UCLA obtains $1.5 million grant from Lowell Milken Family Foundation to boost American Jewish musical studies
UCLA to Host Inaugural Conference on American Jewish Music
The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music is set to host the inaugural program of the Lowell Milken Center for Music of the American Jewish Experience, titled "American Culture and the Jewish Experience in Music", in November. The three-day conference will delve into the long-term continuities that American flexibility and enterprise have made available to Jewish performers, composers, cantors, collectors, and thinkers.
The Lowell Milken Fund for American Jewish Music, established through a $1.5 million gift from the Lowell Milken Family Foundation, will be at the heart of this program. The fund's academic director, Mark Kligman, who holds the school's Mickey Katz Endowed Chair in Jewish Music, will oversee its use to advance and advocate for the field of American Jewish music.
The conference will feature performances of new compositions, panel discussions, and lectures on heritage, innovation, and interactivity. It will be co-presented with the UCLA Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies.
The Lowell Milken Fund for American Jewish Music aims to enrich academic and public understanding of the American Jewish musical experience by combining scholarship, performance support, and community engagement. It has already made significant strides in this direction.
Since its establishment, the fund has produced educational content such as videos on Jewish liturgical music that are freely accessible to the public, fostering a deeper appreciation of this cultural heritage. It has also supported scholarships for emerging scholars and musicians in the field of Jewish music, as seen with recipients involved in programs like those of the Los Angeles Jewish Symphony.
The fund has co-presented events and lecture series on Jewish languages and music, contributing to the preservation and dissemination of endangered Jewish linguistic and musical traditions connected to various diasporic communities, including Judeo-Iranian, Judeo-Spanish (Ladino), and Judeo-Arabic liturgies. It has facilitated discussions on historical and aesthetic issues in Jewish music, such as controversies in cantorial performance practice.
The Milken Archive of Jewish Music, a collection of recordings, scores, and historical materials documenting the Jewish experience in America over the past 350 years, forms a key part of the Lowell Milken Fund's activities. Founded in 1990 by Lowell Milken, the archive includes over 600 recordings by 200 composers and over 800 hours of oral history recordings, videos, photographs, and scholarship.
Milken, a UCLA School of Law graduate from 1973, is among UCLA's most generous supporters. His gifts have been part of the $4.2 billion UCLA Centennial Campaign, scheduled to conclude in December 2019. His contributions include a transformative $10 million gift in 2011 to the law school.
The Milken Archive of Jewish Music has earned ASCAP and Grammy awards. It has been deemed "the most comprehensive documentation, ever, of music reflecting Jewish life and culture in America" by the Chicago Tribune.
The establishment of the Lowell Milken Fund for American Jewish Music substantially advances the commitment of the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music to the field of Jewish music, according to Judith Smith, dean of the school. The school's three departments: ethnomusicology, music, and musicology, will be leveraged in the program.
The Lowell Milken Center for Music of the American Jewish Experience is a testament to UCLA's dedication to the study, preservation, and promotion of American Jewish music and its cultural heritage. As a hub for scholarly research, public programming, and multimedia projects, it serves as a beacon for those interested in exploring Jewish musical traditions in the American context.
The three-day conference, held by UCLA's Herb Alpert School of Music, will feature performances and discussions centered around the intersection of American culture and Jewish experience in music, thus emphasizing the entertainment aspect of music presented by various performers.
The Lowell Milken Fund for American Jewish Music, a key component of this program, strives to enrich public understanding of the American Jewish musical experience through scholarly research, performance support, and community engagement, thereby underscoring the significance of music in this context.
