1.
South Pacific (musical)
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South Pacific is a musical composed by Richard Rodgers, with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and book by Hammerstein and Joshua Logan. The work premiered in 1949 on Broadway and was an immediate hit, the plot of the musical is based on James A. Micheners Pulitzer Prize-winning 1947 book Tales of the South Pacific and combines elements of several of those stories. Rodgers and Hammerstein believed they could write a musical based on Micheners work that would be successful and, at the same time. A secondary romance, between a U. S. lieutenant and a young Tonkinese woman, explores his fears of the consequences should he marry his Asian sweetheart. The issue of prejudice is candidly explored throughout the musical, most controversially in the lieutenants song. Supporting characters, including a comic petty officer and the Tonkinese girls mother, the original Broadway production enjoyed immense critical and box-office success, became the second-longest running Broadway musical to that point, and has remained popular ever since. After they signed Ezio Pinza and Mary Martin as the leads, Rodgers, the piece won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1950. Especially in the Southern U. S. its racial theme provoked controversy, the production won ten Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Score, and Best Libretto, and it is the only musical production to win Tony Awards in all four acting categories. Its original cast album was the record of the 1940s. The show has enjoyed many revivals and tours, spawning a 1958 film. The 2008 Broadway revival, a success, ran for 996 performances and won seven Tonys. Although book editor and university instructor James Michener could have avoided military service in World War II as a birthright Quaker, he enlisted in the U. S. Navy in October 1942. He was not sent to the South Pacific theater until April 1944 and he survived a plane crash in New Caledonia, the near-death experience motivated him to write fiction, and he began listening to the stories told by soldiers. One journey took him to the Treasury Islands, where he discovered an unpleasant village, called Bali-hai, populated by scrawny residents, struck by the name, Michener wrote it down and soon began to record, on a battered typewriter, his version of the tales. On a plantation on the island of Espiritu Santo, he met a woman named Bloody Mary, she was small, almost toothless and she told him also of her plans to oppose colonialism in French Indochina. These stories, collected into Tales of the South Pacific, won Michener the 1948 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, Tales of the South Pacific comprises nineteen stories. Each stands independently but revolves around the preparation for an American military operation to dislodge the Japanese from a nearby island and this operation, dubbed Alligator, occurs in the penultimate story, The Landing at Kuralei. Many of the die in that battle, and the last story is titled The Cemetery at Huga Point
2.
Musical theatre
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Musical theatre is a form of theatrical performance that combines songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The story and emotional content of a musical – humor, pathos, love, anger – are communicated through the words, music, movement, since the early 20th century, musical theatre stage works have generally been called, simply, musicals. These were followed by the numerous Edwardian musical comedies and the theatre works of American creators like George M. Cohan. Musicals are performed around the world and they may be presented in large venues, such as big-budget Broadway or West End productions in New York City or London. Alternatively, musicals may be staged in smaller fringe theatre, Off-Broadway or regional theatre productions, musicals are often presented by amateur and school groups in churches, schools and other performance spaces. In addition to the United States and Britain, there are vibrant musical theatre scenes in continental Europe, Asia, Australasia, Canada, the three main components of a book musical are its music, lyrics and book. The interpretation of a musical is the responsibility of its team, which includes a director. A musicals production is also characterized by technical aspects, such as set design, costumes, stage properties, lighting. The creative team, designs and interpretations generally change from the production to succeeding productions. Some production elements, however, may be retained from the production, for example. There is no fixed length for a musical, while it can range from a short one-act entertainment to several acts and several hours in length, most musicals range from one and a half to three hours. Musicals are usually presented in two acts, with one intermission, and the first act is frequently longer than the second. A book musical is usually built four to six main theme tunes that are reprised later in the show. Several shorter musicals on Broadway and in the West End have been presented in one act in recent decades, moments of greatest dramatic intensity in a book musical are often performed in song. Proverbially, when the emotion becomes too strong for speech, you sing, typically, many fewer words are sung in a five-minute song than are spoken in a five-minute block of dialogue. Therefore, there is time to develop drama in a musical than in a straight play of equivalent length. Within the compressed nature of a musical, the writers must develop the characters, the material presented in a musical may be original, or it may be adapted from novels, plays, classic legends, historical events or films. On the other hand, many musical theatre works have been adapted for musical films, such as West Side Story, My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music, Oliver
3.
Flower Drum Song
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Flower Drum Song was the eighth musical by the team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. It was based on the 1957 novel, The Flower Drum Song and it premiered on Broadway in 1958 and was then performed in the West End and on tour. It was adapted for a 1961 musical film, after their extraordinary early successes, beginning with Oklahoma. In 1943, Rodgers and Hammerstein had written two musicals in the 1950s that did not do well and sought a new hit to revive their fortunes. Lees novel focuses on a father, Wang Chi-yang, a refugee from China. Rodgers and Hammerstein shifted the focus of the musical to his son, Wang Ta, the team hired Gene Kelly to make his debut as a stage director with the musical and scoured the country for a suitable Asian – or at least, plausibly Asian-looking – cast. The musical, much more light-hearted than Lees novel, was profitable on Broadway and was followed by a national tour. After the release of the 1961 film version, the musical was produced, as it presented casting issues. When it was put on the stage, lines and songs that might be offensive were often cut, the piece did not return to Broadway until 2002, when a version with a plot by playwright David Henry Hwang was presented after a successful Los Angeles run. Hwangs story retains the Chinatown setting and the inter-generational and immigrant themes and it received mostly poor reviews in New York and closed after six months but had a short tour and has since been produced regionally. Lee fled war-torn China in the 1940s and came to the United States, by the 1950s, he was barely making a living writing short stories and working as a Chinese teacher, translator and journalist for San Francisco Chinatown newspapers. He had hoped to break into playwriting, but instead wrote a novel about Chinatown, Lee initially had no success selling his novel, but his agent submitted it to the publishing house of Farrar, Straus and Cudahy. The firm sent the manuscript to a reader for evaluation. The reader was found dead in bed, the manuscript beside him with the words Read this scrawled on it, the publishing house did so, and bought Lees novel, which became a bestseller in 1957. Lees novel centers on Wang Chi-yang, a 63-year-old man who fled China to avoid the communists, the wealthy refugee lives in a house in Chinatown with his two sons. His sister-in-law, Madam Tang, who takes citizenship classes, is a regular visitor, while his sons and sister-in-law are integrating into American culture, Wang stubbornly resists assimilation and speaks only two words of English, Yes and No. Wang also has a cough, which he does not wish to have cured. Wangs elder son, Wang Ta, woos Linda Tung, but on learning that she has many men in her life, drops her, he later learns she is a nightclub dancer
4.
Mary Martin
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Mary Virginia Martin was an American actress, singer, and Broadway star. A muse of Rodgers and Hammerstein, she originated many leading roles over her career, including Nellie Forbush in South Pacific and she was named a Kennedy Center Honoree in 1989. She was the mother of actor Larry Hagman, Martin was born in Weatherford, Texas. Her life as a child, as she describes it in her autobiography My Heart Belongs, was secure and she had close relationships with both her mother and father, as well as her siblings. Her autobiography details how the young actress had an ear for recreating musical sounds. Martins father, Preston Martin, was a lawyer, and her mother, although the doctors told Juanita that she would risk her life if she attempted to have another baby, she was determined to have a boy. Instead, she had Mary, who became quite a tomboy and her family had a barn and orchard that kept her entertained. She played with her elder sister Geraldine, climbing trees and riding ponies and he was tall, good-looking, silver-haired, with the kindest brown eyes. Mother was the disciplinarian, but it was Daddy who could turn me into an angel with just one look, Martin, who said I’d never understand the law, began singing outside the courtroom where her father worked every Saturday night at a bandstand. She sang in a trio with her sister and Marion Swofford, even in those days without microphones, my high piping voice carried all over the square. I have always thought that I inherited my carrying voice from my father and she remembered having a photographic memory as a child, making it easy to memorize songs, as well as get her through school tests. She got her first taste of singing solo at a fire hall, sometimes I think that I cheated my own family and my closest friends by giving to audiences so much of the love I might have kept for them. But thats the way I was made, I truly dont think I could help it, Martins craft was developed by seeing movies and becoming a mimic. She would win prizes for looking, acting and dancing like Ruby Keeler, never, never, never can I say I had a frustrating childhood. Mother used to say she never had such a happy child—that I awakened each morning with a smile. I dont remember that, but I do remember that I never wanted to go to bed, to go to sleep, during high school, Martin dated Benjamin Hagman, before she was packed off to finishing school at Ward–Belmont in Nashville, Tennessee. During that time, she enjoyed imitating Fanny Brice at singing gigs and she was homesick for Weatherford, her family, and Hagman. During a visit, Mary and Benjamin persuaded Marys mother to them to marry
5.
Greenwich Village
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Greenwich Village, often referred to by locals as simply the Village, is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan, New York City. Greenwich Village has been known as a haven, the Bohemian capital, the cradle of the modern LGBT movement. Groenwijck, one of the Dutch names for the village, was Anglicized to Greenwich, two of New Yorks private colleges, New York University and the New School, are located in Greenwich Village. The neighborhoods surrounding it are the East Village and NoHo to the east, SoHo to the south, the East Village was formerly considered part of the Lower East Side and never associated with Greenwich Village. The western part of Greenwich Village is known as the West Village, some believe it starts at Seventh Avenue and its southern extension, a border to the west of which the neighborhood changes substantially in character and becomes heavily residential. The Far West Village is another sub-neighborhood of Greenwich Village that is bordered on its west by the Hudson River and on its east by Hudson Street. Greenwich Village is located in New Yorks 10th congressional district, New Yorks 25th State Senate district, New Yorks 66th State Assembly district, encyclopaedia Britannicas 1956 article on New York states that the southern border of the Village is Spring Street, reflecting an earlier understanding. The newer district of SoHo has since encroached on the Villages historic border, many of the neighborhoods streets are narrow and some curve at odd angles. This is generally regarded as adding to both the character and charm of the neighborhood. In addition, as the meandering Greenwich Street used to be on the Hudson River shoreline, much of the neighborhood west of Greenwich Street is on landfill, but still follows the older street grid. When Sixth and Seventh Avenues were built in the early 20th century, they were built diagonally to the street plan. Unlike the streets of most of Manhattan above Houston Street, streets in the Village typically are named rather than numbered, while some of the formerly named streets are now numbered, they still do not always conform to the usual grid pattern when they enter the neighborhood. The Districts convoluted borders run no farther south than 4th Street or St. Lukes Place, redevelopment in that area is severely restricted, and developers must preserve the main façade and aesthetics of the buildings during renovation. In the 16th century, Native Americans referred to its farthest northwest corner, by the cove on the Hudson River at present-day Gansevoort Street, the land was cleared and turned into pasture by Dutch and freed African settlers in the 1630s, who named their settlement Noortwyck. In the 1630s, Governor Wouter van Twiller farmed tobacco on 200 acres here at his Farm in the Woods, sir Peter Warren began accumulating land in 1731 and built a frame house capacious enough to hold a sitting of the Assembly when smallpox rendered the city dangerous in 1739. The building was designed by Joseph-François Mangin, who would later co-design New York City Hall, by 1821, the prison, designed for 432 inmates, held 817 instead, a number made possible only by the frequent release of prisoners, sometimes as many as 50 a day. The oldest house remaining in Greenwich Village is the Isaacs-Hendricks House, when the Church of St. Luke in the Fields was founded in 1820 it stood in fields south of the road that led from Greenwich Lane down to a landing on the North River. In 1822, a fever epidemic in New York encouraged residents to flee to the healthier air of Greenwich Village
6.
Langston Hughes
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James Mercer Langston Hughes was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist from Joplin, Missouri. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form called jazz poetry, Hughes is best known as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance in New York City. He famously wrote about the period that the negro was in vogue, like many African Americans, Hughes has complex ancestry. Both of Hughes paternal great-grandmothers were enslaved African Americans and both of his paternal great-grandfathers were white slave owners in Kentucky, according to Hughes, one of these men was Sam Clay, a Scottish-American whiskey distiller of Henry County and supposedly a relative of the statesman Henry Clay. The other was Silas Cushenberry, a Jewish-American slave trader of Clark County, Hughess maternal grandmother Mary Patterson was of African-American, French, English and Native American descent. One of the first women to attend Oberlin College, she married Lewis Sheridan Leary, also of mixed race, Leary subsequently joined John Browns raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859 and died from his wounds. In 1869 the widow Mary Patterson Leary married again, into the elite and her second husband was Charles Henry Langston, of African-American, Euro-American and Native American ancestry. He and his younger brother John Mercer Langston worked for the abolitionist cause, Charles Langston later moved to Kansas, where he was active as an educator and activist for voting and rights for African Americans. Charles and Marys daughter Caroline was the mother of Langston Hughes, Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri, the second child of school teacher Carrie Mercer Langston and James Nathaniel Hughes. Langston Hughes grew up in a series of Midwestern small towns, Hughes father left his family and later divorced Carrie. He traveled to Cuba and then Mexico, seeking to escape the racism in the United States. After his parents separated, his mother traveled seeking employment, and young Langston Hughes was raised mainly in Lawrence, Kansas by his maternal grandmother, Mary Patterson Langston. Through the black American oral tradition and drawing from the activist experiences of her generation and he spent most of his childhood in Lawrence. In his 1940 autobiography The Big Sea he wrote, I was unhappy for a long time, after the death of his grandmother, Hughes went to live with family friends, James and Mary Reed, for two years. Later, Hughes lived again with his mother Carrie in Lincoln and she had remarried when he was still an adolescent, and eventually they moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where he attended high school. His writing experiments began when he was young, while in grammar school in Lincoln, Hughes was elected class poet. He stated that in retrospect he thought it was because of the stereotype about African Americans having rhythm, I was a victim of a stereotype. There were only two of us Negro kids in the class and our English teacher was always stressing the importance of rhythm in poetry
7.
New York City
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The City of New York, often called New York City or simply New York, is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2015 population of 8,550,405 distributed over an area of about 302.6 square miles. Located at the tip of the state of New York. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy and has described as the cultural and financial capital of the world. Situated on one of the worlds largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, the five boroughs – Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, The Bronx, and Staten Island – were consolidated into a single city in 1898. In 2013, the MSA produced a gross metropolitan product of nearly US$1.39 trillion, in 2012, the CSA generated a GMP of over US$1.55 trillion. NYCs MSA and CSA GDP are higher than all but 11 and 12 countries, New York City traces its origin to its 1624 founding in Lower Manhattan as a trading post by colonists of the Dutch Republic and was named New Amsterdam in 1626. The city and its surroundings came under English control in 1664 and were renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, New York served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790. It has been the countrys largest city since 1790, the Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the Americas by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is a symbol of the United States and its democracy. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance. Several sources have ranked New York the most photographed city in the world, the names of many of the citys bridges, tapered skyscrapers, and parks are known around the world. Manhattans real estate market is among the most expensive in the world, Manhattans Chinatown incorporates the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere, with multiple signature Chinatowns developing across the city. Providing continuous 24/7 service, the New York City Subway is one of the most extensive metro systems worldwide, with 472 stations in operation. Over 120 colleges and universities are located in New York City, including Columbia University, New York University, and Rockefeller University, during the Wisconsinan glaciation, the New York City region was situated at the edge of a large ice sheet over 1,000 feet in depth. The ice sheet scraped away large amounts of soil, leaving the bedrock that serves as the foundation for much of New York City today. Later on, movement of the ice sheet would contribute to the separation of what are now Long Island and Staten Island. The first documented visit by a European was in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine explorer in the service of the French crown and he claimed the area for France and named it Nouvelle Angoulême. Heavy ice kept him from further exploration, and he returned to Spain in August and he proceeded to sail up what the Dutch would name the North River, named first by Hudson as the Mauritius after Maurice, Prince of Orange
8.
Flower Drum Song (film)
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Flower Drum Song is a 1961 film adaptation of the 1958 Broadway musical Flower Drum Song, written by the composer Richard Rodgers and the lyricist/librettist Oscar Hammerstein II. The film and stage play were based on the 1957 novel of the name by the Chinese American author C. Y. Lee. In 2008, Flower Drum Song was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant. A young woman named Mei Li arrives from China as an immigrant with her father in San Francisco to enter into an arranged marriage with the owner of a night club. Dissolving the marriage contract is harder than either of them imagine, Master Wang is persuaded by his sister-in-law, Madame Liang, to allow Mei Li to fall in love naturally with Master Wangs son, Wang Ta. But Wang Ta is dazzled by the charms of Linda, who enjoys being a girl, at the party, Linda has another club employee pretend to be her brother, and grant his permission for Linda to marry Wang Ta. Mei Li, hearing this, becomes discouraged, while Ta, Ta argues that he is old enough to make his own decisions, but the father says that he will be the one to let Ta know when he is old enough. Sammy, in an effort to keep Linda from marrying Wang Ta, arranges to have Wang Ta see her nightclub act and he leaves, distraught, accompanied by his friend since childhood, the seamstress Helen Chao, who also grew up in America and deeply loves Wang Ta. Ta becomes drunk in his misery over Linda, and Helen ends up letting him stay for the night in her apartment and she sings Love Look Away, about her unrequited love. In the morning, Mei Li comes to deliver a burned coat for Helen to mend, when Wang Ta wakes up, he still does not notice Helens affections, even as she pleads for him to stay, and he leaves quickly. He goes to speak with Mei Li, now realizing that she is a match for him than Linda Low, only to have Mei Li reject him, saying that she once loved him. She and her father leave Master Wangs house and pursue the contract between Mei Li and Sammy Fong. This is unfortunate in that Sammy has already proposed to Linda, before the wedding, Wang Ta goes to see Mei Li, and they both realize that they are deeply in love with one another. They agree to try to come up with a way to get Mei Li out of her marriage contract. The day of the wedding, right before she is to sip from a goblet, Mei Li declares that, because she entered the United States illegally, the contract is null and void. Wang Ta can thus marry Mei Li, and Sammy decides to marry Linda right there as well, in the novel, Tas rejection actually leads her to commit suicide. Parodies of the song including a U. S, gap company commercial with Sarah Jessica Parker. There are over a dozen versions of the song on YouTube, including parodies based on Harry Potter, the film was unusual in featuring nearly all Asian American cast members, including dancers, though two of the singing voices were not Asian ones
9.
Edie Adams
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Edie Adams was an American businesswoman, singer, Broadway, television and film actress, and comedian. Adams was an Emmy and Tony Award winner and she was well known for her impersonations of sexy stars on stage and television, especially Marilyn Monroe. She was the wife and frequent television partner of Ernie Kovacs until his death in a 1962 car accident, Adams was born as Edith Elizabeth Enke in Kingston, Pennsylvania, the only daughter of Sheldon Alonzo Enke and his wife, Ada Dorothy. She had a brother, Sheldon Adams Enke. The family moved to areas such as Shavertown, Grove City and Trucksville and spent a year in New York City before settling in Tenafly, New Jersey. Ada Enke taught her singing and piano, mother and daughter were members of the Grove City Presbyterian church choir. Adams grandmother, a seamstress, taught her how to sew and she made her own clothing beginning in the sixth grade and Adams would later have her own designer line of clothing, called Bonham, Inc. She earned a degree from Juilliard, then graduated from Columbia School of Drama. She studied at the Actors Studio in New York and at the Traphagen School of Fashion Design, initially, Adams could not decide whether to pursue a career in fashion design or music, so she tossed a coin, and music won. In 1949-50, she appeared in the live television show Bonnie Maids Versatile Varieties as one of the original Bonnie Maids doing live commercials for the sponsor. In 1950, she won the Miss U. S, Television beauty contest, which led to an appearance with Milton Berle on his television show. Her earliest television work billed her as Edith Adams, one of her early appearances was on Arthur Godfreys Talent Scouts. She was seen by the producer of the Ernie Kovacs show Three To Get Ready, Edie, who was well-trained in classical music, had very little experience with popular music and could perform only three songs. She later stated, I sang them all during the audition and she became part of the show in July 1951. Adams had never seen the program she was hired for, when he saw his daughter on the show, Adams father was upset to find her role involved trying to avoid pies in the face. In one of his last interviews, Ernie Kovacs looked back on the days, saying, I wish I could say I was the big shot that hired her. Later on I did have something to say and I said it, Adams began working regularly on television with comedian Ernie Kovacs and talk show pioneer Jack Paar. After a courtship that included mariachi bands and a diamond engagement ring, Adams and Ernie Kovacs eloped, they were married on September 12,1954
10.
Juilliard School
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The Juilliard School located in the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, New York City, is a performing arts conservatory established in 1905. It is informally referred to as Juilliard, the school trains about 850 undergraduate and graduate students in dance, drama, and music. It is widely regarded as one of the leading music schools. In 2016, QS Quacquarelli Symonds ranked it as the worlds best institution for Performing Arts in their global ranking of the discipline. The Institute opened in the former Lenox Mansion, Fifth Avenue and 12th Street and it moved in 1910 to 120 Claremont Avenue in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, onto a property purchased from Bloomingdale Insane Asylum. In 1920, the Juilliard Foundation was created, named after textile merchant Augustus D. Juilliard, in 1924, the foundation purchased the Vanderbilt family guesthouse at 49 E. 52nd Street and established the Juilliard Graduate School. In 1926, the Juilliard School of Music was created through a merger of the Institute of Musical Art, the two schools shared a common Board of Directors and President but retained their distinct identities. The conductor and music-educator Frank Damrosch continued as the Institutes dean, in 1937, Hutcheson succeeded Erskine as president of the two institutions, a job he held until 1945. In 1946, the Institute of Musical Art and the Juilliard Graduate School completely merged to form a single institution, the president of the school at that time was William Schuman, the first winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Music. Schuman established the Juilliard String Quartet in 1946 and the Dance Division in 1951, William Schuman graduated from Columbias Teachers College and attended the Juilliard Summer School in 1932,1933 and 1936. While attending Juilliard Summer School, he developed a dislike for traditional music theory and ear training curricula, finding little value in counterpoint. L&M was Schumans reaction against more formal theory and ear training, the general mandate was to give the student an awareness of the dynamic nature of the materials of music. The quality and degree of each students education in harmony, music history or ear training was dependent on how each composer-teacher decided to interpret this mandate, William Schuman resigned as president of Juilliard after being elected president of Lincoln Center in 1962. Peter Mennin, another composer with experience at the Peabody Conservatory, was elected as his successor. Mennin made significant changes to the L&M program—ending ear training and music history, in 1968, Mennin hired John Houseman to manage a new Drama Division, and in 1969 oversaw Juilliards relocation from Claremont Avenue to Lincoln Center. Polisis many accomplishments include philanthropic successes, broadening of the curriculum, in 2001, the school established a jazz performance training program. In 1999, the Juilliard School was awarded the National Medal of Arts, in 2006, Juilliard received a trove of precious music manuscripts from board chair and philanthropist Bruce Kovner. Many of the manuscripts had been unavailable for generations,2, and manuscripts of Brahmss Symphony No.2 and Piano Concerto No.2
