School Notes: School of Music
July/August 2013

Awards conferred at honors dinner

At the annual honors dinner on May 5, the school paid tribute to outstanding musical figures and members of the school community. The Cultural Leadership Citation “for distinguished contributions to music” was awarded to James D’Addario, the CEO of D’Addario Strings and cofounder of the nonprofit James D’Addario Family Foundation. The Ian Mininberg Distinguished Service Award was given to Vincent Oneppo ’73MusM, who served Yale throughout his career and, after retiring in 2010, continues to contribute to the school. Boris Berman, the coordinator of piano and artistic director of the Horowitz Piano Series, received the Gustave Stoeckel Award, named for Yale’s first professor of music and presented to Yale faculty who have made extraordinary contributions to the school. The school’s most prestigious honor, the Samuel Simons Sanford Award, was presented to composer David Kurtz ’80MusM. Kurtz is the winner of numerous Emmy awards for his work on television shows and has contributed to the music for movies including The Big Chill and Instant Justice.

New graduate named Gates Scholar

Naomi Woo ’12, ’13MusM, has been selected as a Gates Cambridge Scholar. This October, she will pursue an MPhil in music studies at Cambridge University, UK, where she will research musical performance and scholarship. Seeking to unite the sometimes separate disciplines of music scholarship and performance, Woo aims “to use performance as a means of informing and enriching musicology, treating works of music as experiences rather than merely as texts.” The 51 Gates scholars were selected from a pool of 3,500 applicants on the basis of intellectual ability, leadership capacity, and commitment to improving the lives of others.

Symposium examines the role of music in school reform

The fourth Symposium on Music in Schools brought together 50 distinguished music educators June 6–9 to explore the role of music in school reform. The biennial symposium, supported by the Yale College Class of 1957, is part of the Music in Schools Initiative, which also conducts intensive ongoing programs with the New Haven public schools. This year’s attendees, all music educators in American public schools selected from a pool of nearly 300 nominees, received the Yale Distinguished Music Educator Award at the symposium’s dinner.