Practice Room Reservation System Is Inaugurated

"It's impossible to find an open practice room" has been a student lament at Juilliard seemingly forever. Finding an available one during busy times is "more difficult than finding street parking in New York City," says Adam Meyer (M.M. '04, viola), associate dean and director of the Music Division. Now a real- time room sign-in pilot program is underway that won't increase the number of rooms—but it should make finding an available one vastly easier.

Through a new system developed for Juilliard, students will be able to go to a kiosk on the fourth floor or go online to find out which practice rooms are available at any given moment. If, say, a pianist wants a particular room (the system will show which ones have pianos), she'll be able to reserve it through the kiosk. She'll then have five minutes to scan into the room with her ID. The system does allow for short breaks of up to 15 minutes with a reminder text after 10 minutes have passed. If she doesn't re-enter the room within 15 minutes, its status will revert to "Available." And as long as she doesn't leave the room unattended for more than 15 minutes, there are no time limits to how long she can keep it. The system also improves security as it prevents unauthorized access, tracks who's using the rooms, and, because the doors lock, protects belongings.

The system was the brainchild of facilities manager Adam Gagan, who joined the Juilliard staff in May. "My background is in industrial and systems engineering, so when I study a process, I try to optimize it," Gagan said. After extensive research in the summer and fall, a pilot program of 10 rooms began last month; the goal is to install the system in all practice rooms this summer.

Classical Stats Stat

While only five of the world's busiest 150 conductors are women, of that handful, two, Marin Alsop (B.M. '77, M.M. '78, violin) and JoAnn Falletta (M.M. '83, D.M.A. '89, orchestral conducting) are alumnae. How do we know? Through statistics released each winter by Bachtrack.com, which aggregates information from more than 20,000 worldwide performances annually, including orchestra concerts, chamber recitals, and operas. Going back to the list of busiest conductors, another one of the five busiest women is Jane Glover, who was at Juilliard last month to lead Iphigénie et Aulide, this year's Metropolitan Opera Lindemann Program-Juilliard collaboration.

Also on the list: Jaap van Zweden ('79, violin) is second; the sixth is Juilliard's director of conducting and orchestral studies Alan Gilbert (Pre-College '69; M.M. '94, orchestral conducting). Gilbert is also, of course, the music director of the New York Philharmonic—itself the world's second busiest orchestra, after the San Francisco Symphony. And the Vienna State Opera is the busiest opera company, followed by the Metropolitan Opera, whose artistic director is James Levine (Diploma '63, orchestral conducting) —Joshua Simka

Library-Musicological Gathering To Be Held at Juilliard

Generally things are pretty quiet at Juilliard in the summer, but they'll be at least a little less so this year, as a historic joint music librarian-musicological congress will be held here from June 21 to 26. Some 600 members of the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and Documentation Centres and the International Musicological Society (I.A.M.L./I.M.S.) will take part in presentations and discussions on the theme of Music Research in the Digital Age. Topics will range from the broad—Copyright in a Changing Digital Landscape—to the particular—Methodologies in the Study of Musicological Research Documenting the Music of Hungarian Jews. Jane Gottlieb, vice president for library and information resources, will serve as chair for an opening-session talk called Digitizing Musical New York (and More). Assistant violin faculty member Ray Iwazumi (Pre-College '94; B.M. '98, violin), who has written about Belgian violinist and composer Eugène Ysaÿe, will discuss resources in New York and Belgium related to him.