Icons and Innovators: An Evening of Award-Winning Artists

Emanuel Ax was born in Lvov, Poland, and performs in recital and with major symphony orchestras around the world. He appears regularly at the BBC Proms, Blossom Festival, Edinburgh Festival, Hollywood Bowl, Mostly Mozart Festival, Tanglewood Festival, and Ravinia Festival, among many others. His frequent chamber music performance collaborators include Isaac Stern, Yo-Yo Ma, and Young Uck Kim. Among Ax’s many world premieres of 20th- and 21st-century music include Joseph Schwantner’s Piano Concerto with the St. Louis Symphony under Leonard Slatkin (1988). Ax has recorded more than 20 discs for RCA records and has been an exclusive Sony Classical recording artist since 1987. He received Grammys in 1985 and 1986 for recordings of Brahms and Beethoven with Yo-Yo Ma. He was also the winner of the first Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Competition in 1974, the Michaels Award of Young Concert Artists in 1975, and the Avery Fisher Prize in 1979. Ax, who was a student of Mieczylaw Munz at Juilliard, did his graduate work at Columbia University. He has been on the Juilliard faculty since 1990.

Laëtitia Hollard is a French Afro-Caribbean actress who was raised in Wisconsin and is a recent BFA graduate of the Juilliard School (Class of 2025). Before attending Juilliard, she performed with American Players Theatre, Capital City Theatre, Theater LILA, and Children's Theater of Madison.

She can currently be seen in The Pitt on HBO, where she plays recent grad nurse Emma Nolan. She also stars as the lead in Trauma, a new feature film directed by Larry Fessenden.

While at Juilliard, her credits include Viola in Twelfth Night, Amphiarus in The Seven, Goneril in King Lear, and Mary in Abingdon Square.

Laëtitia is always deeply honored to return to her alma mater and grateful to be part of this production.

Kayla Mak is an apprentice member of American Ballet Theatre, joining in the fall of 2025 shortly after her graduation from Juilliard with a BFA in Dance. At Juilliard, she performed works by today's leading choreographers including Justin Peck, Caili Quan, Jamar Roberts and Shen Wei, in addition to receiving a grounding in the techniques of José Limón, Martha Graham, and other foundational dance figures. Prior to joining the main company, Mak danced with American Ballet Theatre Studio Company where she danced a wide range of ballet repertory from Petipa to Balanchine, along with contemporary ballet voices. Kayla reached a global audience through appearances on NBC's World of Dance, at the Vail Dance Festival, and through other professional performance opportunities. Mak is a recipient of the Princess Grace Award for dance performance.

Midori is a visionary artist, activist and educator who explores and builds connections between music and the human experience. In the four decades since her debut with the New York Philharmonic at age 11, she has performed with many of the world’s most prestigious orchestras and has collaborated with world-renowned musicians including Leonard Bernstein, Yo-Yo Ma, and many others.

Midori makes two appearances at Carnegie Hall this season.  In the fall, she joins the Estonian Festival Orchestra with conductor Paavo Järvi for Arvo Pärt’s Tabula Rasa as part of an all-Pärt program in honor of the composer’s 90th birthday. In April, she returns to perform Beethoven’s Violin Concerto with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s with conductor Masaaki Suzuki. Other orchestra appearances in the U.S. this season include the Boston Symphony with conductor Nodoka Okisawa in Dvořák’s Violin Concerto, and the Albany and Knoxville Symphonies.

In November, Midori performs a new work, Resonances of Spirit, for violin and electronics, written for her by the young New York-based violinist and composer Che Buford. The world premiere takes place at Williams College in Williamstown, MA, where Midori returns in February for a residency. The recital program also includes works by Beethoven, Poulenc, Clara Schumann, Robert Schumann and Schubert.

In addition to her U.S. appearances, Midori’s European soloist engagements include the Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra with conductor Christoph Eschenbach, Gewandhaus Orchestra with Maestro Järvi, and the Frankfurt Radio Symphony with conductor Michael Sanderling, where she is to receive the Pablo Casals Award from the Kronberg Academy; she also performs chamber music with pianist Jonathan Biss and cellist Antoine Lederlin. She makes two appearances in London, with a Wigmore Hall recital and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. In Asia, she performs recitals in Korea, Hong Kong and the Philippines; joins the Festival Strings Lucerne for a tour of Japan; and performs with the Hong Kong Sinfonietta. She also performs on tour in South America this season.

Her forthcoming release on Pentatone (expected Spring 2026) is a recording with Festival Strings Lucerne of music by Robert Schuman and Clara Schumann.

Deeply committed to furthering humanitarian and educational goals, Midori has founded several non-profit organizations; the New York City-based Midori & Friends, active for over three decades, offers accessible, tuition-free music education programs to students in NYC. Based in Japan, MUSIC SHARING brings both Western classical and traditional Japanese music to young people throughout Japan and developing areas of Asia; the organization’s the ICEP program travels to Cambodia this season. For the Orchestra Residencies Program (ORP), which supports youth orchestras, Midori commissioned a new work from composer Derek Bermel, Spring Cadenzas, that was premiered virtually during the COVID lockdown and continues to be performed; in 2023, ORP worked with the Afghan Youth Orchestra; this season, ORP works with the South Bend (IN) Youth Symphony and Joy of Music in Worcester, MA. Midori’s Partners in Performance (PiP) helps to bring chamber music to smaller communities in the U.S.  In recognition of her work as an artist and humanitarian, she serves as a United Nations Messenger of Peace, and was named a Kennedy Center Honoree in 2021.

Born in Osaka in 1971, she began her violin studies with her mother, Setsu Goto, at an early age. In 1982, conductor Zubin Mehta invited the then 11-year-old Midori to perform with the New York Philharmonic in the orchestra’s annual New Year’s Eve concert, where the foundation was laid for her subsequent career. Midori recently joined the faculty of the Juilliard School; she is the Dorothy Richard Starling Chair in Violin Studies at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and Artistic Director of Ravinia Steans Music Institute’s Piano & Strings program. She is the recipient of honorary doctorates from Smith College, Yale University, Longy School of Music and Shenandoah University, and of the 2023 Brandeis Creative Arts Award from Brandeis University.

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.

Anna Deavere Smith is credited with having created a new form of theater. Her plays, which focus on contemporary issues from multiple points of view, are composed of interview excerpts.  President Obama awarded Smith the National Endowment for the Humanities Medal. She’s the recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship, several Obie awards, and the George Polk Career Award in Journalism.  She was a runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize and nominated for two Tony Awards. Plays and films based on them include Fires in the Mirror and Twilight: Los Angeles, Let Me Down Easy, and Notes from the Field.  Television and film acting includes: Inventing Anna, The West Wing, Nurse Jackie, Black-ish. Philadelphia, The American President, and Rachel Getting Married, She’s a professor at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Last year she was Eastman Professor at Oxford. She has several honorary doctorate degrees including those from Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Spelman College and Juilliard, and Oxford.

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.

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.

Pianist Derek Wang moves across performance, collaboration, curation, and public engagement with the “enviable idiomatic rigor” of a connoisseur (The Wall Street Journal) and the relish of “a musical gourmand” (Le Devoir).

Derek first came to international attention with his interpretations of Liszt, receiving awards at the 12th International Liszt Competition (Liszt Utrecht) in 2022 (Second Prize) and at the inaugural New York Liszt Competition in 2021 (First Prize). 

Derek's work across disciplines includes collaborations with leading choreographers at the Vail Dance Festival, with Academy Award-winning animator Hugh Welchman, and with poet-activist Emtithal Mahmoud for the opening session of the 2025 Aspen Ideas Festival. Derek held a three-summer-long position as pianist of the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble at the Aspen Music Festival. He is presently a faculty member and Creative Enterprise Fellow at Juilliard, where he curates a range of interdisciplinary programs and shares artistic direction of Juilliard Station, a new street-facing performance space.

Derek holds degrees from Juilliard and from the Yale School of Music. His principal teachers have included Stephen Hough, Yoheved Kaplinsky, Matti Raekallio, and Boris Slutsky. He continues his studies at the Musikhochschule in Hannover, Germany with Arie Vardi. For more information and the latest concert schedule, please visit www.derek-wang.com.

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.

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.