Janis Brenner, who joins the faculty as the artistic mentor for the Choreographers and Composers class, is the artistic director of Janis Brenner & Dancers in New York. She has toured in 31 countries and has been recognized with numerous awards, including a 1997 New York Dance and Performance (“Bessie”) Award for outstanding creative achievement and a 1996 Lester Horton Award for outstanding achievement in choreography. Her work has been commissioned and restaged by more than 45 companies and colleges in Germany, Sweden, France, Taiwan, Indonesia, Singapore, Russia, and the United States. Ms. Brenner has been performing with Meredith Monk and the Vocal Ensemble since 1990, recording on ECM Records. She has worked with Theo Bleckmann and Michael Moschen, and was a soloist with Annabelle Gamson’s company and with the Murray Louis Dance Company (1977-84), where she worked with Rudolf Nureyev, Plácido Domingo, Dave Brubeck Quartet, Joseph Papp, Batsheva Dance Company, and Alwin Nikolais. In 1998, Ms. Brenner had her first two memoir essays published by DanceView Magazine. She served on the board for the Gender Project in New York, which seeks to empower women in dance, and is on the advisory board of the Yard in Chilmark, Mass.

Dance composition teacher Wally Cardona moved to New York City in 1986 to study dance at The Juilliard School, where he received his B.F.A. During his first summer in New York, he was invited by Benjamin Harkarvy, then the Dance Division director, to attend the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, where he met Ralph Lemon. Mr. Cardona danced with Mr. Lemon’s company until 1995. In 1992, Mr. Cardona’s first work premiered at the Festival International de Danse in Cannes; his next work, Made In Voyage (1995), was performed in seven countries; and in 1997, Wally Cardona Quartet (WC4) was founded and WCV, Inc. was formed. Since then, Mr. Cardona’s work has been presented at festivals in Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Korea, Mexico, Portugal, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Commissions include Portland Institute for Contemporary Art; Brooklyn Academy of Music; Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival; the Myrna Loy Center/Helena Presents; Sushi Performance; Danspace Project; Dance Theater Workshop; Le Marietta Secret/Le Quartz de Brest; Ricochet Dance Productions; Group Motion and Hidden City; Paradigm; and soloist Risa Steinberg. As a teacher, Mr. Cardona has taught workshops throughout the world and is currently on the dance faculty at the Eugene Lang College of the New School in New York City. The recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship and a “Bessie” Award for the creation of Everywhere (which marked his debut at BAM’s Next Wave in 2005), Mr. Cardona resides in Brooklyn.

Charla Genn, who will teach ballet technique, instructs company ballet classes at the Metropolitan Opera, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet, and Les Ballets Trockaderos de Monte Carlo. As a choreographer, she created several modern and contemporary ballets for Ballet Manhattan and American Repertory Ballet. Ms. Genn has also staged works for Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, American Repertory Ballet, Washington Ballet, Goucher College, and the Richmond Academy in Vancouver, Canada. She created roles for Alvin Ailey, Robert Cohan, Daniel Ezralow, Jacqulyn Buglisi, Margot Sappington, and Robert North. Ms. Genn began her professional career in South Africa with Johannesburg City Ballet and Cape Town City Ballet. She danced as a soloist and principal dancer with the Bat-Dor Dance Company of Israel and with the Eglevsky Ballet, under Edward Villella. After two years as ballet mistress and principal dancer with New York Festival Dance Theater, she became its associate artistic director. In 1985, she co-founded Ballet Manhattan with her husband, Paul Croitoroo. Ms. Genn is a dance rehabilitation specialist, working one-on-one with professional dancers recovering form injuries and operations.

Joining the faculty as a ballet instructor, Fabrice Herrault began his classical training with Daniel Franck at Académie Chaptal in Paris before enrolling in L’Ecole de Danse de l’Opéra de Paris, under Claude Bessy. He graduated from the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris under Serge Golovine and Attilio Labis, and has danced with Le Jeune Ballet de France, Hamburg Ballet, Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo, Les Ballets de Marseille (under the direction of Roland Petit), Twyla Tharp and Dancers, and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. He has appeared on film and television in La Dame aux Camelias with the Hamburg Ballet, and with Twyla Tharp and Dancers in In the Upper Room on PBS’s Dance in America series. Mr. Herrault is a member of the ballet faculty at Steps on Broadway in New York City. He has taught at Barnard College, the Metropolitan Opera Ballet, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, San Francisco Ballet, American Ballet Theater Summer Intensive, Miami City Ballet Summer Intensive, and the New York International Ballet Competition.

Ray Hesselink, who will teach tap, is a director and choreographer working in theater, film, and television. His style is greatly inspired by the MGM films of the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s, reminiscent of such tap greats as Fred Astaire, Eleanor Powell, and Ann Miller. Mr. Hesselink most recently worked as a tap dance trainer and consultant with the creative team of the Broadway musical Billy Elliot. He has choreographed for many venues, including the Duke Theater, Symphony Space, and Yale Drama School, and also at the New York Musical Theater Festival. As a dancer, he created the role of Mr. Happy in Derick Grant’s Imagine Tap!, the role of Bud in Batboy: The Musical, and a recurring role on USA’s Up All Night, hosted by Rhonda Shear. Mr. Hesselink has also been featured as a principal dancer in Nayikas, a classical Indian dance company. He is currently on faculty at Steps on Broadway and Broadway Dance Center.

Francisco Martinez, who will teach ballet technique, was rehearsal director for Ballet Hispanico of New York from 1996 to 2000 and has been a guest teacher for Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal, BJM Danse-Ballet Jazz de Montréal, Boston Ballet, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Arts Umbrella, Compañia Nacional de Danza (Spain), Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet, and Hubbard Street Dance Chicago. Mr. Martinez was a dancer with Compañia Nacional de Danza and Ballet Royal de Wallonie (Belgium), performing the works of Petipa, Fokine, Balanchine, Jiri Kylian, Hans Van Manen, Nacho Duato, Vicente Nebrada, Alberto Alonso, and Anna Sokolow. In September 2005 Mr. Martinez’s work Le Cachot was performed by Damien Chevron in the Seoul International Dance Competition, in Korea. Mr. Chevron earned the Grand Prix of the jury for his performance. Mr. Martinez has trained at the National Ballet School in Spain, the Maria de Avila Dance School, and with Victor Ullate. In addition, he earned his ballet degree from the Royal Conservatory of Dance in Madrid and graduated from the Dance Education Laboratory at the 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Center in New York City.

David Parker, who will teach dance composition, is director of David Parker and the Bang Group, a rhythm-based theatrical dance troupe that has been based in New York City since 1995. The group has toured widely throughout Europe and North America, and has appeared at dozens of festivals, universities, and performing arts centers. Mr. Parker has won several awards, including a finalist prize from the Fourth International Competition for Contemporary Choreographers in Groningen, the Netherlands; a special citation from the Kurt Jooss Awards jury in Essen, Germany; and a New York Dance and Performance (“Bessie”) Award for design for his collaboration with Dutch avant-garde designers Melanie Rozema and Jeroen Teunissen. Mr. Parker has served on the faculties of the Alvin Ailey School since 1999 and Barnard College since 2005, where he teaches dance composition. He is on the boards of directors of the Danspace Project and the Field, has served on the “Bessie” Awards committee, and is curator and producer of a performance series at Manhattan’s West End Theater, where his company has been in residence since 2003. He continues to perform as a guest artist, most recently with Sara Rudner (Dancing on View at the ICA Boston), in Christopher Williams’s The Golden Legend, in Doug Elkins’s Fraulein Maria, in New York Theater Ballet’s Cinderella, and with a variety of independent choreographers.

MUSIC

Phoebe Carrai, who joins the Historical Performance faculty as a Baroque cello instructor, performs with the Arcadian Academy, the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Ensemble Arion, Les Musiciens du Louvre, and the Handel and Haydn Society. She is a member of the faculties of the University of the Arts in Berlin and the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, Mass. Ms. Carrai is also 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 the group for 10 years. At that time she also taught at the Hilversum Conservatory in the Netherlands. She studied at the New England Conservatory of Music, where she earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees, and in 1979, she undertook postgraduate studies in historical performance practice with Nikolaus Harnoncourt at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria. Ms. Carrai performs on an anonymous Italian cello, c. 1690. She has recorded for Aetma, Deutsche Grammophon, Harmonia Mundi, Telarc, Decca, and BMG.

Nick Eanet, the new first violinist in the Juilliard String Quartet, joins the violin faculty. He was the concertmaster of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, a position appointed by James Levine, from 1999 to 2009. During his tenure with the orchestra, Mr. Eanet has performed across Europe and Japan, and has regularly appeared in orchestral and chamber music concerts at all three venues at Carnegie Hall. He began his violin studies at age 3 with Nicole DiCecco and at 12 was admitted to The Juilliard School Pre-College, where he studied with Dorothy DeLay. He continued studying in the College Division with Robert Mann. After graduating from Juilliard with a Bachelor of Music, Mr. Eanet joined the Mendelssohn String Quartet as leader and first violinist. During his years with the ensemble, Mr. Eanet performed around the world in major venues such as Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, Wigmore Hall in London, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, and the Library of Congress. His teaching responsibilities included posts at Harvard University and the North Carolina School of the Arts. Numerous summer festival appearances include the Mostly Mozart Festival, Sante Fe Chamber Music Festival, Aspen Music Festival, Maui Chamber Music Festival, Steamboat Springs Strings in the Mountains Festival, among others. In addition to performing with the Sea Cliff Chamber Players and at Bargemusic, Mr. Eanet is a key member of Amadeus Virtuosi, a chamber orchestra that he also conducts.

Arthur Haas, who will teach figured bass/continuo skills in the Historical Performance program, has been the director of Amherst Early Music Festival Baroque Academy since 2001. He has won numerous awards, including the Concours International de Clavecin de Paris (1975). Mr. Haas was a soloist in numerous early music festivals, including Festival Estival de Paris, Spectaculum (Vienna), Innsbruck Festwoche für Alte Musik, and Mostly Mozart. He has performed duo recitals and concerts with early music specialists, including Julianne Baird, William Christie, Jan DeGaetani, Judith Nelson, Paul O’Dette, Dawn Upshaw, and Marion Verbruggen. Mr. Haas has taught summer workshops in early music for San Francisco Early Music Society, International Baroque Institute at Longy, Eastman Continuo Institute, and Albuquerque Early Music Workshop. He has made numerous recordings, including the music of D’Anglebert, Forqueray, Purcell, Jacquet de La Guerre, and François Couperin; and chamber music with Upshaw, Verbruggen, and Bruce Haynes. He has been a member of Aulos Ensemble since 1988 and the Five Centuries Ensemble from 1977 to 1987. Mr. Haas is currently on faculty at SUNY-Stony Brook and Mannes College the New School for Music.

Monica Huggett, the artistic director of the Historical Performance program, will teach Baroque violin. She was formerly the artistic director of the Portland (Ore.) Baroque Orchestra and the Irish Baroque Orchestra. During the last four decades, she 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. She has served as guest director of the Arion Baroque Orchestra; Tafelmusik; the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra; Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra; the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra; Orquestra Barroca de Sevilla; and Concerto Copenhagen. Among her 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 (2005); and Gramophone’s best instrumental recording award (2002) for Heinrich Biber’s Violin Sonatas. Ms. Huggett’s discography, which numbers in the hundreds, is on various labels, including EMI, Harmonia Mundi, Philips Virgin, Erato, and Decca. Born in London, Ms. Huggett began her violin studies at age 6 and at 16 entered the Royal Academy of Music in London, 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.

Brandon Lee assumes the position of conductor of the Jazz Orchestra. A recipient of numerous awards including the 2001 Clifford Brown and Stan Getz Fellowship, the 2001 Bob Ostrum Jazz Award, and the Outstanding Soloist Award at the 1999 Ellington Festival, Mr. Lee is a recent graduate of Juilliard’s Jazz Studies program, where he received his bachelor’s and master’s degress, as well as an Artist Diploma. He has toured the world and played with the likes of Benny Golson, Frank Wess, Clark Terry, Joe Wilder, and Wynton Marsalis. In the summer of 2002 Mr. Lee was awarded a scholarship by Marsalis to attend the International Achievement Summit in Dublin. He has performed a number of concerts with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and recorded with the ensemble on a N.B.A. pre-game show project in December 2005. Born in Houston, Mr. Lee began playing piano at 3 and trumpet at 9, and continued to pursue jazz at the Houston High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. He has studied with and been influenced by such Houston musicians as Bob Morgan, Conrad Johnson, Dennis Dotson, and his father, Herman Lee. Mr. Lee’s debut album, From Within, was recently released to critical acclaim.

Robert Mealy, who joins the Historical Performance faculty as a chamber music coach, 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 the group in its recent Grammy-nominated recording of Conradi’s Ariadne. Mr. Mealy appears regularly 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 the University of California at Berkeley. He was recently 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.

Sandra Miller, who will teach Baroque flute in the Historical Performance program, is frequently 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, the 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. Ms. Miller was a professor of music (now emerita) at the SUNY-Purchase College Conservatory of Music for many years. She has also taught at Mannes College the New School for Music, in 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, Ms. Miller 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 fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Robert Nairn will teach Baroque bass and violone in the Historical Performance program. A performer with a career that has spanned Europe, the United States, and Australasia, 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, and the English Baroque Soloists. He performed in London regularly for 10 years as a member of Florilegium and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Mr. Nairn has performed at a number of international festivals, including those in Salzburg, Glyndebourne, and the London Proms. As a soloist, he has performed several concertos with the Australian Chamber Orchestra and the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. He has recorded for Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, Sony, EMI, Virgin, ABC Classics, and Channel Classics. In 1999, Mr. Nairn was appointed to the faculty at Penn State University and was promoted in 2003 to associate professor. In addition to teaching double bass and coaching chamber music, he formed and is director of the university’s Baroque Ensemble. In 2003 he won the principal double bass position with Boston’s prestigious Handel and Haydn Society. A native of Australia, Mr. Nairn received his Bachelor of Music with distinction from the Canberra School of Music and a postgraduate diploma from the Berlin Musikhochschule, with the assistance of a two-year DAAD German Government Scholarship.

Joining the percussion faculty, Markus Rhoten has been the principal timpanist at the New York Philharmonic since 2006. In previous years he was the principal timpanist of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, led by Eliahu Inbal. Born in 1978 in Hanover, Germany, Mr. Rhoten attended the College of Arts in Berlin, and continued his studies as an apprentice with the National Opera Orchestra Mannheim. During his studies he was awarded a stipend for the Academy of the Bavarian Radio Orchestra in Munich, and in 2002 he became principal timpanist of the Bavarian Radio Orchestra, under Lorin Maazel. He has also worked with conductors Mariss Jansons, Riccardo Muti, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Franz Welser-Möst, Thomas Daussgard, Paavo Jarvi, and Mstislav Rostropovich, among others. Mr. Rhoten has performed with the Hessen Radio Symphony Orchestra, Zurich Opera Orchestra, North German Radio Philharmonic, Lower Saxony State Opera Orchestra, and Munich Philharmonic Orchestra.

Cynthia Roberts, who will teach Baroque violin in the Historical Performance program, is one of America’s leading performers on the Baroque violin, serving as concertmaster of the New York Collegium, Apollo’s Fire, and Concert Royal, and performing as a soloist and recitalist throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. At the invitation of William Christie, she recently appeared as concertmaster of Les Arts Florissants. She has performed regularly with Tafelmusik and the American Bach Soloists, and is a principal player in the Carmel Bach Festival. Ms. Roberts has also appeared with the London Classical Players, Taverner Players, and Smithsonian Chamber Players. Her violin playing was featured on the soundtrack of the 2005 film Casanova. 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 a soloist with the Boston Pops. Her principal teachers were Joseph Silverstein, Josef Gingold, and Stanley Ritchie.

Gonzalo Xavier Ruiz joins the Historical Performance faculty as a Baroque oboe instructor. Appearing as principal oboist and concerto soloist with most of the leading period-instrument groups in America, Mr. Ruiz has performed widely in the United States and Europe with many conductors, including Christopher Hogwood, Nicholas McGegan, and Jordi Savall. His playing is featured on numerous recordings of solo, chamber, and orchestral repertoire. Equally accomplished on the modern instrument, Mr. Ruiz has acted as principal oboist of the Buenos Aires Philharmonic and the New Century Chamber Orchestra. He 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 has also taught at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, Mass., and has given master classes at Indiana University. An active chamber musician, Mr. Ruiz has made several reconstructions and arrangements, notably from the works of Bach and Rameau. Mr. Ruiz is an acknowledged expert in historical reed-making techniques, and more than two dozen of his pieces are on permanent display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Dominic Teresi joins the Historical Performance faculty as a Baroque bassoon instructor. He is principal bassoon of the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra and he performs and records with the group worldwide. He also shares leadership of Chiaroscuro, an ensemble of early music specialists dedicated to 17th-century music. A foremost performer of the dulcian, Baroque, Classical, and modern bassoons, he has played with the Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra, Le Concert d’Astrée, Chatham Baroque, Toronto Consort, Spiritus Collective, and others. Mr. Teresi was recently invited to be a featured artist on CBC Radio’s New Generation series, performing a live concert of bassoon concertos and chamber music. He is a 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 faculty member of the University of Toronto. He holds a Master of Music and an Artist Diploma in modern bassoon from Yale University, a médaille d’or from the Conservatoire National de Région de Bordeaux, France, and is a doctoral candidate at Indiana University.

Kenneth Weiss, who will teach Baroque harpsichord in Historical Performance, is a faculty member of the Paris Conservatory and performs harpsichord recitals and Baroque chamber music in numerous festivals and concert halls around the world. From 1990 to 1993, he 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 Combattimento in the Lille, Bordeaux, and Monte Carlo operas; a Handel program with the English Concert; and a new staged production of two tonadillas escénicas, late-18th-century Spanish works by Esteve and de Laserna, at the Almagro Festival near Madrid. Mr. Weiss’s 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. Since 2005, Mr. Weiss has given 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.

PRE-COLLEGE DIVISION

The Pre-College Division welcomes two new faculty members this year: Sophie Arbuckle, who will teach viola, and Lara Lev, who will be a chamber music coach.