In May, Carl Allen, artistic director of Jazz Studies, was the commencement speaker at Snow College, in Ephraim, Utah.

Dance faculty member Janis Brenner performed with Kun-Yang Lin/Dancers as a guest vocalist leading a chorale of university and community singers at the Philadelphia premiere of Lin’s Beyond the Bones in March. 

In April, the Manhattan School of Music Opera Theater performed The Ghosts of Versailles by composition faculty member John Corigliano. 

Frank Corsaro, the retired artistic director of the Juilliard Opera Center, has written a detective novel called The Hunting Hour (Authorhouse.com) with his son Andrew. 

Susan Hamburger, who teaches stagecraft in the Dance Division, was the featured lighting designer on Rosco.com in January. 

Tap dance faculty member Ray Hesselink co-created and choreographed I Bob: The Amazing Adventures of an Ordinary Guy, an evening-length comic ballet that premiered at the Joyce SoHo in July.  

Guitar faculty member Sharon Isbin performed on Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion at New York City’s Town Hall in April. 

In March, clarinet faculty member Anthony McGill received a Sphinx Medal of Excellence, a new award that honors young black and Latino leaders in classical music who “demonstrate artistic excellence, outstanding work ethic, a spirit of determination, and leadership potential.”

In March, the final concert of the American Mavericks series at Carnegie Hall of the San Francisco Symphony was led by conducting faculty member Jeffrey Milarsky (BM ’88, MM ’90, percussion). The concert also featuredJeremy Denk (DMA ’01, piano).

Dance faculty member Banu Ogan restaged excerpts from four Merce Cunningham dances:  Scramble (1967), Un jour ou deux (1973), Fielding Sizes (1980), and Scenario (1997) through a grant given to the Five College (Mass.) joint dance department to restage Cunningham’s renowned choreographic collage MinEvent on two casts of five college dancers. 

In July, dance composition faculty member David Parker presented his company, David Parker and the Big Bang Group, at Summer Stages Dance at Concord (Mass.) Academy in a program called All of the Other Reindeer.

In May, The Los Angeles Times profiled percussion faculty member Joseph Pereira (MM ’00, percussion) in connection with the premieres of two of his works by Los Angeles Philharmonic musicians at Disney Hall. The works were Concerto for Percussion and Chamber Orchestra and … alter the way things are with us down here for amplified double bass quartet.

Violin and chamber music faculty member Itzhak Perlman (Pre-College ’63; ’68, violin) will perform works by Massenet and Kreisler at the New York Philharmonic’s season opener, on September 27. Fellow faculty memberAlan Gilbert (Pre-College ’85; MM ’94, orchestral conducting) will conduct.

Evening Division faculty member Henning Rübsam (BFA ’91, dance) was interviewed last fall for the CP On Air Network’s Classic Talk series about the 20th anniversary of his company, Sensedance. This summer, Rübsam taught at Texas Academy of Ballet and at Präha Akademie Düsseldorf in Germany. 

In July, faculty member Joel Sachs conducted Juilliard students and alumni in the annual Museum of Modern Art Summergarden concerts. 

Mother Desert (Graywolf Press), a book of poems by liberal arts director Jo Sarzotti, was published in June.

In July, Pre-College faculty member Caroline Stinson (MM ’08, Artist Diploma ’10, cello) released her debut album, Lines (Albany). It features works by former faculty members Elliott Carter and Roger Sessions as well as by Witold Lutoslowski, Steven Stucky, John Harbison, Anna Weesner, Andrew Waggoner, Nadia Boulanger, and Ernest Bloch.

As a scholar in residence at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, dance history lecturer Rachel Straus gave lectures about Jessica Lang (BFA ’97) and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet in July and August. In June, Straus conducted research on contemporary German dance in Berlin. And her recent history columns for Dance Teacher magazine focused on the Broadway choreographers Michael Kidd (May) and Hanya Holm (June).

STUDENTS

In May, New York City’s Rose Bar featured an evening of performances by pianists including first year master’s students David Aladashvili (Pre-College ’08; BM ’12, piano) and Marika Bournaki (Pre-College ’08; BM ’12 , piano) as well as Vassily Primakov (BM ’03 , piano) and Natalia Lavrova (Pre-College ’99; BM ’03, MM ’05 ,piano) in its first Get Classical program, which aims to bring classical music into the city’s mainstream music nightlife. 

Fourth-year violinist Stefani Collins, third-year violist Matthew Lipman, and Matthew Zalkind (BM ’08, MM ’10, cello) won first prizes at the Washington International Competition for Strings, which took place in June. Meta Weiss, a doctoral candidate in cello, took second prize. 

Organ doctoral candidate Ryan William Jackson became the director of music and fine arts ministries at Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in July. 

Last November, Pre-College violinist Annika Jenkins performed Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto with Symphonicity in Virginia Beach, Va. In February, Jenkins performed Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5 with the Virginia Symphony as part of its Young People’s Concerts series. 

Third-year violist Matthew Lipman won the Stulberg International String Competition’s Burdick-Thorne gold medal in May. The prize includes $5,000 and a performance in the Grand Rapids (Mich.) Symphony Rising Stars series. The competition was held at Western Michigan University’s Dalton Center Recital Hall. Among the judges were cellist Matt Haimovitz (Pre-College ’87) and Roland Vamos (BS ’59, MS ’60, DMA ’74, violin).

The Princess Grace Foundation has announced that fourth-year dancer Raymond Pinto will receive one of its annual dance scholarships. The award ceremony will take place in October.

Second-year master’s organ student Benjamin Sheen was a finalist in the 2012 Taylor Organ Competition, in Atlanta.

In May, pianist and Barnard-Columbia-Juilliard Exchange student Conrad Tao (Pre-College ’11) became one of two Avery Fisher Career Grant recipients. He received $25,000.

Third-year organ student Gregory Zelek won the advanced level of the 2012 Rodgers North American Organ Competition, held in April at Kutztown (Pa.) University.

STAFF

In August, Katherine Howell, finance office administrative assistant, performed with Dell’Arte Opera Ensemble as a nun in Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelites and as a soloist in the French Art Song and Scenes program. Also in August, she sang Queen of the Night in Mozart’s The Magic Flute with New York Lyric Opera Theater. 

In April, Lisa B. Robinson, senior writer for special projects and proposals, completed the Unite half marathon in New Brunswick, N.J. 

In July, Justin Treece, master electrician of the Willson Theater, received an honorable mention at the Hollywood Book Festival for his urban fantasy novel Minion (iUniverse.com), the first book in his Shudagon trilogy. 

Electrics shop supervisor Jennifer Wilcox was the lighting designer for the play Blast Radius. It was written by Mac Rogers, directed by Jordana Williams, and performed at Long Island City’s Secret Theater in June