Nygaard, Jens

▪ 2002

      American pianist and conductor (b. Oct. 26, 1931, Stephens, Ark.—d. Sept. 24, 2001, New York, N.Y.), was the maverick founder and director of the Jupiter Symphony, which for more than two decades offered concerts of rare and unusual classical music in New York City. Nygaard was noted for conducting obscure works by early 19th-century composers—among them, Louis Spohr, Carl Reinecke, and Carl Czerny—and for finding forgotten works by Wolfgang and Leopold Mozart, among others. As his Jupiter Symphony staggered from one financial crisis to the next, Nygaard was criticized for overworking and underpaying his young musicians—after one concert he could afford to pay each of them only subway tokens and a book of Shakespeare's sonnets. Nonetheless, he ensured that the orchestra played a third of its concerts for charities. Nygaard's mother gave him his first piano lessons, and his father had played clarinet in John Philip Sousa's band; Nygaard himself could play most orchestra instruments by the time he entered Louisiana State University on a clarinet scholarship. He received his bachelor's (1957) and master's (1958) degrees from the Juilliard School of Music in New York City. After suffering a mental breakdown in 1959, he endured a period of homelessness. During the 1960s and '70s, he made his reputation for wide-ranging musical tastes by leading orchestras, sometimes featuring himself as piano soloist, in and around New York. In 1979 he formed the Jupiter Symphony, named for Wolfgang Mozart's last symphony, and the Rockefeller Foundation contributed a $35,000 grant, but the iconoclastic Nygaard refused further Rockefeller aid rather than establish a conventional orchestra board. Financial obstacles forced the orchestra to disband in 1992, but Nygaard soon reunited the Jupiter Symphony.

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