Stephen McKinley Henderson to Give Juilliard's 2017 Commencement Address
By: BWW News Desk Apr. 17, 2017
The Juilliard School will confer honorary doctorates upon six luminaries during its 112th commencement ceremony on Friday, May 19, 2017, at 11 a.m. in Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center (Broadway at 65th Street, New York City).
Composer, conductor, and pianist Thomas Adès; soprano, educator, and cultural leader Martina Arroyo; award-winning actor, Juilliard guest master class teacher, and alumnus Stephen Mckinley Henderson; jazz pianist, arranger, music director, and composer Dick Hyman; Metropolitan Opera Association Vice President, philanthropist, and musicologist Frayda B. Lindemann; and dancer and former artistic director of the José Limón Dance Company Carla Maxwell will be honored at the May 2017 Commencement Ceremony.
Stephen Mckinley Henderson will give Juilliard's commencement address.
Juilliard President Joseph W. Polisi will read special citations and present degrees to all six honorees, who will be garbed in Juilliard's traditional academic robes and velvet caps, and will receive their ceremonial doctoral hoods onstage.
The ceremony will be live streamed at live.juilliard.edu.
ABOUT THE HONORARY DEGREE RECIPIENTS:
British composer Thomas Adès is one of the foremost musicians of his generation. His newest opera, The Exterminating Angel, debuts at the Metropolitan Opera in October, after its 2016 premiere at Salzburg and production at the end of April at Covent Garden. An earlier opera, The Tempest, was premiered at Covent Garden, with a Met production in 2012 (followed by a video release on EMI) as well as a new staging at the Vienna State Opera in 2015. Commissions for large-scale orchestral works such as In Seven Days, Polaris, Tevot, and Totentanz have come from the Berlin, Los Angeles, and New York Philharmonics as well as the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Barbican Centre, and other major presenting institutions. He has also written prize-winning works for chamber ensemble, solo piano, and chorus. Mr. Adès also maintains international careers as both a conductor and pianist. In addition to the orchestras above and others, he has led the Vienna Philharmonic, the London Symphony, and currently serves as the first-ever Artistic Partner to the Boston Symphony Orchestra, appearing with the B.S.O. chamber players in addition to conducting responsibilities. He frequently appears as pianist in solo recital or with colleagues such as tenor Ian Bostridge, cellist Steven Isserlis, and pianist Kirill Gerstein. His many awards include the Grawemeyer Award for Asyla(1999); Royal Philharmonic Society large-scale composition awards for Asyla, The Tempest,and Tevot; the Ernst von Siemens Composers' prize for Arcadiana; and the British Composer Award for The Four Quarters. His CD recording of The Tempest from the Royal Opera House (EMI) won the contemporary category of the 2010 Gramophone Awards; and his DVD of the production from the Metropolitan Opera was awarded the Diapason d'Or de l'année (2013), a Grammy Award for Best Opera recording (2014), and an ECHO Klassik Award for Music DVD Recording of the Year (2014). In 2015, he was awarded Denmark's prestigious Léonie Sonning Music Prize. Mr. Adès will be receiving Juilliard's honorary doctor of music degree.
American soprano Martina Arroyo has received numerous awards and accolades for her long-standing pre-eminence at the world's foremost opera houses and concert halls, including a 2013 Kennedy Center Honor and a 2010 Opera Honors Award from the National Endowment for the Arts. She continues to make an invaluable contribution to the art form through her teaching and her commitment to young artist development through the Martina Arroyo Foundation. Born and raised in New York City, Ms. Arroyo went on to conquer the opera world, from the Metropolitan Opera to the Vienna State Opera, Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires to La Scala in Milan, Paris Opera to the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, and concert halls from Salzburg and Berlin to New York. The New York Times once heralded her voice as "among the most glorious in the world." In 2003, Ms. Arroyo established her own nonprofit cultural organization. Now celebrating its 14th anniversary season, the Martina Arroyo Foundation provides new generations of emerging young artists with the tools to pursue careers in opera, by means of two intensive programs of study, coaching, and performance that focus on immersive preparation of complete operatic roles. Ms. Arroyo served for six years on the National Endowment for the Arts and continues to participate as an invited panelist and moderator. She sits on several boards, including Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Opera Guild, MasterVoices, and the Voice Foundation, as well as serving with the National Council on the Arts as an Ambassador for the Arts. Ms. Arroyo will be receiving Juilliard's honorary doctor of music degree.
Stephen Mckinley Henderson
Stephen Mckinley Henderson, a guest master class teacher at Juilliard and an alumnus, has worked on stages throughout the United States and abroad, on Broadway, off-Broadway, and in television and film. His Obie and Lucille Lortel awards are for outstanding lead actor in Stephen Adley Guirgis' Pulitzer Prize winning play, Between Riverside and Crazy, directed by Austin Pendleton. Considered among the celebrated interpreters of playwright August Wilson's work, Mr. Henderson received a Tony nomination and the Richard Seff Award for his performance of Bono in the 2010 revival of Fences with Denzel Washington and Juilliard alumna Viola Davis. His film and television work includes the Paramount feature film Fences, directed by Mr. Washington, for which Mr. Henderson received a Virtuoso Award from the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. He also appeared in the debut season of Aaron Sorkin's HBO series, Newsroom; Steven Spielberg's Lincoln for DreamWorks; and Tower Heist for Imagine/Universal. His stage roles range from Van Helsing in Dracula, The Musical, directed by Des McAnuff, to Pontius Pilate in LAByrinth Theatre's production of The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman. He is a retired professor and former chair of the department of theater and dance for the State University of Buffalo, and a Fox Foundation Fellow. Mr. Henderson will be receiving Juilliard's honorary doctor of fine arts degree.
Throughout a busy musical career that got underway in the early 50s, Dick Hyman has worked as pianist, organist, arranger, music director, and composer. His versatility in all of these areas has resulted in film scores, orchestral compositions, concert appearances, and well over 100 albums recorded under his own name. While developing a masterful facility for improvisation in his own piano style, Mr. Hyman has also investigated ragtime and the earliest periods of jazz and has researched and recorded piano music by Scott Joplin, Jelly Roll Morton, James P. Johnson, Duke Ellington, and Fats Waller. Other solo piano albums include variations on Irving Berlin, Harold Arlen, Cole Porter, George Gershwin, and Richard Rodgers, while his current repertoire draws increasingly from the classics. Mr. Hyman's concert compositions include his Piano Concertos No. 1 and 2, The Ragtime Fantasy, From Chama to Cumbres by Steam, a clarinet concerto for his colleague Ken Peplowsky, and a cantata based on the autobiography of Mark Twain. Among his recent chamber music compositions are Quartet for Strings in G, Quintet for Piano and Strings, Sextet for Piano and Strings, and Danzas Tropicales, which he premiered in Sarasota with members of La Musica Chamber Players. Mr. Hyman has often been heard in duo-piano performances with Derek Smith, in Three-Piano Crossover with Marian McPartland and Ruth Laredo, and in pops concerts under the director of Doc Severinsen and others. After serving as artistic director for the Jazz in July series at the 92nd Street Y for 20 years, he stepped down, but occasionally returns to the venue and makes other individual performances throughout the U.S. and Canada. In years past, Dick Hyman was music director for Arthur Godfrey and orchestrator of the hit musical Sugar Babies. He has served as composer/arranger/conductor/pianist for many Woody Allen films. Other film scores have included Moonstruck, Scott Joplin--King of Ragtime, The Lemon Sisters, and Alan and Naomi. Arbors Records has released his encyclopedic Century of Jazz Piano, an extended history on six discs, while newer albums by Mr. Hyman continue to be made available. He is the recipient of a 2017 N.E.A. Jazz Masters award. Mr. Hyman will be receiving Juilliard's honorary doctor of music degree.
Frayda B. Lindemann
Frayda B. Lindemann is vice president of the Metropolitan Opera Association, a member of the executive committee, and has been a managing director of the board since 1991. She has served as a member of the board of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, and is Immediate Past Board Chairman of OPERA America, a national organization that supports the creation, presentation, and enjoyment of opera, and provides artistic and educational services to opera companies and their communities. For many years, Dr. Lindemann has given time and support to the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program of the Metropolitan Opera, which provides training for exceptionally gifted young singers; the program has introduced a new generation of artists who are currently performing at the Metropolitan Opera and other opera houses. For 35 years, she also supported young musical talent through her work with Young Concert Artists. Dr. Lindemann received a PhD in musicology from Columbia University in 1978. She was associate professor in the music department of Hunter College for 12 years and now serves as co-chair of the Music Advisory Board at Hunter. Ms. Lindemann will be receiving Juilliard's honorary doctor of music degree.
Carla Maxwell joined the José Limón Dance Company in 1965 and soon became a principal dancer under the direction of Limón, a longtime Juilliard faculty member. Following Limón's passing, in 1972, she served as assistant artistic director under Ruth Currier and was appointed artistic director in 1978. During her tenure, the Company emerged as one of the finest repertory dance ensembles in the world, and also set an example for the field as the first major modern company in the U.S. to continue after its founder's death. She received the 1995 Dance Magazine Award and also a 1998 New York Dance and Performances (Bessie) Award, the latter for "finding a creative present in the context of a revered past, and thereby offering choreographic opportunity to multiple generations of artists; for inspired leadership and artistic accomplishment." Her work has been honored by the governments of Colombia and Mexico, and she was the recipient of a 2002-03 Isadora Duncan Award for her re-staging of Limón's Psalm. Acclaimed as a brilliant dramatic dancer, Ms. Maxwell danced many major roles with the Company, including the title role in Carlota, Limón's final ballet, which he choreographed for her. She is responsible for many of the company's reconstructions of Limón dances, and has created works for the Company and regional companies throughout the U.S. She teaches internationally as both a representative of the Foundation and a guest artist-in-residence. Ms. Maxwell stepped down as artistic director on July 1, 2016, and holds the position of legacy director for the José Limón Dance Foundation. Ms. Maxwell will be receiving Juilliard's honorary doctor of fine arts degree.
Founded in 1905, The Juilliard School is a world leader in performing arts education. Juilliard's mission is to provide the highest caliber of artistic education for gifted musicians, dancers, and actors from around the world so that they may achieve their fullest potential as artists, leaders, and global citizens.
Located at Lincoln Center in New York City, Juilliard offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in dance, drama (acting and playwriting), and music (classical, jazz, historical performance, and vocal arts). Currently more than 800 artists from 44 states and 42 countries are enrolled at Juilliard, where they appear in over 700 annual performances in the school's five theaters; at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully and David Geffen Halls and at Carnegie Hall; as well as other venues around New York City, the country, and the world.
Beyond its New York campus, Juilliard is defining new directions in global performing arts education for a range of learners and enthusiasts through The Tianjin Juilliard School, K-12 educational curricula, and an increasing array of digital education products.
Pictured: Stephen Mckinley Henderson. Photo by Nate Jensen.
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