The Juilliard School Boulez, Mozart, and Jelly Roll Morton

David Robertson will conduct the Juilliard Orchestra on April 19.  (Photo by Peter Schaaf)Composer and conductor Pierre Boulez turns 90 this year. To celebrate, David Robertson will lead the Juilliard Orchestra on April 19 in two iconic Boulez works at its only Avery Fisher Hall concert this season. Provost and dean Ara Guzelimian explores the program in The Journal.

Finding Figaro’s Roots

Stephen Wadsworth’s production of Le nozze di Figaro concludes a three-opera cycle of Mozart’s collaborations with librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte.  (Photo by Todd Rosenberg)
Faculty member Stephen Wadsworth’s cycle of the three Mozart-Da Ponte collaborations culminates this month with a Juilliard Opera production of Le nozze di Figaro. In the April Journal, Wadsworth discusses his ties to the ever-popular opera as well as its political and historical underpinnings, while music history chair L. Michael Griffel explores the origins of the characters’ names.

Early Icons of Jazz

The Juilliard Jazz Ensembles will perform the music of Jelly Roll Morton and King Oliver on April 13.  (Photo by Richard Termine)

Pianist Jelly Roll Morton grandly claimed to have singlehandedly invented jazz, and while he can’t claim sole credit, it’s certainly true that without either Morton or the bandleader King Oliver (who introduced the world to a young Louis Armstrong), jazz as we know it wouldn’t exist. New Orleans-based clarinetist and bandleader Michael White, who’ll lead the Juilliard Jazz Ensembles in a Morton and Oliver concert on April 13, spoke to The Journal about their music.

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(Photo by Rosalie O’Connor)