The very first notes performed by the Juilliard Orchestra this season—at a September Alice Tully Hall concert during the school’s second annual Fall Festival—were written by Anna Clyne, an English composer whose multimedia creation, PALETTE, was a New York premiere and Juilliard co-commission.
And PALETTE was only the beginning: Modern music is a big part of Juilliard’s season, whether played by the orchestra or contemporary-music ensemble AXIOM, in chamber recitals or the fourth season of The New Series. In the fall, the orchestra played the world premiere of alum Eunike Tanzil’s Ascending Creatures (another Juilliard commission) and The Spark Catchers by New York-based British composer Hannah Kendall. AXIOM played works by composers Julia Wolfe and Anna Thorvaldsdottir. And The New Series presented world premieres by students Elizabeth Younan, Matthew Schultheis, and Ricardo Ferro-Hernandez as well as alums Andrew Hsu and Elise Winkler.
Even Juilliard’s Preparatory Division has gotten into the act. In November at Alice Tully Hall, the Pre-College Orchestra—consisting of students with an average age of just over 17—gave the world-premiere performance of Keepers of the Krown by Patrice Rushen, part of the Kayden Music Commissioning Program at Juilliard Pre-College and Interlochen Center for the Arts. Rushen—a classically trained pianist who originally found success in the 1970s and ’80s with her signature fusion of jazz, pop, and R&B—wrote her piece based on the eponymous art installation by sculptor Lauren Halsey, in which Rushen was depicted.
Several premieres, commissions, and other contemporary works will be heard in the spring. The Juilliard Orchestra’s upcoming Alice Tully Hall concerts include much modern music, including The Rhyme of Taigu by Chinese American composer (and visiting composition faculty from Juilliard’s Tianjin campus in China) Zhou Long (January 26, conducted by Ken Lam) and John Adams’ explosive Doctor Atomic Symphony (April 24, led by Juilliard’s director of conducting studies David Robertson). On March 30, alum and faculty member Jeffrey Milarsky leads the orchestra in the annual Composers Concert, which features world-premiere works by four student composers.
The orchestra’s final spring concert, part of the school’s Commencement Week, takes place May 21, with alum and Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra music director JoAnn Falletta leading the students in another world premiere of a Juilliard commission: composition alum Paola Prestini’s My Brilliant Friend: The Story of a New Name, based on the series of popular books by pseudonymous Italian author Elena Ferrante.
The Juilliard String Quartet (JSQ) consists of violinists Areta Zhulla and Leonard Fu, violist Molly Carr, and cellist Astrid Schween, all alums and faculty whose illuminating performances of the classical canon as well as a wide array of contemporary music like recent commissions by alums Jörg Widmann and Tyson Davis underline its motto to play old masterpieces as if they were new and new works with the same reverence as the classics. For the quartet’s April 30 recital at Alice Tully Hall, alongside canonical works by Shostakovich and J.S. Bach, a JSQ commission by alum Michelle Barzel Ross, Birds on the Moon, makes its New York premiere.
On May 3 in Paul Hall, The New Series presents Juilliard Pride Songbook, Vol. 3, which includes world-premiere works by alums Joy Redmond and Alistair Coleman as well as student Vincent Zhang. Zhang also features in the February 19 Alice Tully Hall collaboration of AXIOM and The New Series. Kurtág @ 100 celebrates the luminous music of the Hungarian composer as he reaches the century mark. Conducted by AXIOM music director Jeffrey Milarsky, the concert juxtaposes several of György Kurtág’s works—featuring Kafka-Fragmente, parts III and IV—with the world premiere of Zhang’s The Iron Mass for soprano and orchestra.
The work—based on the Roman Catholic liturgy and texts from Lord, What Is Man? by Jewish poet and philosopher Solomon Ibn Gabirol— is “heavily inspired by Kurtág’s concentrated miniature writing,” Zhang explains. “Kurtág’s music and mine are extremely different, (so) writing this piece felt like forcing two very strong energies to collide. The result is something I hope will be experienced as ‘chaotic Kurtág with severe bipolar disorder,’ in the best, most explosive artistic sense.”
A second-year bachelor’s candidate who’s a student of Music Division Dean and Director David Serkin Ludwig, Zhang considers his training at Juilliard “the most crucial part of my musical development so far.” He’s grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with his fellow students, who are often the first to perform his new music. “The musicians here are absolutely phenomenal and unbelievably dedicated,” he says. “You don’t find this level of commitment in the arts anywhere else.”
