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Juilliard School

The Juilliard School (/ˈdʒuːli.ɑːrd/ JOO-lee-ard)[5] is a private performing arts conservatory in New York City. Founded by Frank Damrosch as the Institute of Musical Art in 1905, the school later added dance and drama programs and became the Juilliard School, named after its principal benefactor Augustus D. Juilliard.

"Juilliard" redirects here. For other uses, see Juilliard (disambiguation).

Former names

  • Institute of Musical Art (1905–1926)
  • Juilliard School of Music (1926–1968)

Private conservatory

1905 (1905)

Frank Damrosch

MSCHE[1]

$1.38 billion (2021)[2]

Damian Woetzel

~350 (2021)[3]

~950 college and ~290 pre-college

~600 students (2020)

~350 students (2020)

New York City
,
New York
,
United States

40°46′26″N 73°59′00″W / 40.77389°N 73.98333°W / 40.77389; -73.98333

Small Urban

red and blue[4]
   

Penguin

www.juilliard.edu

The school is composed of three primary academic divisions: dance, drama, and music, of which the last is the largest and oldest. Juilliard offers degrees for undergraduate and graduate students and liberal arts courses, non-degree diploma programs for professional artists, and musical training for pre-college students. Juilliard has a single campus at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, comprising numerous studio rooms, performance halls, a library with special collections, and a dormitory. It has one of the lowest acceptance rates of schools in the United States. With a total enrollment of about 950 students, Juilliard has several student and faculty ensembles that perform throughout the year, most notably the Juilliard String Quartet.[6][7]


Juilliard alumni have won 105 Grammy Awards, 62 Tony Awards, 47 Emmy Awards, and 24 Academy Awards, including 2 alumni with EGOTs. Musicians from Juilliard have pursued careers as international virtuosos and concertmasters of professional symphony orchestras. Its alumni and faculty include more than 16 Pulitzer Prize and 12 National Medal of Arts recipients.[8][9]

Alice Tully Hall

Alice Tully Hall

Main entrance

Main entrance

Irene Diamond Building

Irene Diamond Building

The Juilliard School occupies a single main building, the Irene Diamond Building, in the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, along Broadway and W 65th Street. The Juilliard building contains several large studio rooms and performance venues, such as the Glorya Kaufman Dance Studio, Stephanie P. McClelland Drama Theater, Harold and Mimi Steinberg Drama Studio, the Judith Harris and Tony Woolfson Orchestral Studio, and Edwin and Nancy Marks Jazz Rehearsal Room. Recital halls include the Peter Jay Sharp Theater, Paul Recital Hall, and the Morse Recital Hall.[77][78] The building also houses the Alice Tully Hall, where the Chamber Music Society of the Lincoln Center performs.[79]


Adjacent to the Juilliard building is the Samuel B. & David Rose Building, which is the home of the school's Meredith Willson Residence Hall, named after the composer, conductor and Juilliard alumni Meredith Willson.[80][81] The building consists of student dormitories, faculty suites, and studios for visiting artists.[82][83] and is also home to the School of American Ballet.[84]

Organization and Administration[edit]

Juilliard's leadership and administration consist of a Board of Trustees, Executive officers, and senior administrators. The Board of Trustees includes approximately thirty members, with a chair and two vice-chairs, and is responsible for appointing Juilliard's president and managing the school's business affairs.[85][86] Executive offices include the offices of the president and provost. Four administrators serve each as dean and director of the dance, music, drama, and preparatory divisions. There is an additional director for the Jazz program. Other academic subdivisions include the Ellen and James S. Marcus Institute for Vocal Arts and Lila Acheson Wallace Library. The vice president holds the position of Chief Advancement Officer and manages the development of the school. Other administrative areas include the Chief Operating Officer and Corporate Secretary, the Public Affairs Office, and Enrollment Management and Student Development.[87]


The Juilliard School has ties with higher education institutions such as Barnard College, Columbia University,[88] and Fordham University[89] and has associations with Nord Anglia Education for primary and secondary education since 2015.[90] The school is accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE), with its last reaffirmation in 2020.[91]

Academics[edit]

Admission[edit]

Juilliard admits both degree program seekers and pre-college division students. The latter enter a conservatory program for younger students to develop their skills;[92] All applicants who wish to enroll in the Music Advancement Program, for the Pre-College Division, must perform an audition in person before members of the faculty and administration and must be between ages 8 and 18.


The Juilliard admissions program comprises several distinct steps. Applicants must submit a complete application, school transcripts, and recommendations;[93] some majors also require that applicants submit prescreening recordings of their work, which are evaluated as part of the application.[94] A limited number of applicants are then invited to a live audition,[93][94] sometimes with additional callbacks.[93] After auditions, the school invites select applicants to meet with a program administrator.


Admission to the Juilliard School is highly competitive, as it ranks among the most selective schools in the United States.[95][96] In 2007, the school received 2,138 applications for admission, of which 162 were admitted for a 7.6% acceptance rate.[97] For the fall semester of 2009, the school had an 8.0% acceptance rate.[98] In 2011, the school accepted 5.5% of applicants.[99] For Fall 2012, 2,657 undergraduate applicants were received by the college division and 7.2% were accepted. The 75th percentile accepted into Juilliard in 2012 had a GPA of 3.96 and an SAT score of 1350.[100]


A cross-registration program is available with Columbia University where Juilliard students who are accepted to the program are able to attend Columbia classes, and vice versa. The program is highly selective, admitting 10–12 students from Juilliard per year. Columbia students also have the option of pursuing an accelerated Master of Music degree at Juilliard and obtaining a bachelor's degree at Barnard or Columbia and an MM from Juilliard in five (or potentially six, for voice majors) years.[101]

Academic programs[edit]

The school offers courses in dance, drama, and music. All Bachelor's and Master's degree programs require credits from Liberal Arts courses, which include seminar classes on writing, literature, history, culture, gender, philosophy, environment, and modern languages.[102]


The Dance Division was established in 1951 by William Schuman with Martha Hill as its director. It offers a Bachelor of Fine Arts or a Diploma.[103] Areas of study include ballet and modern and contemporary dance, with courses ranging from dance technique and performance to dance studies. Since its inception, the dance program has had a strong emphasis not only on performance but also on choreography and collaboration.[104]


The Drama Division was established in 1968 by the actor John Houseman and Michel Saint-Denis. Its acting programs offer a Bachelor of Fine Arts, a Diploma and, beginning in Fall 2012, a Master of Fine Arts.[105] Until 2006, when James Houghton became director of the Drama Division, there was a "cut system" that would remove up to one-third of the second-year class. The Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program, begun in 1993, offers one-year, tuition-free, graduate fellowships; selected students may be offered a second-year extension and receive an Artist Diploma. The Andrew W. Mellon Artist Diploma Program for Theatre Directors was a two-year graduate fellowship that began in 1995 (expanded to three years in 1997); this was discontinued in the fall of 2006.


The Music Division is the largest of the school's divisions. Available degrees are Bachelor of Music or Diploma, Master of Music or Graduate Diploma, Artist Diploma and Doctor of Musical Arts. Academic majors are brass, collaborative piano, composition, guitar, harp, historical performance, jazz studies, orchestral conducting, organ, percussion, piano, strings, voice, and woodwinds. The largest music department is Juilliard's string department,[106] followed by the piano department.[107] The collaborative piano, historical performance, and orchestral conducting programs are solely at the graduate level; the opera studies and music performance subprograms only offer Artist Diplomas. The Juilliard Vocal Arts department now incorporates the former Juilliard Opera Center.


The school's non-degree diploma programs are for specialized training to advance a performer's professional career. These include undergraduate and graduate programs in dance, drama, and music. Musicians and performers can also complete Artist Diploma programs in jazz studies, performance, opera, playwriting, and string quartet studies.[108]

Pre-College Division[edit]

The Pre-College Division teaches students enrolled in elementary, junior high, and high school. The Pre-College Division is conducted every Saturday from September to May in the Juilliard Building at Lincoln Center.[109]


All students study solfège and music theory in addition to their primary instrument. Vocal majors must also study diction and performance. Similarly, pianists must study piano performance. String, brass and woodwind players, as well as percussionists, also participate in orchestra. The pre-college has two orchestras, the Pre-College Symphony (PCS) and the Pre-College Orchestra (PCO). Placement is by age and students may elect to study conducting, chorus, and chamber music.


The Pre-College Division began as the Preparatory Centers (later the Preparatory Division), part of the Institute of Musical Art since 1916. The Pre-College Division was established in 1969 with Katherine McC. Ellis as its first director. Olegna Fuschi served as director from 1975 to 1988. The Fuschi/Mennin partnership allowed the Pre-College Division to thrive, affording its graduates training at the highest artistic level (with many of the same teachers as the college division), as well as their own commencement ceremony and diplomas. In addition to Fuschi, directors of Juilliard's Pre-College Division have included composer Dr. Andrew Thomas. The current director of the Pre-College Division is Yoheved Kaplinsky.

Center for Innovation in the Arts[edit]

The Center for Innovation in the Arts (CIA), formerly called the Music Technology Center, at the Juilliard School was created in 1993 to provide students with the opportunity to use digital technology in the creation and performance of new music. Since then, the program has expanded to include a wide offering of classes such as, Introduction to Music Technology, Music Production, Film scoring, Computers In Performance and an Independent Study In Composition.[110]


In 2009, the Music Technology Center moved to a new, state of the art facility that includes a mix and record suite and a digital "playroom" for composing and rehearsing with technology. Together with the Willson Theater, the Center for Innovation in the Arts is the home of interdisciplinary and electro-acoustic projects and performances at the Juilliard School.

Instruments[edit]

The Juilliard School has about 275 pianos, of which 231 are Steinway grand pianos. It is one of the world's largest collections of Steinway and Son's pianos in the space of concert halls and practice rooms.[111][112]


Pipe organs at Juilliard include those by Holtkamp (III/57, III/44, II/7), Schoenstein (III/12), Flentrop (II/17), Noack (II/3) and Kuhn (IV/85), which are located in various practice rooms and recital halls.[113][114]


The strings department allows students to borrow valuable historic stringed instruments for special concerts and competitions. There are more than 200 such stringed instruments, including several by Antonio Stradivari and Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù.[115][116]

Print and digital resources[edit]

The Lila Acheson Wallace Library is the main library at Juilliard that holds study scores, performance and sound recordings, books, and videos. The school's archives include manuscript collections with digitized holographs. The library has over 87,000 musical scores and 25,000 sound recordings. The Peter Jay Sharp Special Collections features the Igor and Soulima Stravinsky Collection, the Arthur Gold and Robert Fizdale Collection, and the Eugène Ysaÿe Collection.[117][118]

Notable Juilliard alumni include:

Henry Mancini, film composer and conductor (entered 1942, drafted for WWII)[162]

Henry Mancini, film composer and conductor (entered 1942, drafted for WWII)[162]

Miles Davis, jazz musician, trumpeter, bandleader, composer (entered Juilliard 1944)[163]

Miles Davis, jazz musician, trumpeter, bandleader, composer (entered Juilliard 1944)[163]

Van Cliburn, classical pianist (Diploma, 1954)[164][165]

Van Cliburn, classical pianist (Diploma, 1954)[164][165]

Nina Simone, singer, songwriter, pianist, and civil rights activist (entered Juilliard 1950)[166][167]

Nina Simone, singer, songwriter, pianist, and civil rights activist (entered Juilliard 1950)[166][167]

Leontyne Price, operatic soprano (Special Studies 1952)[168][169]

Leontyne Price, operatic soprano (Special Studies 1952)[168][169]

John Williams, film composer, conductor and pianist (entered Juilliard 1955)[170]

John Williams, film composer, conductor and pianist (entered Juilliard 1955)[170]

Chick Corea, jazz composer and pianist (entered Juilliard 1960)[171][172]

Chick Corea, jazz composer and pianist (entered Juilliard 1960)[171][172]

Philip Glass, composer and pianist (BM, 1960, MS in composition 1962)[173]

Philip Glass, composer and pianist (BM, 1960, MS in composition 1962)[173]

Marvin Hamlisch, composer and conductor, EGOT recipient (Pre-College, 1963)[174]

Marvin Hamlisch, composer and conductor, EGOT recipient (Pre-College, 1963)[174]

James Levine, conductor and pianist (Graduated 1964)[175][176]

James Levine, conductor and pianist (Graduated 1964)[175][176]

Pinchas Zukerman, violinist (Professional Studies, 1969)[177]

Pinchas Zukerman, violinist (Professional Studies, 1969)[177]

Yo-Yo Ma, cellist (Pre-College, 1971; Professional Studies, 1972)[178][179]

Yo-Yo Ma, cellist (Pre-College, 1971; Professional Studies, 1972)[178][179]

Kevin Kline, actor (GrDiP, 1972)[180]

Kevin Kline, actor (GrDiP, 1972)[180]

Patti Lupone, actress (GrDiP, 1972)[181]

Patti Lupone, actress (GrDiP, 1972)[181]

Christine Baranski, actress (BFA, 1974)[182]

Christine Baranski, actress (BFA, 1974)[182]

Kelsey Grammer, actor (1973-1975, left Juilliard)[183]

Kelsey Grammer, actor (1973-1975, left Juilliard)[183]

Robin Williams, comedian and actor (1973-1975, left Juilliard)[184]

Robin Williams, comedian and actor (1973-1975, left Juilliard)[184]

Christopher Reeve, actor, known for playing Superman (GrDiP, 1975)[185]

Christopher Reeve, actor, known for playing Superman (GrDiP, 1975)[185]

William Hurt, actor (GrDip, 1976)[186]

William Hurt, actor (GrDip, 1976)[186]

Mandy Patinkin, actor and singer (GrDiP, 1976)[187]

Mandy Patinkin, actor and singer (GrDiP, 1976)[187]

Nigel Kennedy, violinist and violist (c. 1972-1977)[188]

Nigel Kennedy, violinist and violist (c. 1972-1977)[188]

Keith David, actor (BFA, 1979)[189][190]

Keith David, actor (BFA, 1979)[189][190]

Kevin Spacey, actor (BFA, 1981)[191][192]

Kevin Spacey, actor (BFA, 1981)[191][192]

Val Kilmer actor (BFA, 1981)[193]

Val Kilmer actor (BFA, 1981)[193]

Midori Goto, classical violinist (entered Juilliard 1982)[194][195]

Midori Goto, classical violinist (entered Juilliard 1982)[194][195]

Renée Fleming, soprano (AD in Opera Studies, 1987)[196][197]

Renée Fleming, soprano (AD in Opera Studies, 1987)[196][197]

Laura Linney, actress (MFA, 1990)[198]

Laura Linney, actress (MFA, 1990)[198]

Viola Davis, actress and producer, EGOT recipient (GrDiP, 1993)[199][200][201]

Viola Davis, actress and producer, EGOT recipient (GrDiP, 1993)[199][200][201]

Audra McDonald, actress and singer (BM, 1993)[202][203]

Audra McDonald, actress and singer (BM, 1993)[202][203]

Sarah Chang, classical violinist (BM, 1999)[204]

Sarah Chang, classical violinist (BM, 1999)[204]

Glenn Howerton, actor and writer (BFA 2000)

Glenn Howerton, actor and writer (BFA 2000)

Anthony Mackie, actor (BFA, 2001)[205]

Anthony Mackie, actor (BFA, 2001)[205]

Jessica Chastain, actress and producer (BFA, 2003)[206][207]

Jessica Chastain, actress and producer (BFA, 2003)[206][207]

Gillian Jacobs, actress and director (BFA, 2004)[208]

Gillian Jacobs, actress and director (BFA, 2004)[200]

Oscar Isaac, actor (BFA, 2005)[209]

Oscar Isaac, actor (BFA, 2005)[209]

Adam Driver, actor (BFA, 2009)[210]

Adam Driver, actor (BFA, 2009)[210]

Ten Years of American Opera Design at the Juilliard School of Music, published by New York Public Library, 1941.

The Juilliard Report on Teaching the Literature and Materials of Music, by Juilliard School of Music. Published by Norton, 1953.

The Juilliard Review, by Richard Franko Goldman, published by Juilliard School of Music, 1954.

The Juilliard Journal, published by the Juilliard School, 1985.

Nothing But the Best: The Struggle for Perfection at the Juilliard School, by Judith Kogan. Published by , 1987. ISBN 0-394-55514-7.

Random House

Guide to the Juilliard School Archives, by Juilliard School Archives, Jane Gottlieb, Stephen E. Novak, Taras Pavlovsky. Published by The School, 1992.

, by Andrea Olmstead. Published by University of Illinois Press, 2002, ISBN 0-252-07106-9.

Juilliard: A History

A Living Legacy: Historic Stringed Instruments at the Juilliard School, by Robinson, Itzhak Perlman. Amadeus Press, 2006. ISBN 1-57467-146-4.

Lisa Brooks

Official website

The Juilliard School – its history at 100

Music Division, The New York Public Library. Olmstead's papers hold the research she carried out for her book on Juilliard, and include recorded interviews with various faculty, former students, and staff.

Andrea Olmstead papers, 1970–2013