Tonight, the Juilliard School celebrates 100 years in the star-making business with a gala performance at its own Peter Jay Sharp Theater. Broadcast on PBS by Live From Lincoln Center, the program will celebrate the school’s past with performances by its distinguished alumni. But it also will introduce students from the precollege through graduate school programs who will shape the future of music, dance, and theater. Those students will represent what has changed – and also what has remained gloriously the same – in this most celebrated school.

Founded in 1916, Juilliard is perhaps best known for its largest – and, initially, its central – discipline: music. This year, there are 318 undergraduate music students, as opposed to 88 in dance and 71 in drama. Tonight, the composer and conductor John Williams, who studied piano in the 1950s, will conduct the Juilliard Orchestra’s performance of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2. At the piano will be the 13-year-old student Peng Peng, a Chinese-born talent who studies at Juilliard’s pre-college division.

This division, part of the school since 1916, invites more than 300 young hopefuls to nurture their talents at rigorous Saturday classes. For a music-obsessed youngster like Mr. Peng, there’s no question that music is the only way to spend a Saturday. Asked why he was looking forward to playing the concerto, this eighth-grader gave an answer that suggests his enthusiasm: “You can put everything of yourself in it. You can put your heart into it.”

At the school’s founding, jazz was not a specific area of academic study. But in 2001, the Juilliard Institute for Jazz Studies became the latest riff on arts education. Viewers will hear from that department, thanks to alto saxophonist Sharel Cassity, a first-year graduate student in the septet playing Wynton Marsalis’s “Free To Be,” featuring department head Victor Goines and professor Wycliffe Gordon. Amid the excitement, Ms. Cassity is grateful for a little help from the wardrobe department.

“Playing saxophone in an evening gown is kind of awkward,” she said, adding that she’ll be wearing a custom-tailored women’s tuxedo on loan from the costume shop.

Compared with music, the dance and drama departments are relatively new additions. But both have grown into respected programs. The dance division, founded in 1951, was originally directed by Martha Hill, with a faculty that included Jose Limon and Martha Graham. Tonight, dancers will present an ensemble work punctuated with a duet by two seniors, Navarra Novy-Williams and Dominic Santia.

But the work of Juilliard alums can be seen in modern dance troupes all over New York. Throughout their careers, they enrich the city and keep it the capital of American dance. Dancer Kristen Weiser, who graduated in 2004, was onstage just months later with the Cedar Lake Dance Ensemble. Already, she’s one of the company’s brightest stars. Choreographer Henning Rubsam, who studied dance in the late 1980s,founded his own company, Sensedance, in 1991. While a student at Juilliard, he heard fellow student Beata Moon at the piano during one of the school’s outreach programs. “I thought there was a colorful spring to her sound that made me want to move,” he said. “We kept in touch after graduation, and when Beata expressed interest in composing, I asked if I could dance to it.” Last fall, his company danced to a commissioned score by Ms. Moon in “Dinner Is West” at the Baruch Performing Arts Center.

At the drama department, there is no shortage of well-known names: William Hurt, Robin Williams, and Val Kilmer are just a few. Founded in 1968, the department boasts that more than 80% of alumni are working actors.

Fourth-year drama student Nick Westrate says the intensity of Juilliard’s program creates a bond of shared experiences among alumni; he received a huge hug from alum Patti LuPone at their first meeting. “Twelve-hour days, six days a week, for four years – it’s acting boot camp in a rare and amazing way,” Mr. Westrate said.

Tonight, he will mark a milestone when he takes his place alongside alumni Kevin Kline. And many more notables are on the bill: soprano Renee Fleming, who attended the opera program in the mid-1980s; Itzhak Perlman, who studied violin in the 1960s; pianist Emmanuel Ax, who trained in the 1970s; Wynton Marsalis, who attended in the 1970s and ’80s; and soprano Leontyne Price, who studied voice in the 1950s. No doubt, they’ll sing Juilliard’s praises and pave the way for another century of excellence.

Tonight, 8 p.m., ‘The Juilliard School: Celebrating 100 Years’ (Thirteen/WNET).