Sing Iowa's praises: School of Music celebrates 100 years

For 100 years, The University of Iowa has been part of the state's musical scene, performing works both serious and lighthearted in tone. Here, William LaRue Jones leads the UI Martha Ellen Tye Opera Theater's summer 2006 production, Gilbert and Sullivan's wacky and wonderful Pirates of Penzance, in the Englert Theatre in downtown Iowa City. Photo by Tim Schoon.

The Music Man—Meredith Willson’s 1957 Broadway hit musical—told the world what Iowans already knew:

Iowa is fertile ground for music.

From Antonin Dvorák’s visit to Spillville in 1893, when the Czech composer worked happily on his newest works and declared that Iowa is “an ideal place”; to the first-in-the-nation Iowa Band Law of 1922, that supported the state’s many municipal bands; to the present day, with thousands of students enrolled in school bands, orchestras and choirs that win Grammy awards and perform across the country and around the globe: music has thrived here.

And for exactly 100 years, The University of Iowa has been part of the state’s musical scene. Founded in 1906, when voice instructor Miss Effie Mae Proffitt was appointed its first director, the School of Music has grown over the past century to a faculty of more than 50, teaching nearly 500 music majors in eight different performance areas in addition to musical composition and several fields of academic studies.

	University of Iowa Symphony and Choruses presented Thoroughly Modern Masterworks, a concert featuring two 20th-century masterpieces, at Hancher Auditorium earlier this year. Photo by Tim Schoon.

Today, the School is humming with performance activity—not to mention, bowing, plucking, buzzing, and banging. Every year, the School of Music offers more than 400 public performances. Just about all areas of repertoire are covered, from the most intimate solo pieces to monumental masterpieces; from classic big-band jazz to cutting-edge improvisation; opera from one-acts to grand; and from “early music” to the latest works of faculty and students.

As it has grown, the School of Music has extended its influence.

“The School of Music has played a significant role in shaping the culture of Iowa,” says Myron Welch, the University’s director of bands. “There are music teachers all across the state who received their education through the School of Music, and they have taught thousands of students and been influential in the artistic life of their local communities.”

To celebrate its 100th anniversary, the School of Music has gone all out. Both the grounds and the interior of the Voxman Music Building (VMB) have been dressed up for the occasion, with landscaping, new benches inside the building, and new signs pointing the way to performance spaces. Glamour has been added to Clapp Recital Hall, the school’s principal performance venue, in the form of galleries of works by Professor Emeritus George Walker on the second floor, and drawings of current faculty by Robert Naujoks, a UI alumnus and professor of art at Mount Mercy College, on the ground floor. Iowa City gallery owner Benjamin Chait has provided enlarged UI Opera Theater posters printed on aluminum.

Elsewhere, a gallery of scenic and costume sketches by Margaret Wenk of the Division of Performing Arts can be found on the second floor of VMB.

While these visual elements are important, it is music that forms the heart of the celebration. Plans have been under way for several years to present a stunning series of Centennial Concerts that call on UI students, faculty, and alumni to demonstrate the school’s reach in the musical world. New works by prominent alumni will be premiered on many of the concerts, and others will feature alumni returning to the University as performers (see the list of remaining Centennial Concerts at right).

One of the high points will undoubtedly be the Nov. 29 performance of Verdi’s Requiem, featuring the University Symphony Choirs and alumni soloists.

“Hancher Auditorium will be filled with the glorious sounds of Verdi’s highly operatic work,” says Kristin Thelander, director of the School of Music. “We are thrilled to welcome back four of our outstanding alumni as soloists: Michèle Crider, Katharine Goeldner, William Gabbard, and Kimm Julian. Many alumni and members of the University community will remember the compelling performances they provided in UI operas of the 1980s and '90s.”

Other performances in the centennial series will include an entire jazz big band of alumni, alumnus Steven Schick playing an all-new percussion piece written by alumnus David Lang to take advantage of his virtuoso skills, new works performed by the UI’s award-winning Center for New Music, and one of the most loved operas of all time, Puccini’s La Bohéme.

The celebration culminates next spring in the “Collage Concert,” April 14 and 15 in Hancher Auditorium. Although the program doesn’t promise 76 trombones, the concert will feature the School of Music’s “acclaimed instrumental and choral ensembles along with student and faculty soloists and chamber groups who will perform works specially selected to commemorate the 100 years of musical excellence.”

Harold Hill—Meredith Willson’s “music man”—couldn’t have put it any better.

by Peter Alexander