CAMPAIGN STORIES

With 800 guests in attendance and 500 more viewing from home, WPI’s music department recently pulled off what could be described as the performance of a lifetime. The daylong concert featured nearly 400 students in performances from WPI’s Jazz Ensembles, Choral Ensembles, Brass Ensembles, Philharmonic Orchestra, and Concert Band.

The eight-hour event honored WPI’s recently retired Professor Douglas Weeks with a work commissioned by the WPI Arts & Science Department. Also included in the event were two originally commissioned pieces for WPI’s Alden Voices, a principal violinist from the Dallas Symphony, and presentations of the Glee Club Steven J. Kahn Award and the Alden Voices Malama Robbins Award.

Weeks joined WPI in 1980 overseeing a 15-piece brass ensemble, which was the school’s only instrumental performing group at the time. As demonstrated by last month’s Mechanics Hall performance, the university now boasts as many as 800 music students at any given time and teems with opportunities to study music, pursue it as a minor or major, explore it through project work, and bring it to appreciative audiences around the world.

Although much of the Music Department’s growth and success can be attributed to Weeks’s unparalleled service and commitment to the program, he recently offered that today’s robust music program is due in large part to the university’s many generous donors. “There are numerous expenses associated with supporting a music program such as lab facilities, rehearsal facilities, equipment, sheet music, software, guest artists, travel, and so forth. Fortunately, WPI has several endowments and generous committed supporters who enrich the music program greatly and enable WPI to offer a top-level music department to its students. We are very grateful,” says Weeks.

Learn more about the WPI music program at https://music.wpi.edu