Friends of Music
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Soon after its establishment, the UCSD Music Department received
international recognition, and promising young composers and performers
came from all over the country and abroad to study here.
The FRIENDS OF MUSIC have had significant part in making all this
possible. Since its founding in February 1983, this organization
has raised approximately $10,000 per year. This pays tuition and
fees for one or more graduate music students each year. Those supported
over the past dozen years have gone on to pursue music careers throughout
the world.
Every bit as important has been the encouragement that the FRIENDS
have given to composers and performers. This amounts to more than
attending talks and concerts. By the example of our commitment and
by what we say to friends and acquaintances about the music we have
heard and plan to hear - - even when it is music we don’t
think we will like (for loyalists are not obliged to like everything)
- - we help to maintain the cause of contemporary music here --
and, because of the far-reaching impact of the Music Department
and its ensembles, everywhere. We affirm that today’s music
is not the private property of some little coterie but a vital part
of contemporary life that touches all of us. |
So the several purposes of the FRIENDS OF MUSIC come to this: to
support contemporary music in this region by underwriting scholarships,
performances, and talks, by encouraging composers, performers, and
scholars through informed listening, thoughtful discussions (remember
that they like to tell us about their music), and simple presence
that tells them there are people who care about their efforts, and
by speaking up on behalf of this exciting and too little appreciated
art.
Walt Whitman once said that for there to be great poetry there
must be great audiences. He was talking about quality, not quantity.
The same is true of contemporary music.
Or, contact
Dirk Sutro at
publicity@music.ucsd.edu
