UCLA secured a $1.5 million donation from the Lowell Milken Family Foundation for the advancement of Jewish music in the United States.
UCLA's Herb Alpert School of Music Receives Generous Gift for American Jewish Music
The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music has received a significant boost in its commitment to the field of Jewish music, with the Lowell Milken Family Foundation donating a generous $1.5 million gift to establish the Lowell Milken Fund for American Jewish Music.
This philanthropic initiative will support the advancement and education of American Jewish music, operating within the school under the Lowell Milken Center for Music of American Jewish Experience. The fund will be used to produce educational content, award scholarships, and develop programs that cultivate knowledge and practice in American Jewish music.
One of the first programs to benefit from this fund is the inaugural program, American Culture and the Jewish Experience in Music, which will be held in November. This three-day conference will feature performances of new compositions, panel discussions, and lectures on heritage, innovation, and interactivity. It will focus on the long-term continuities that American flexibility and enterprise have made available to Jewish performers, composers, cantors, collectors, and thinkers.
The conference will be co-presented with the UCLA Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies, further strengthening the school's commitment to Jewish musical traditions.
The Lowell Milken Fund for American Jewish Music builds on the work of the Milken Archive of Jewish Music, founded by Lowell Milken himself in 1990. The archive includes over 600 recordings by 200 composers, as well as over 800 hours of oral history recordings, videos, photographs, and scholarship. The Milken Archive of Jewish Music has earned ASCAP and Grammy awards for its contributions to the preservation and promotion of Jewish musical traditions.
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. Kligman's expertise in Jewish music and his passion for the subject make him an ideal choice to lead this important initiative.
Lowell Milken, a UCLA alumnus who graduated from the UCLA School of Law in 1973, is among UCLA's most generous supporters. In 2011, he donated a transformative $10 million gift to the UCLA School of Law, establishing the Lowell Milken Institute for Business Law and Policy. This gift was the largest single gift in the law school's history and enabled the school to surpass a $100 million fundraising goal well ahead of the original five-year schedule.
The Lowell Milken Fund for American Jewish Music will help nurture both scholarship and performance, ensuring the vitality of American Jewish musical culture today. Through educational content, scholarships, and programs, the fund will facilitate both academic study and community engagement, helping preserve and innovate Jewish musical heritage in America through teaching, research, and performance opportunities.
- The generous donation from the Lowell Milken Family Foundation will support the education and scholarly pursuits in American Jewish music at UCLA's Herb Alpert School of Music, specifically through the creation of the Lowell Milken Fund for American Jewish Music.
- As academic director of the Lowell Milken Fund for American Jewish Music, Mark Kligman will leverage his expertise in Jewish music to foster both scholarly research and live performance, thereby ensuring the long-term vitality of American Jewish musical culture.
