UCLA receives a $1.5 million grant from the Lowell Milken Family Foundation for the promotion of American Jewish music.
UCLA's Herb Alpert School of Music Receives Major Gift for American Jewish Music
The Lowell Milken Fund for American Jewish Music has been established at UCLA's Herb Alpert School of Music, thanks to a generous donation from Lowell Milken. This new fund aims to promote, sustain, and advance the music of the American Jewish experience.
The school's three departments - ethnomusicology, music, and musicology - will be leveraged for academic scholarship, performances, and community events. These initiatives will explore and promote Jewish musical traditions in the United States, such as Jewish liturgical music.
The Lowell Milken Fund is closely connected to the Milken Archive of Jewish Music, a comprehensive repository and resource documenting Jewish music primarily in America. This archive has earned ASCAP and Grammy awards, and serves as a foundational documentation resource and an amplifier of Jewish musical culture in America.
Together, these two entities aim to preserve the cultural heritage of American Jewish music, nurture contemporary creativity, and educate new generations about the richness and diversity of Jewish musical traditions.
Judith Smith, dean of the Herb Alpert School of Music, stated that the fund substantially advances their commitment to the field of Jewish music. Mark Kligman, who holds the school's Mickey Katz Endowed Chair in Jewish Music, has been appointed as the academic director of the Lowell Milken Fund for American Jewish Music.
The inaugural program, "American Culture and the Jewish Experience in Music," will be held in November. This three-day conference will be co-presented with the UCLA Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies and will focus on long-term continuities that American flexibility and enterprise have made available to Jewish performers, composers, cantors, collectors, and thinkers.
The school will present concerts and symposia to engage and educate the community, and will use the fund to advance and advocate for the field of American Jewish music. The Lowell Milken Fund for American Jewish Music's work is a significant contribution to preserving a vital cultural heritage while fostering ongoing artistic creation and appreciation of Jewish music traditions, especially in the American context.
In addition to this latest gift, Milken made a transformative $10 million gift to the UCLA law school in 2011, establishing the Lowell Milken Institute for Business Law and Policy, the largest single gift in the law school's history. Milken, who graduated from the UCLA School of Law in 1973, has also donated $1 million in 2016 for the Lowell Milken Family Centennial Scholars Endowed Scholarship Fund, supporting UCLA's nearly 700 student-athletes.
The gifts from Milken are part of the $4.2 billion UCLA Centennial Campaign, scheduled to conclude in December 2019 during UCLA's 100th anniversary year. The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music has received a $1.5 million gift from the Lowell Milken Family Foundation as part of this campaign.
The Milken Archive of Jewish Music includes more than 600 recordings by 200 composers and over 800 hours of oral history recordings. The program will feature performances of new compositions, panel discussions, and lectures on heritage, innovation, and interactivity.
This partnership enriches understanding of Jewish identity and history through music and provides resources for performers, scholars, and the public interested in the American Jewish musical narrative.
The Lowell Milken Fund for American Jewish Music, embedded within UCLA's Herb Alpert School of Music, not only supports the preservation of Jewish musical traditions but also encourages contemporary creativity in music, merging education-and-self-development with entertainment. Moreover, the forthcoming program, "American Culture and the Jewish Experience in Music," promises to engage the community with various musical performances, further delving into the realm of entertainment.
