In what UCLA is calling the largest single gift to music education in the western United States, the Herb Alpert Foundation has given the university a $30-million endowment pledge to establish the cross-disciplinary UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, officials announced today.
The endowment will bring the university's departments of ethnomusicology, music and musicology under a single umbrella for the study and performance of world, popular and classical music, jazz and other genres.
"The landscape of music has changed so dramatically in the last few years and the ways of making, delivering and sharing music have become so diverse, there needs to be a new approach to music education," Alpert, 72, said last week.
"I was looking for a school that would respond to the global environment we are in now," he said, "and UCLA has some real visionaries on staff who have some far-reaching, really beautiful ideas of how to pull it all together."
The Alpert School, which will be housed in existing facilities in the university's Schoenberg Hall, will be inaugurated in 2008. It will be part of the School of Arts and Architecture (UCLA Arts) under Christopher Waterman, who has been dean since 2003. Timothy Rice, a professor in the department of ethnomusicology since 1987, has been named the school's first director.
"The grant will foster collaborative, interdisciplinary interactions between the departments, build on existing strengths and move us in new directions, including more opportunities to learn about the music business and related professions," Waterman said. "The school will create a unified focus and coherent image both for the outside world and internally, so that students can take advantage of what we have."
Waterman expects the endowment, which will be given over three years, to generate about $1.4 million annually.
"A certain chunk of that will go for technology and equipment," he said. "Another will be given to scholarships and trying to recruit the best students and faculty we can. I don't think we're going to have any problem spending it to achieve our aspirations."
"Two things excite me about the possibilities here," Rice said. "One is, from the inception this school will have the best balance between creativity and scholarship, and interesting new ways of thinking about music.
