The path to tomorrow

Collection, Norfolk Festival renovation updates

A major facilities-improvement project began at the Yale Summer School of Music/Norfolk Chamber Music Festival in September and is slated for completion in time for the summer 2023 session. A replacement of the Music Shed Annex is underway and will yield new rehearsal spaces, and Eldridge Barn, which had been used for rehearsals, will be converted to student housing. The $10 million project is funded by the Ellen Battell Stoeckel Trust, the School of Music, and donors, and includes such upgrades to the Music Shed as a new air-cooling system, improved recording capabilities, a new green room, and the relocation of restrooms. Kirkegaard Associates, which consulted on acoustics design during renovations to YSM’s Sprague Memorial Hall, which was finished in 2003, and in the design of the Adams Center for Musical Arts, which opened its doors in 2017, is working on the Norfolk project. “We have a chance now to really make the Norfolk Festival a destination,” Festival Director Melvin Chen said.

Simultaneously, renovations to the Morris Steinert Collection of Musical Instruments are ongoing. Objects from the Collection are being relocated to Yale’s West Campus in advance of construction, which will reimagine the Collection as a teaching museum. Construction, which will include the installation of a new climate-control system—and during which, Collection Director William Purvis said, “care will be taken to preserve the unique and extraordinary acoustics” of the keyboard gallery—is due to start this spring with a goal of work being completed by fall 2024, in time for the 125th anniversary, in 2025, of Steinert’s original gift of keyboards and other musical instruments to Yale in 1900. “This project will significantly enhance the Collection and its role at the School and the University for years to come,” said Purvis, who will conclude his directorship of the Collection at the end of this academic year.

Graduates help grow Alumni Fund

At the start of the academic year, YSM’s Office of Development and Alumni Affairs secured the help of eight alumni volunteers in encouraging “their classmates and other Yale alums to give back to the School of Music,” Development and Alumni Affairs Officer Liz Landau said. The Alumni Fund Volunteer Program was modeled on initiatives that have long existed at Yale. Landau called the program a “service to the School” and said, “We’ve definitely seen results from it,” explaining that YSM’s Alumni Fund enjoyed about a 50-percent increase in participation this past fiscal year over previous years.

Convocation 2022 welcomes “a new chapter”

In early September, the incoming class was formally installed during a ceremony that implicitly celebrated the tradition itself, which YSM Dean Robert Blocker began upon arriving at Yale in 1995. Convocation 2022 included the presentation of awards, captivating performances—including the annual collective singing of Schubert’s An die Musik—and a speech titled A New Chapter, in which Blocker, who will retire at the end of August after 28 years as Dean, said, “A new chapter begins tonight for each of us in this hall. … I wish for each of you a time at Yale that is fulfilling, enlightening, and inspiring.”

Student Advisory Council sets agenda

The School of Music’s Student Advisory Council embarked this academic year on an ambitious agenda that seeks to build on the work of last year’s inaugural Council. This year’s Council members seek to further define the group’s organizational structure and election processes, appoint a Council chairperson, and establish more efficient lines of communication between councilors and their constituents. Beyond the group’s structure and operations, the Council continues to engage the YSM administration about course evaluations and more efficient processes for scheduling degree recitals and making and announcing performance assignments.

Council members remain dedicated to discussing ongoing health and safety policies at YSM, and, to the extent conditions allow, planning more social-engagement and community-building activities at the School of Music.