Home > News > UCLA DEPARTMENT OF MUSIC RECEIVES $1.75 MILLION GRANT FROM MAXWELL H. GLUCK FOUNDATION

UCLA DEPARTMENT OF MUSIC RECEIVES $1.75 MILLION GRANT FROM MAXWELL H. GLUCK FOUNDATION

Carolyn Campbell (ccampbel@arts.ucla.edu) (310) 825-6540
For Immediate Use Wednesday, April 19, 2000.

UCLA’s Department of Music, part of the School of the Arts and Architecture, has been awarded $1.75 million from the Maxwell H. Gluck Foundation to expand and enhance its music outreach, performance and education programs. The gift, pledged over four years beginning in 200l, will provide world-class training to UCLA’s student musicians, strengthen area public school music programs, and provide opportunities for at-risk youth to experience opera and music theater.

The generous gift continues a partnership between the Department of Music and the Gluck Foundation that began in 1997. The foundation donated $1 million then to support the department’s music outreach and performance programs for three years, concluding this year.

“The Gluck Foundation embraces projects that promote the arts and education and, particularly, those that involve multiple beneficiaries. Our relationship with UCLA has fostered these goals with mutual advantage,” said Jon Kaswick, M.D., president of the Gluck Foundation. “There is a lot of promise for the department to become one of the outstanding music departments in the world, and I think it’s being realized partially through our involvement in expanding its horizons.”

“The importance of this gift is monumental,” said Jon Robertson, chair of the Department of Music. “It gives us the opportunity to give scholarships to many of our students. To attract top talent from around the world, you have to have the scholarships. What the Gluck Foundation has done is really put us into a very elite crowd of schools of music and universities that have built up over the years the kind of scholarship assistance that is necessary. Most state schools just simply cannot compete with private institutions.”

In addition to maintaining the department’s current performance and educational outreach programs, the Gluck Foundation grant will fund a new Music Education Outreach program and a new Opera Outreach program. Beginning in the fall, the Department of Music will begin a one-hour “Introduction to Opera” program. With costumes, props, and sets, UCLA’s top singers will travel to eight inner-city elementary schools to present scenes from various operas. In spring of 2001, the students will be brought to UCLA to see an opera production.

Since 1997, the Gluck Fellows Music Performance Program has provided UCLA’s talented student musicians with invaluable chamber music experience and coaching from UCLA music faculty. By the end of this academic year, UCLA soloists and chamber groups will have performed more than 400 concerts and workshops through the Gluck Fellows Music Outreach and Performance Program. Because of the Gluck Foundation’s generous support, thousands of Los Angeles area youth have experienced opera and music theater at special performances at UCLA and through a program of “Mozart Scenes” performed at five inner-city schools.


Contact: Carolyn Campbell
Phone: (310) 825-6540
Email: ccampbel@arts.ucla.edu