Courtesy of Helene Snihur

Eastman School of Music graduate Dominick J. Argento, who graduated with a Ph.D. from the school in 1958, has created a trust with plans to endow a $1.5 million professorship at Eastman.

The provision for the professorship is referred to as a deferred gift and will be made available through Argento’s estate. The gift will be used to endow a position in recognition of Argento’s accomplishments — the Dominick J. Argento Professorship.

According to Eastman Executive Director of Development for Major Gifts and Special Projects Suzanne Stover, Argento has maintained close ties with Eastman over the years, reflective, she believes, of his deep appreciation for the school.

“In addition to providing me with an extraordinary musical education, Eastman changed my life in much more significant ways,” Argento said in a statement. “More than just imparting to me particular compositional techniques, what I acquired from the school was a sense of confidence, instilled by Howard Hanson, Bernard Rogers and Alan Hovhaness. I was made a teaching fellow, and even that was character-building work. Eastman changed my life.”

Argento is highly honored in the music world, having received the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his 1975 composition “From the Diary of Virginia Woolf” and a 2004 Grammy Award for Best Classical Contemporary Composition for his “Casa Guidi.” He is most well known as a lyric opera composer, but has also composed major song cycles and orchestral and choral works.

“We are in awe of [Argento’s] artistic achievements and grateful for his exceptional generosity and commitment,” Dean of the Eastman School of Music Douglas Lowry said in a statement. “His gift will support and enhance the work of our outstanding faculty in presenting new musical ideas, as well as adventuresome ventures in music teaching and performance.”

Among Argento’s other awards are the Eastman School of Music Alumni Achievement Award (1979), election to the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1979), the George Peabody Medal (1993), Fulbright (1951) and Guggenheim (1958, 1964) fellowships, the OPERA America Award for Achievement, the Chorus America’s Founder’s Award and multiple honorary doctorates.

The gift, Stover says, “is significant and extremely generous, and we hope it will inspire others to be generous to the University and the Eastman School, too.”

Remus is a member of the class of 2016.



UR hosts squash ProAm tournament with top 100 professionals

The event was part of the Professional Squash Association’s (PSA) Challenger’s Tour and notably featured two of the world’s top 100 players, #82 ranked Nasir Iqbal of Pakistan and Egypt’s Khaled Labib, ranked #99.

Jason Momoa performs humiliation ritual in the form of “A Minecraft Movie”

As a whole, this movie was bad in about every way a movie can possibly be bad. ’m not quite pretentious enough to pretend the purpose of “A Minecraft Movie” is to provide a great work of art to an adult population of English majors.

Petition to Protect Student Activism gains traction on campus

“There can be no affirmation of students’ right to free expression without the removal of excessive surveillance and policing, whether that surveillance and policing comes from administration or external enforcement agencies,” Perez told the Campus Times.