The Juilliard School Announces the Appointments of New Music Studio Faculty

Natasha Brofsky has enjoyed a career in both the United States and Europe. As cellist of the Naumburg Award-winning Peabody Trio, she has performed on important chamber music series throughout the United States, Canada, and the U.K., at venues including Wigmore Hall in London, Herbst Theater in San Francisco, and the Corcoran Gallery in Washington. The Peabody Trio has recorded on New World, CRI, and Artek. During nearly a decade in Europe, Ms. Brofsky held principal positions in the Norwegian Radio Orchestra and the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra under Iona Brown. The Chamber Orchestra toured internationally, performing at the Proms in London, the Kennedy Center, and Carnegie Hall. In addition, she was a member of the Serapion Ensemble, performing with them in Germany and Austria, and the string trio, Opus 3, which performed throughout Norway for “Rikskonsertene,” the Norwegian State Concert Agency.

Ms. Brofsky is a sought-after teacher and has given master classes at many schools, including San Francisco Conservatory, Peabody Conservatory, and Boston University, as well as for El Sistema in Venezuela. Since 2001, she has been on the faculty at the Yellow Barn Festival in Vermont. She joined the cello faculty of the New England Conservatory in 2004, and she will retain this position.

Ms. Brofsky earned a bachelor of music and performer’s certificate from the Eastman School of Music and a master’s degree from Mannes College. Her cello teachers have included Marion Feldman, Robert Sylvester, Paul Katz, and Timothy Eddy. After college, she was awarded a Fulbright grant and studied in London with William Pleeth. While in London, she was awarded the Muriel Taylor Cello Prize.

David Finckel studied with Elsa Hilger, Bernard Greenhouse, and Mstislav Rostropovich. He appears in more than 100 concerts each season in recital with pianist Wu Han and as cellist of the Grammy Award-winning Emerson String Quartet. His activities as a concerto soloist include performances and recordings of the Dvorák Concerto, John Harbison Concerto, and Augusta Reed Thomas’ Ritual Incantations. In recognition of artistic excellence and achievement in the arts, Mr. Finckel and his longtime recital partner, pianist Wu Han, were named Musical America’s 2012 Musicians of the Year. In 1997, Mr. Finckel and Ms. Han launched ArtistLed, classical music’s first musician-directed and Internet-based recording company, whose catalogue of thirteen albums has won widespread critical acclaim. Mr. Finckel’s recording for the ArtistLed label of the Rachmaninoff, Shostakovich, and Prokofiev sonatas received BBC Music Magazine’s coveted “Editor’s Choice” award. This season, ArtistLed releases its fourteenth recording, an album featuring Mendelssohn’s Piano Trios with violinist Philip Setzer.

David Finckel and Wu Han have served as artistic directors of The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center since 2004. They also are the founders and artistic directors of Music@Menlo, a chamber music festival and institute in Silicon Valley that has garnered international acclaim, now celebrating its tenth anniversary season. In 2011, Mr. Finckel and Ms. Han were named artistic directors of Chamber Music Today, a new festival to be held annually at the Seoul Arts Center in Korea.

Mr. Finckel has taught at the Hartt School of Music and is currently on the faculty of Stony Brook University, a position he will retain. He has given master classes at the Aspen Music Festival, Toho School in Tokyo, the Taiwan Cultural Center, and the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. He is the creator and teacher of the innovative Cello Talks, an extensive online teaching series.

Denson Paul Pollard began as bass/tenor trombonist with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra in September, 2007. He was the bass trombonist of the Hong Kong Philharmonic from 2001-2007. He also has been bass trombonist of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the Cedar Rapids Symphony, the Illinois Symphony Orchestra, the Des Moines Metro Opera Orchestra, and the principle trombonist of the Waterloo/Cedar Falls Symphony Orchestra. He has played with the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Houston Symphony Orchestra, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. His teachers have included Dr. Jim Roberts, Dr. David Gier, George Krem, Charles Vernon, and Joseph Alessi. Denson Paul Pollard is a passionate champion of the bass trombone as a solo instrument and has played solo recitals all over the world. He has been a featured soloist with the Houston Symphony Orchestra, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, the West Point Military Academy Band, the Hong Kong Academy for the Performing Arts Wind Ensemble, the Jacksonville State University Wind Ensemble, the University of Iowa Chamber Orchestra, the Des Moines Community Orchestra and numerous community bands across Iowa. He performed a solo recital as a featured artist at the 2008 Eastern Trombone Workshop in Washington, DC and was a featured soloist at the 2009 Asia Trombone Festival in Taipei, Taiwan. Recently, Dr. Pollard was featured as a soloist with the US Army Band at the 2010 Eastern Trombone Workshop.

Mr. Pollard was awarded the master of musical arts degree and the doctorate of musical arts in performance and pedagogy from the University of Iowa, where he served as a teaching assistant in the areas of musicology, jazz and applied trombone. He holds a bachelor of science degree in musical education from Jacksonville State University in Jacksonville, Alabama. Dr. Pollard has taught at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University, and Hong Kong Chinese University. Currently, he is a member of the brass faculty at Mannes College and during the summers, the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo, Japan. He will retain those positions.

Erik Ralske was appointed as principal horn of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra by Maestro James Levine at the start of the 2010-2011 season. On July 6, 2010, he was featured in a front-page New York Times article for having won both the MET Opera position and the Los Angeles Philharmonic principal horn position in the same week. Prior to joining the MET Orchestra, he was a member of the New York Philharmonic for 17 seasons – 12 years as third horn and 5 years as acting associate principal horn. Other previous positions include associate principal horn with the Houston Symphony Orchestra and principal horn with the Vancouver Symphony, Florida Symphony, and Tulsa Philharmonic Orchestras. During his tenure with the New York Philharmonic, he was a soloist with the orchestra over a dozen times with music directors Kurt Masur and Lorin Maazel in New York, as well as on tour in Europe and South America. Next year, he is scheduled to make his solo debut with the MET Orchestra at Carnegie Hall in May 2013.

Mr. Ralske is active as a chamber musician. He has performed with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the MET Chamber Ensemble, the New York Philharmonic Ensembles, the Music Academy of the West, as well as the Seattle, Vancouver, and Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festivals. Currently, he is a member of the Philharmonic Quintet of New York (PQNY), a wind quintet of first chair players from the New York Philharmonic.

Erik Ralske has been active in the recording industry and has performed on several movie soundtracks – from Platoon (1986) to the many recent releases, such as Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2011). Among his CD recordings are Take 9, which combines the talents of the New York Philharmonic horn section and the American Horn Quartet, as well as a recent Naxos release of chamber music by the Pulitzer Prize winning composer, Paul Moravec.

He is on the faculties of the Manhattan School of Music and Mannes College Music, and he will retain those positions. He received both his bachelor of music and master of music degrees from Juilliard.

About The Juilliard School

The Juilliard School established this country's standard for education in the performing arts, beginning with music in 1905. In 1951, its Dance Division was established, with combined training in contemporary and ballet technique. Juilliard became part of Lincoln Center in 1968, and added a four-year drama program.

A residence hall - the School's first - was completed in 1990, and in 2001, Juilliard broke new ground with the addition of its jazz program; a graduate program in Historical Performance began in fall 2009, the same year that Juilliard inaugurated its partnership with the Metropolitan Opera's Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. This fall 2012, Juilliard will enroll its first class of new MFA degree students in the Drama program. Currently more than 800 young artists from 38 states (plus Washington, D.C.) and 37 foreign countries attend Juilliard.

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