[FA Worldmusic] UCLA Endowment for Ethnic Music

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http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/arts/la-et-alpert16nov16,1,2379161.
story?coll=la-entnews-arts&ctrack=5&cset=true Herb Alpert hits a UCLA high
note His foundation pledges $30 million for a cross-cultural school to
highlightethnic music. By Chris Pasles, Los Angeles Times Staff WriterNovember
16, 2007 In what UCLA is calling the largest single gift to music education in
thewestern United States, the Herb Alpert Foundation has given the university
a$30-million endowment pledge to establish the cross-disciplinary UCLA
HerbAlpert 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 performanceof world, popular and
classical music, jazz and other genres. "The landscape of music has changed so
dramatically in the last few yearsand 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 lastweek. "I was looking for a school that would
respond to the global environment weare in now," he said, "and UCLA has some
real visionaries on staff who havesome far-reaching, really beautiful ideas of
how to pull it all together." The Alpert School, which will be housed in
existing facilities in theuniversity's Schoenberg Hall, will be inaugurated in
2008. It will be partof the School of Arts and Architecture (UCLA Arts) under
ChristopherWaterman, who has been dean since 2003. Timothy Rice, a professor
in thedepartment of ethnomusicology since 1987, has been named the school's
firstdirector. "The grant will foster collaborative, interdisciplinary
interactions betweenthe departments, build on existing strengths and move us
in new directions,including more opportunities to learn about the music
business and relatedprofessions," Waterman said. "The school will create a
unified focus andcoherent image both for the outside world and internally, so
that studentscan take advantage of what we have." Waterman expects the
endowment, which will be given over three years, togenerate 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
beststudents and faculty we can. I don't think we're going to have any
problemspending 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 creativityand scholarship, and interesting
new ways of thinking about music. "The other is, in comparison with other
schools, to use an astronomicalanalogy, most are constructed like a solar
system," he said. "The sun isalways Western classical music. The planets
orbiting around it and receivinglight and energy from it are jazz studies,
world music studies, maybe mediatechnology and a few other things. "In our
school, it will be more like constellations of stars, where eachwill be their
own kind of sun giving off their own kind of light. Mychallenge will be to
make each of these stars shine more brightly." An interdepartmental faculty
panel will begin planning changes to thecurriculum before the end of the year,
Waterman said. Within two years, theschool expects to initiate new courses for
the integrated study of thevarious music disciplines. Students will also be
able to take classes aboutthe music business, music in the public sector, and
music and health. Alpert, a Los Angeles native, is an eight-time Grammy Award
winner mostwidely known as a trumpet player and leader of Herb Alpert & the
TijuanaBrass and as co-founder of A&M Records. Although a well-known graduate
of USC, he made his first gift to UCLA in1969 and since then has funded
scholarships and the university's MusicPartnership Program, which provides
music education in local schools andnonprofits. The Alpert foundation, which
is closely overseen by Albert and his wife,singer Lani Hall Alpert, funds
charitable organizations and institutions. Itwill have distributed about $100
million by the end of the year since itsfounding in 1988, according to
foundation President Rona Sebastian. "A lot of the giving has been done
anonymously," Sebastian said. "We're asmall private family foundation. We
don't accept unsolicited proposals, andwe don't advertise what's being done.
"But the giving, the philanthropy is so heartfelt. The Alperts' desire is
togive back and touch people's lives in a positive way. For them, the
deepsatisfaction of knowing that they're able to give back is what it's
allabout." Among other gifts, the foundation annually presents unrestricted
grants tofive mid-career artists (the Alpert Awards in the Arts, administered
byCalifornia Institute of the Arts) and scholarships to four
college-boundstudents (Emerging Young Artists Awards, administered by the
CaliforniaAlliance for Arts Education). Alpert additionally has funded a
variety ofprograms across the country in support of jazz performance and
education. chris.pasles at latimes.com
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