[Dixielandjazz] $20 Million For Early Music Program.

[Stephen G Barbone]

Rats, I thought it might be for Jazz Note the last sentence of the  
first paragraph. That also
describes practitioners of OKOM. VBG.


Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband


NY TIMES - January 16, 2012, 3:30 PM - By JAMES R. OESTREICH
Juilliard School Announces $20 Million Gift for Early Music
Devotees of early music in New York may be experiencing whiplash. The  
year began in inspiriting fashion, with the Green Mountain Project's  
superb annual presentation of Vespers music by Monteverdi, sponsored  
by Trinity Church at the Church of St. Jean Baptiste. Then, days  
later, a bleak midwinter seemed to settle in, when Trinity declared a  
hiatus in its own music program, suspending the activities of its  
excellent Trinity Choir and Baroque Orchestra at least until March.  
Now, on Tuesday, the Juilliard School is announcing a $20 million gift  
to endow its graduate-level program in historical performance. The  
sheer size of the gift is enough to make heads snap in the early-music  
world, whose practitioners typically struggle to stay a step ahead of  
poverty.

The donor is Bruce Kovner, the chairman of the school’s board, who  
recently retired as chairman of the $10 billion hedge fund Caxton  
Associates. Mr. Kovner, 66, has already financed the curriculum in  
period performance, which began in 2009, through its development and  
several academic years costing, he said in a telephone interview,  
$500,000 to $1 million each. The program, which is directed by the  
English violinist Monica Huggett and has attracted guest luminaries  
like the conductor-instrumentalists William Christie and Jordi Savall,  
has had a significant impact on the New York scene by presenting its  
own public concerts and furnishing performers for groups like Trinity’s.

Mr. Kovner, who also donated a priceless collection of manuscripts to  
Juilliard in 2006, has long been enamored of “the great literature of  
the Baroque,” he said, and he thought it an appropriate area for  
Juilliard to take on. He is not alone in thinking that — thanks in  
large part to the Juilliard program — early music now “has a center of  
gravity” and “serious levels of accomplishment” in New York.