World-class harmony
President’s love of music attracted dean
When Brad Foley was pondering whether to accept the deanship of the UO School of Music and Dance in 2002, one of the deciding factors was UO President Dave Frohnmayer’s love of music.
Frohnmayer’s mother, MarAbel, a 1932 graduate of the UO music school, a pianist, and longtime arts supporter, had passed on to her son a passion for music.
So Foley is overjoyed to have MarAbel Frohnmayer’s name on the newly renovated and expanded music building. The public dedication ceremony for the MarAbel B. Frohnmayer Music Building will be held at 10:30 a.m. Friday, March 6, in Room 190, the new instrumental rehearsal room in the north end of the building.
The music building renovation is one of seventeen major construction projects on campus funded in whole or in part by donors to Campaign Oregon, which raised more than $853 million for the university.
Lorry Lokey, one of the major donors to the $19.3-million music project, requested that the building be named to honor MarAbel Frohnmayer. The renovation added 30,000 square-feet to the facility, increasing its size by about 50 percent, adding much-needed space for practice, teaching, and performance. The facility features the latest in sound-proofing and sound-isolating technologies.
“At last we have a facility that matches the quality of our students and faculty,” says Foley. “We’ve gone from 60,000 to 90,000 square feet. We’ve gone from thirty practice rooms to fifty. We’ve improved the quality of faculty teaching studios. We’ve improved the quality of classrooms. So basically, every kind of teaching situation we have in our school will be enhanced by better quality space.”
The MarAbel B. Frohnmayer Music Building is, as Foley says, a direct result of Dave Frohnmayer’s understanding for what “the arts meant to an individual, what they meant to a university, and how much importance they had for him and his family.”