.S. Bach - Concerto for Oboe and Strings in F Major, BWV 1053
Limited free tickets will be available about two weeks before the concert at the Janet and Leonard Kramer Box Office at Juilliard. For further information, call (212) 769-7406 or go to www.juilliard.edu.
Sunday, February 7, 4 PM - Corpus Christi Church, 529 West 121st Street, NYC
J.S. Bach - Brandenburg Concertos No. 3, 4, and 5
For information on tickets for Music Before 1800, call (212) 666-9266. To get to Corpus Christi Church, take the M4 or M 104 bus or the No. 1 subway to 116th Street, Columbia University stop.
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