Rodney Whitaker, director of jazz studies at Michigan State University. / Macomb Center for the Performing Arts
The conventional wisdom is that jazz doesn’t pay well, but Michigan State University has a million reasons that argue otherwise.
The MSU College of Music has received $1 million from the MSU Federal Credit Union to create an endowment to support an artist-in-residence program in the jazz studies department. The gift is the largest corporate gift the music school has ever received and the largest gift supporting a single academic program. It matches the $1 million given previously by Byron and Dolores Cook to endow a new recital hall.
The gift for jazz studies was announced today at the “Jazz: Spirituals, Prayer and Protest Concert” in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. held on campus at the Wharton Center in East Lansing.
The residency program will bring established jazz stars like Branford Marsalis as well as up-and-comers to East Lansing for a week at a time to work with students and perform. But the program promises to pay dividends far beyond campus: The guest artists and MSU groups will be touring the breadth of the state, with special attention paid to Detroit.
“It’s a real commitment of this program to the entire state of Michigan,” said Jim Forger, dean of the College of Music.
The MSU Federal Credit Union has been an important donor to the music school in recent years, but a $1 million gift ups the ante. It recognizes the emergence of jazz studies as one of the school’s signature programs in the last decade under the leadership of director Rodney Whitaker. A bassist and native Detroiter, Whitaker, 44, has had an extensive international career, working and recording with Wynton Marsalis and countless others. At MSU, he has led the transformation of jazz studies from an afterthought into a nationally respected program.
Read more: http://www.freep.com/article/20130120/ENT04/130120030/1035/rss04
0 Comments:
Post a Comment