| Bach
Festival Gets $700,000 Gift
EUGENE—Keeping classical music alive and transforming
the lives of young people are the goals that inspired The
Roger and Lilah Stangeland Foundation to donate $700,000
for the Oregon Bach Festival's Youth Choral Academy, festival
director Royce Saltzman announced today.
The academy, founded in 1998, brings 85 select high school
students from around the country to Eugene every summer
for ten days to live, work, and perform alongside the festival's
internationally renowned choir, orchestra, soloists, and
conductors. The gift will help defray the costs of bringing
young musicians to Eugene each year.
"With this gift, we can make this program accessible
to talented youth from across the nation, regardless of
their ability to pay," Saltzman said. "In recognition
of the Stangeland Foundation's generosity, the Youth Choral
Academy will now be called the Stangeland Family Youth Choral
Academy." The gift also increases the festival's endowment
to $5 million, marking the halfway point toward a $10 million
goal.
"The Oregon Bach Festival is one of the crown jewels
of the University of Oregon," said Dave Frohnmayer,
university president. "It is especially close to my
heart because of the role music and the festival have played
in my family's life. Making this world-class festival better
every year requires an endowment. I am particularly pleased
that increasing the festival endowment is part of Campaign
Oregon."
"It is our hope that the gift will help sustain the
academy into the distant future and leave a musical and
educational legacy," said Brad Stangeland of Eugene,
a board member of the Oregon Bach Festival. The Stangeland
Foundation was started by Brad's parents, Roger and Lilah,
for the purposes of furthering educational opportunities,
especially for youth. Brad Stangeland owns a Eugene landscape
architecture and design firm, and he and his wife, Colleen,
own New Twist and Toko Asia, both stores in the Fifth Street
Market.
"This is one of the core components of the Oregon
Bach Festival," said Brad Stangeland. "We must
give kids a chance to participate and understand this great
music, or the future of orchestral and choral music will
be lost. These young adults get to work with one of the
great conductors of Bach and are taken through a very extensive
educational experience. This is perfectly consistent with
the Stangeland Foundation's goals."
Director Anton Armstrong has led the program since its
inception. A professor of music at St. Olaf College in Minnesota
and conductor of the prestigious St. Olaf Choir, Armstrong
is the recipient of the 2006 Robert Foster Cherry Award
for Great Teaching.
"Back home, these students are the leaders, the best
singers in their schools," said Armstrong. "Here,
they are surrounded by others just like themselves. We set
the bar high. We expect them to reach the highest level
of excellence they can - not for selfish reasons, but to
become better people and to share a musical experience that
enriches others. They walk away from these ten days as stronger
and better people."
"Music education teaches people how to think,"
said Oregon Bach Festival board member Pete Moore. Pete
and his wife Mary Ann are co-chairs of the festival's endowment
initiative. "Music increases people's abilities to
live and learn in life. The Youth Choral Academy exposes
people to classical music at an impressionable age. I think
classical music is music at its best. It is the music of
history, and the music of mankind. We can't let future generations
lose touch with classical music, and that's a very real
possibility in these times when it is difficult to get funding
for the arts.
"These opportunities to learn, rehearse, and perform
are opportunities that many students don't have in their
high schools. They literally transform the way these young
people think, and the choices they make in their lives.
Mary Ann and I are delighted that this gift will help make
this program available to more young people. We're also
delighted to reach the halfway point toward our $10 million
endowment goal. When we started, it seemed rather daunting.
Now it's within reach. I'm confident we can make it within
the next two years."
The Stangeland Foundation gift will be invested, and earnings
from the endowment will be used to help support the academy.
Posted: July 6, 2006
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