Icons and Innovators: An Evening of Award-Winning Artists

Jessie Montgomery is a GRAMMY® Award-winning composer, violinist, and educator whose work interweaves classical music with elements of vernacular music, improvisation, poetry, and social consciousness, making her an acute interpreter of 21st-century American sound and experience. Her profound works have been described as “turbulent, wildly colorful, and exploding with life,” (The Washington Post) and are performed regularly by leading orchestras, ensembles, and soloists around the world. In June 2024, Montgomery concluded a three-year appointment as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Mead Composer-in-Residence. She was named Performance Today’s 2025 Classical Woman of the Year.

A founding member of PUBLIQuartet and former member of the Catalyst Quartet, Montgomery is a frequent and highly engaged collaborator with performing musicians, composers, choreographers, playwrights, poets, and visual artists alike. At the heart of Montgomery’s work is a deep sense of community enrichment and a desire to create opportunities for young artists and underrepresented composers to broaden audience experiences in classical music spaces.

Montgomery has been recognized with many prestigious awards and fellowships, including the Civitella Ranieri Fellowship, the Sphinx Medal of Excellence and Sphinx Virtuosi Composer-in-Residence, the Leonard Bernstein Award from the ASCAP Foundation, and Musical America’s 2023 Composer of the Year. She serves on the Composition and Music Technology faculty at Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music.

Nico Muhly is an American composer who writes orchestral music, works for the stage, choral, chamber, and sacred music. He’s received commissions from The Metropolitan Opera, Carnegie Hall, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic, and Wigmore Hall; his choral music, both sacred and secular, has been performed by The Tallis Scholars and choirs across the United Kingdom. He has been featured at the Barbican, King’s Place and the Philharmonie de Paris as composer, conductor, pianist, and curator. An avid collaborator, he has worked with choreographers Benjamin Millepied, Justin Peck, Kyle Abraham, and Mark Morris; vocal collaborators include Iestyn Davies, Renée Fleming, and Nicholas Phan; artists Sufjan Stevens, The National, Teitur, Anohni, James Blake and Paul Simon. His work for screen includes scores for The Reader and Kill Your Darlings, the BBC’s adaptation of Howards End and Pachinko for Apple TV+.

He has worked with visual artists Maira Kalman, Yu Hong, and Oliver Beer, and has created site-reactive works for the National Gallery, London, the Guggenheim Museum’s Asian Art Initiative at the Venice Biennale, and written articles for the Guardian, the New York Times, and the London Review of Books. Recordings of his works have been released by Decca and Nonesuch, and he is part of the artist-run record label Bedroom Community, which released his first two albums, Speaks Volumes (2006) and Mothertongue (2008).

Caroline Shaw is a musician who moves among roles, genres, and mediums, trying to imagine a world of sound that has never been heard before but has always existed. She works often in collaboration with others, as producer, composer, violinist, and vocalist. Shaw is the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize in Music, an honorary doctorate from Yale, four Grammys, and a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. She has written and produced for iconic artists and ensembles across the musical spectrum, including Rosalía, Renée Fleming, Yo-Yo Ma, Tiler Peck, Nas, Kanye West, the LA Phil, the NY Phil, and others. Recent tv/film/stage scoring projects include Leonardo Da Vinci (Ken Burns/PBS), Julie Keeps Quiet (Leonardo Van Dijl), Fleishman is in Trouble (FX/Hulu), The Sky Is Everywhere (Josephine Decker/A24), vocal work with Rosalía (MOTOMAMI), The Crucible (Lyndsey Turner/National Theatre), Partita (Justin Peck/NYC Ballet), Moby Dick (Wu Tsang), and LIFE (Gandini Juggling/Merce Cunningham Trust). Current touring projects include shows with Sō Percussion, Ringdown, Attacca Quartet, Roomful of Teeth, Graveyards & Gardens, Gabriel Kahane, and Kamus Quartet. Her favorite color is yellow, and her favorite smell is rosemary.

Nadia Sirota is a violist, conductor, and Peabody Award-winning producer. In all branches of her artistic life, she aims to open classical music up to a broader audience. Her singular sound and expressive execution have served as muse to dozens of composers, including Nico Muhly, Missy Mazzoli, Marcos Balter, and David Lang.

As a soloist, Nadia has performed with orchestras around the world, and released four albums of commissioned music. She is a member of the chamber sextet yMusic and has lent her signature sound to a dizzying array of projects, appearing on albums and concert stages with such popular artists as the National, David Bowie, Björk, Paul Simon, Ben Folds, and ANOHNI.

Nadia is co-founder of Eclipse Projects, a boutique agency specializing in artist management and creative producing, based in Los Angeles and New York. She received a Peabody Award for her podcast Meet the Composer With Nadia Sirota on New York Public Radio’s WQXR/Q2 (2014-17). From 2018 to 2022, she served as the New York Philharmonic’s first Creative Partner. She received her undergraduate and Master’s degrees from the Juilliard School, where she studied with Heidi Castleman, Misha Amory, and Hsin-Yun Huang. Nadia has been a Juilliard Creative Associate since 2019 and joined the Juilliard faculty in 2023, teaching Chamber Music and Graduate Studies, and becoming the school’s first Creative Associate at Large.

Bobbi Jene Smith (’06, dance) is a director, choreographer, and dancer who has choreographed original work for the Paris Opera Ballet, The Royal Danish Ballet, Martha Graham Dance Company, Ballet BC, LA Dance Project, Vail Dance Festival, Batsheva Ensemble, Theater Basel, and others. Her dance and theater 
works have been presented and supported by the American Repertory Theater, Performance Space New York, La MaMa, ODC Theater, Stanford Live, Carolina Performing Arts, Kaufmann Concert Hall at 92NY, Luminato 
Festival, MASS MoCA, Betty Nansen Theater, and others. 

Additionally, she has starred in or choreographed for films that include Elvira Lind’s Bobbi Jene, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride!, Alex Garland’s Annihilation, Georgia Parris’s Mari, and Boaz Yakin’s Aviva. Smith is an alum of Juilliard, North Carolina School of the Arts, and Royal Winnipeg Ballet School. She is a founding member of the American Modern Opera Company and a cofounder of the Broken Theater with Or Schraiber. She has been awarded the Harkness Promise Award and Wilhelm Foundation Award, and was a Martha Duffy Resident Artist at Baryshnikov Arts Center. Smith has been an artist-in-residence at LA Dance Project and the experimental theater LaMaMa.

Phillipa Soo is best known for originating the role of Eliza Schuyler Hamilton in Broadway’s critically acclaimed show Hamilton, earning her a Tony nomination, an Emmy nomination for the filmed version, a Grammy award for the cast album, and the 2015 Lucille Lortel Award for Lead Actress in a Musical. She recently starred as 'Mary Magdalene' in Jesus Christ Superstar at the Hollywood Bowl alongside Cynthia Erivo and Adam Lambert, co-starred in Ryan Murphy’s ABC drama series Dr. Odyssey with Joshua Jackson and Don Johnson, and led the film adaptation of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s bestselling novel One True Loves opposite Simu Liu.

Her recent theater credits include starring as Guenevere in Aaron Sorkin’s revival of Lerner & Loewe’s Camelot on Broadway, Shaina Taub’s off-Broadway musical Suffs directed by Leigh Silverman and the role of Cinderella in the James Lapine & Stephen Sondheim production of Into the Woods. In 2018, Soo appeared on Broadway opposite Uma Thurman in the play The Parisian Woman and in 2017 as the titular role in the Broadway musical Amelie. Soo also originated the role of Natasha Rostova in the 2012 Ars Nova production of Dave Malloy’s Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812.

Other television credits include Hulu’s critically acclaimed Dopesick, AppleTV+’s Shining Girls and The Code for CBS. She also voiced a lead role in Netflix’s animated film Over the Moon and in Disney+’s The One and Only Ivan, and co-starred in films Tick Tick Boom, The Broken Hearts Gallery, and Here and Now opposite Sarah Jessica Parker.

Phillipa recently released her children’s book Piper Chen Sings to uniformly excellent reviews.

The Canadian-born pianist Tony Siqi Yun, Gold Medalist at the First China International Music Competition (2019) and awarded the Rheingau Music Festival’s 2023 Lotto-Förderpreis, is quickly becoming a sought-after soloist and recitalist. At the age of 23, he has been hailed as a “poet of the keyboard” (Pianist Magazine), and The Philadelphia Inquirer noted his thrilling performance and “interpretive flashes that point to an emergent big personality: moments of grandness or deep expressivity.”

In 2025-2026, he appears with Orchestre Métropolitain, Louisville Orchestra, Las Vegas Philharmonic and Lincoln Symphony, among others. Major recital debuts this season include Wigmore Hall, Concertgebouw, Flagey, Harrogate, Royal Conservatory in Toronto, Celebrity Series of Boston as well as returns to Vancouver and Ghent. He returns to China this season, appearing with orchestras in Beijing and Hangzhou. Summer highlights include a debut recital at Ravinia and a concerto debut at the Aspen Music Festival, performing Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with Xian Zhang.

This past season, Tony appeared with the Nashville Symphony, New Jersey Symphony and Colorado Springs Philharmonic orchestras, among others. He had debut recitals with Washington Performing Arts, San Francisco Symphony’s Shenson Spotlight Series, and Friends of Chamber Music Denver.

He made his Carnegie Hall debut in 2024 under the baton of Yannick Nézet-Séguin with Orchestre Metropolitain, following his 2022-2023 debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Mr. Yun has appeared recently with the Toronto Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Calgary Philharmonic, Buffalo Philharmonic, Hamilton (ON) Philharmonic and Rhode Island Philharmonic; outside North America, he has recently appeared with Orchestre de Chambre de Paris and Shanghai Symphony Orchestra. Previous recital appearances in North America include Stanford Live, La Jolla Music Society, Gilmore Rising Stars Series, 92NY in New York, and the Vancouver Recital Series; in Europe, he has given recitals at the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, Gewandhaus Leipzig, Tonhalle Düsseldorf, and Philharmonie Luxembourg.

Mr. Yun is a 2024 graduate of The Juilliard School, where he was a recipient of the Jerome L. Greene Fellowship and studied with Professors Yoheved Kaplinsky and Matti Raekallio. He continues his studies in the Masters program at Juilliard.

Damian Woetzel is the seventh president of The Juilliard School, where he champions excellence, prioritizes affordability and access to the highest level of artistic education, and is leading a historic campaign to make the world’s leading conservatory tuition-free. Since beginning his tenure in July 2018, Damian has brought a new generation of artistic leadership, opened the school’s first branch campus in Tianjin, China, and expanded the school’s footprint with Juilliard Station, providing free public performances as Lincoln Center’s newest venue. One of the foremost ballet dancers of his time, Damian retired in 2008 from a 20-year career as an acclaimed principal dancer with New York City Ballet and on the international stage. He holds an M.P.A. from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and has been a visiting lecturer at Harvard Law School.