Highlighting Juilliard School: the Great School of Music

The Juilliard School is a center for music and the performance arts that has provided the world the highest caliber of artists from musicians, actors, to dancers for centuries now. Juilliard’s primary consideration is to foster an environment of excellent artistry for students to hone and prepare them for a successful career in music and the performing arts.

In fact, Juilliard School has produced various prominent personalities in the fields of drama, dance and music. The original Superman actor Christopher Reeve, Laura Linney of The Truman Show, Marcia Cross of Desperate Housewives, comedian and actor Robin Williams of Good Morning Vietnam, and Sara Ramirez of Grey’s Anatomy are just a few of its produced talents.

Juilliard’s professional quality musical training also gave the world the following artists: Nathaniel Ayer, an American virtuoso and pianist whose life is featured in the film The Soloist; Hiroko Nakamura, a pianist; the chamber music trio called Ahn Trio by the three sisters: Angella, Lucia, and Maria Ahn; and also Jonathan Batiste, a pianist.

Juilliard School first came to be known as the Institute of Musical Art when it was founded in 1905 by Dr. Frank Damrosch, who believed that Americans are not supposed to travel to Europe if only to study music and the performance arts. From its initial students of 100, it has ballooned to a few hundreds more, which showed the increasing demand for high-quality musical training in the US. As a result, the school originally located at the Fifth and Twelfth Street moved to its Claremont Avenue location. Juilliard School then got its name as part of its metamorphosis. It also resulted to the founding of Juilliard Graduate School.

Because of the sudden increase in the number of enrollees, Juilliard resorted to separating its classes into several divisions as drama, music, dance, precollege, evening, college, and the Music Advancement program. Anyone who wants to be in the ranks of the great Juilliard graduates should be able to pass the competitive auditions in selected cities around the United States. Their performances will be rated by the members of the faculty.

Juilliard has been part of history in the performance arts arena. In 2006, Juilliard was awarded a trove of precious music manuscripts from the billionaire collector Bruce Kovner. This includes recommended proofs and first editions of the major works of Beethoven, Chopin, Bach, Mozart, Schubert, and many others. This is an indication of Juilliard’s excellent collection of music and how it earned its reputation as the leading music school in the United States.