The generosity of many of the friends of the Music Department has always been crucial to our work in funding cutting-edge research, supporting new creative work, or bringing scholars and performing artists to campus to enrich the lives of all our students. We are grateful for each and every gift.
Gifts to support the Harvard University Department of Music may be sent via US mail to:
The Chair
Harvard University Department of Music
3 Oxford Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Please make checks payable to Harvard University.
Gifts can also be made online.
1. go to http://alumni.harvard.edu/give (Note – you do not need to be an alumni of Harvard to participate!)
2. Select “Harvard University” under the “Give to the University and Affiliates” header.
3. You needn’t log in. Choose your gift amount and select “Faculty of Arts and Sciences.” When selecting a fund to donate to, please choose “Other-FAS” from the dropdown menu
4. Enter “Department of Music” in the “Other Fund Name” box.
Special Initiatives
Donate to the Christoph Wolff Fund for Music
Donate to the Robert Levin Prize for Performance
Christoph Wolff Fund
In celebration of Professor Christoph Wolff’s distinguished contributions to academic and musical life at Harvard University, Vincent J. Panetta, Jr. AB ’72; PhD ’91 and Eunice Johnson Panetta ’90 generously established The Christoph Wolff Fund for Music. The Fund supports, among other things, an annual residency by a noted musicologist, composer, or performer. Contributions from Wolff’s students, friends, and colleagues continue to support the fund.
Professor Wolff served the Music Department and the University in a multitude of ways. He was University Professor, Chair of the Department, Acting Director of the Harvard University Library, and Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
Wolff’s primary research interests extend to the music from the 17th to the early 19th centuries, especially to Bach and Mozart studies. Recent publications include Bach: Essays on His Life and Music (1991), Mozart’s Requiem (1994), The New Bach Reader (1998), Driven into Paradise: The Musical Migration from Nazi Germany to the United States (1999; ed. with R. Brinkmann), Music of My Future. The Schoenberg Quartets and Trio (2001; ed. with R. Brinkmann) and The Organs of J. S. Bach: A Handbook (2012; with M. Zepf). A recipient of the Dent Medal of the International Musicological Society (1978) the Humboldt Research Prize (1996), and the Bach Prize of the Royal Academy of Music (2006), he won the Otto Kinkeldey Award of the American Musicological Society for Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician (2000), which has been translated into nine languages. Wolff’s Mozart at the Gateway to His Fortune. Serving the Emperor, 1788-1791 (2012) received the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award.
HOW TO DONATE TO THE WOLFF FUND
Online: To make a gift by credit card to the Christoph Wolff Fund for Music in honor of Professor Wolff, please follow the steps above. Note that the donation is for “Christoph Wolff Fund for Music” on your check’s memo line or enter or enter the name of the fund in the “Comments/Other Designation” box of the online donation form.
Christoph Wolff Distinguished Visiting Scholars in the Music Department
- 2014/2015: Sir John Eliot Gardiner
- 2015/2016: Kristian Bezuidenhout
- 2016/2017: Nicholas McGegan
- 2017/2018: Masaaki Suzuki
- 2018/2019: Angela Hewitt
- 2019/2020: Pedro Memelsdorff
Robert Levin Prize in Musical Performance
In recognition of Robert Levin’s unique contribution to musical life at Harvard on the occasion of his retirement in 2014, the Music Department established a prize that honors an outstanding student musical performer in each graduating year.
Robert Levin, ’68, Professor Emeritus and former Dwight P. Robinson Jr. Professor of the Department of Music at Harvard University, is known world wide for his pioneering reconstructions and completions of Mozart’s and Bach’s unfinished masterworks andgroundbreaking performances of Mozart and Beethoven piano concertos, complete with improvised cadenzas. No less important, Levin is also an outspoken supporter of new music. He brings together scholarly pursuits and questions of musical performance at the highest level, and for twenty years, has inspired these qualities in his students at Harvard.
The Department honors his work with this named prize.
The Robert Levin Prize will ensure that music making at the highest level continues to flourish at Harvard. Thanks to generous gifts made by James and Marina Harrison and Jay and Eunice Panetta, we are fortunate to have a stunning start for the fund. We hope that their generosity will encourage further contributions and that the Levin Fund will grow and flourish.
HOW TO DONATE TO THE LEVIN PRIZE
Online: To make a gift by credit card to the Harvard University Prize in Musical Performance Fund in honor of Professor Robert Levin, please follow the steps above. Note that the donation is for “Harvard University Prize in Musical Performance Fund in honor of Professor Robert Levin” on your check’s memo line, or enter the name of the fund in the “Comments/Other Designation” box of the online donation form.
Recipients of the Prize in Musical Performance in honor of Robert Levin
2020: Sasha Yakub ’20
A resident of Currier House concentrating in Music, Alexander “Sasha” Yakub is awarded this prize for his work in violin performance. Sasha has studied with Lynn Chang, James Buswell, Minna Diner and Giovina Sessions, and was also a 2019 Harvard OFA Artist Development Fellow, 2020 Yamaha Young Artists Competition honorable mention winner, and a 2017-18 Tanglewood Music Center Violin Fellow. As part of Duo 404, a violin/keyboards duo with Forrest Eimold specializing in the music of the 20th and 21st centuries (Sasha’s special interest and passion), Sasha has traveled to the UK to study with Thomas Adès at the International Musicians Seminar at Prussia Cove. Other notable recent public performances include the world premiere of Paul Mortilla’s violin concerto “Animal Brain: ad infinitum perplexus confixium” with New Music New Haven at the Yale School of Music and the performance of “Synchronisms No. 9” at the Harvard Music Department’s memorial concert for Prof. Emeritus Mario Davidovsky. Sasha is also a composer, and a proud member of The Goat Exchange, an artistic collective where he serves both as violinist and composer. Notable composition projects with that group include The Emperor’s New Clothes, a children’s disco musical commissioned by and premiered at the American Repertory Theater, and more recently “Memory Play,” a short film voted “Best Experimental” from the Grand Jury Selection at the Ivy Film Festival.
2019: Claire Dickson ’19 and Brian Zhao ’19
A resident of the Dudley Co-op concentrating in Psychology with a secondary in Music, Claire Dickson is a vocalist and composer who has performed regularly on campus including with the Harvard University Choir, Harvard Jazz Bands, and independent projects. She has also studied abroad at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, the Banff Jazz Workshop (2016) and taken performance-oriented courses with Vijay Iyer, Yosvany Terry, and Esperanza Spalding. In 2018, she received an Artist Development Fellowship to study vocal performance under Grammy Award-nominated vocalist and composer Theo Bleckmann in New York City. She is working as a co-leader of the band Myrtle.
A resident of Cabot House enrolled in the Harvard/NEC joint five-year AB/MM program for cello performance and a concentrator in Economics with a secondary in Statistics, Brian Zhao is co- recipient of the 2019 Robert Levin Prize. He is also the 2019 Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra (HRO) Concerto Competition winner and performed Elgar’s Cello Concerto with the HRO in March 2019. Zhao performs on campus with the Brattle Street Chamber Players. He has attended the Heifetz International Music Institute and the IU Jacobs School of Music Summer String Academy. In 2015, he toured China with the Greater Dallas Youth Orchestra and has performed with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra. Zhao studies under Laurence Lesser.
2018: Eden Girma ’18
A resident of the Dudley Co-Op joint concentrating in Astrophysics and Mathematics with a secondary in Music and enrolled in the Harvard/New England Conservatory dual-degree program (Jazz Performance), Eden Girma has performed extensively with and assumed leadership positions within Voxjazz and Kuumba. Girma also co-founded Renegade, an arts advocacy collective for artists of color, served as music director for the HRDC’s production of Dryside, worked as a proctor for the Freshman Art Program (FAP), and worked with a variety of student musicians and composers on independent projects and participated in a spring master class with the vocalist Jill Scott. As a 2018 OFA Artist Development Fellow recipient, Girma plans to attend the Banff International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music in the summer of 2018.
2017: Emma Frucht ’17 and Sam Wu ’17
A resident of Winthrop House concentrating in History of Art and Architecture, Emma Frucht has served as co-concertmaster and co-Principal second violin of the Harvard Radcliffe Orchestra, and President and Treasurer of the Brattle Street Chamber Players. She has performed as a soloist with the Mozart Society Orchestra, and has played in masterclasses with Aaron Rosand, Donald Weilerstein, Yo-Yo Ma and Kathy Winkler, collaborated with Paul Katz, Naoko Tanaka, Victoria Chiang, and the Parker String Quartet, and participated in Glenn Dicterow’s String Leadership Program at the Music Academy of the West. Winner of the Parker String Quartet’s Guest Artist Award, Frucht currently studies violin with Lynn Chang ’75.
A resident of Adams House and joint concentrator in Music and East Asian Studies, Sam Wu’s music has been performed by the Melbourne Symphony, Shanghai Philharmonic, Beijing National Center for the Performing Arts, Shanghai International Arts Festival, Callithumpian Consort, Antioch Chamber Ensemble, Princeton Pianists’ Ensemble, and pipa master Wu Man, among others. In addition to composing, he is the Music Director for the Harvard Mozart Society Orchestra, guest-conducted for the Bach Society Orchestra, and served as the assistant-conductor of the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra (2014-15). He is a 2016 Artist Development Fellow, winner of Harvard University’s John Green and Hugh F. MacColl Prizes, Ensemble Ibis Prize, and Interlochen Fine Arts Best Composer Award. Wu has studied composition with Tan Dun, Chaya Czernowin, Libby Larsen, David Conte, and Richard Beaudoin; conducting with Federico Cortese and Andrew Clark. In the fall, he will pursue a Masters in composition at Juilliard, with Robert Beaser.
2016: Alexander Beyer ’17 and Joshua Campbell ’16
A resident of Winthrop House enrolled in the Harvard/New England Conservatory (NEC) joint five-year AB/MM program concentrating in Mathematics, pianist Alexander Beyer has appeared as guest soloist with the Milwaukee, Charlotte, Hartford, Irish National, New Haven, Waterbury, and Bridgeport Symphony orchestras among others. He has recently performed in the Irish National Concert Hall, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Paul Hall, Stamford Palace Theater, Weill Recital Hall, the New World Center and Woolsey Hall. As a winner of the NEC Piano Honors Competition he made his Jordan Hall debut in 2014. This past fall he performed Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra in Sanders Theatre. At the 2015 U.S. Chopin Competition he received Sixth Prize, and was the recipient of the Third Prize, as well as the Beethoven and Orchestra special awards at the 2015 Dublin International Piano Competition. Beyer has studied with Yoshie Akimoto, Dr. Matti Raekallio, and Melvin Chen. He currently studies with Russell Sherman and Wha Kyung Byun at NEC.
A resident of Pforzheimer House jointly concentrating in Music and Romance Languages and Literatures (French and Francophone Studies), vocalist Joshuah Campbell has performed with VoxJazz, the Harvard Krokodiloes and the Hasty Pudding Theatricals. He has also been featured in a number of theatrical productions at Harvard, including Dreamgirls (Jimmy Early), Songs for a New World (Man 1), Mother Courage and Her Children (Soloist/Ensemble), and A Raisin in the Sun (George Murchison). Campbell recently completed a performance-based senior thesis project concerning Black American musicians in Paris, under the advising of Professors Alice Jardine and Vijay Iyer.
2015: Stella Chen ’15
Stella Chen ’15 received the inaugural Robert Levin Prize In Musical Performance. This prize has been established to recognize an extraordinarily gifted undergraduate musician, preferably of the senior class.
A resident of Kirkland House enrolled in the Harvard/New England Conservatory joint five-year A.B/M.M. program concentrating in Psychology, Stella Chen is a violinist and concertmaster of the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra and the Dunster House Opera and is a co-president of the Brattle Street Chamber Players. In 2013, Chen received an Artist Development Fellowship to participate in the Perlman Music Program, the Ravinia Steans Music Institute, and the Mozarteum International Summer Academy.