$50 Million Gift to Juilliard Targets Racial Discrimination in Music


For three decades, the Juilliard School has sought to bring more variety to classical music by offering a weekend education program for predominantly Black and Latino schoolchildren.

The now-famous conservatory is planning a major expansion of what’s known as the Music Development Program: Juilliard announced Thursday that it has received a $50 million gift that it will use to increase enrollment for the program by 40 percent and provide full scholarships. to all participants.

“This is going to be transformational,” Damian Woetzel, president of Juilliard, said in an interview. “It will broaden the path to the highest level of classical music education in such a significant way.”

The gift comes from Crankstart, a California foundation sponsored by venture capitalist Michael Moritz and his wife, writer Harriet Heyman, who are longtime supporters of the program.

Heyman, announcing the gift, racial and ethnic variation in america orchestras, only 4 percent of musicians are Black or Hispanic. The Music Development Program’s “commitment to recruit underrepresented minorities will help bring excellent young musicians as well as new spirit to orchestras, concert halls and theaters everywhere,” Heyman said in a statement.

Juilliard aims to increase the number of registrations from 70 to 100. The initiative will expand its reach to include younger students. (Currently serving children ages 8-18.) And in addition to providing full scholarships to all students, the gift will be used to raise funds to help them purchase instruments.

The program includes ear training, instrument classes, and theory classes for students who come largely from New York City public schools. Students can enroll for four years. The annual cost of the program is $3,400, although many students currently receive full or partial scholarships funded from a variety of sources.

Since 2010, only seven Music Development Program students have attended Juilliard’s undergraduate program, while more have entered other prestigious institutions such as the Manhattan School of Music, Berklee College of Music, and the New England Conservatory. And 61 of the students were accepted into Juilliard’s prestigious pre-college course.

Anthony McGill, principal clarinet conductor of the New York Philharmonic and artistic director of the program, said the gift will enable Juilliard to reach students who may be reluctant to apply due to financial concerns.

“We needed to make sure there were no barriers to getting the more students we wanted into our program,” McGill said in an interview. “We wanted to open the doors and paths to their success.”

The program was founded in 1991 as a way to provide rigorous training to promising young musicians at a time when many New York schools were cutting their music education classes. interference from time to time faced financial difficulties. Juilliard nearly suspended it in 2009 due to budget cuts and fundraising issues. A group of donors eventually came to the rescue, including Moritz and Heyman. In 2013, the couple stepped up again, giving $5 million.

The expansion of the program comes with broader pressure from artists and cultural institutions to address longstanding inequalities in classical music. Weston Sprott, who helps oversee the program as juilliard’s prep dean, said being a musician of color is often a solitary experience, and ensembles need to better reflect the diversity of their communities.

“Often, the reward we get for our success as musicians of color is isolation,” Sprott, who is black, said in an interview. “Classical music wouldn’t be the best it could be without these young people we include in our programming.”



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