MU School of Music receives $1 million donation

The donation is designed to create full-ride composition scholarships.

By Trevor Eischen

Published March 9, 2009

The MU School of Music received a $1 million donation to provide several new programs and scholarships Monday at Reynolds Alumni Center.

The donors, Jeanne Sinquefield and her husband Rex Sinquefield, hope the donation will help establish support and motivation for future composers.

Michael O'Brien, College of Arts and Science dean, opened the ceremony, and Chancellor Brady Deaton presented the award.

"Jeannie and Rex have been so generous to this university in so many ways," Deaton said.

After Deaton announced the gift donation, the MU Faculty Brass Quintet played a composition titled "Fanfare for Jeanne," composed by professor Stefan Freund.

Jeanne Sinquefield took to the podium and explained the intended plans for the donation money.

"We want to make Mizzou a Mecca for composers," she said.

Jeanne Sinquefield stressed the lack of full-ride scholarships for composers seeking to fund their education. Full-ride music composition scholarships are rare to find in college campuses throughout the U.S.

With the $1 million donation, eight full-ride scholarships have been established for prospective composition students.

Another program created by the donation funds is a new graduate-level music ensemble that will perform in various venues around campus, such as dining halls and residence hall lounges. The mission is to develop a new audience for the music being composed.

The Sinquefields and the Sinquefield Charitable Foundation support the Creating Original Music Project. That organization supports a summer composition camp and an annual competition with participants ranging from kindergarten through 12th grade.

During the presentation, Jeanne Sinquefield showed a clip from the award-winning documentary "Genius Among Us: Young Composers in Missouri." The clip took a look into the educational and enlightening experiences young Missouri composers have during their summer at COMP camp.

"The joy of life is listening to music, and why would you not encourage that?" she said.

School of Music director Robert Shay expressed the importance of supporting the futures of composers and musicians.

"All music was once new music," he said. "Bach's cantatas, Beethoven's symphonies, Wagner's operas, the list could go on, were first heard to be different and provocative and, to many, not necessarily successful."

Shay described the vital importance of having well-established music schools and excellent teachers to mold the growing artists and composers into their full musical potential.

"We tend to think they were born into the world as already as established artistic masterpieces," he said. "But in reality, composition is full of trial and error."

Shay said a long-term goal of the music department is to expand and provide an even more exceptional education to all music students.

"One of the values of our department right now is that there's a lot of opportunity for close faculty-student interaction," Shay said. "And that's really got to be one of our pride points."

At the end of the announcement ceremony, Freund presented a framed first page of his composition to the Sinquefields.

At the Chancellor's Concert on Monday night, the Sinquefield Prize was awarded to student composer Stephanie Berg. The University Philharmonic played her prize-winning piece.