{"id":16474,"date":"2023-11-01T16:58:39","date_gmt":"2023-11-01T16:58:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fiualumni.com\/stay-connected\/alumni-news\/newsroom\/?p=16474"},"modified":"2023-11-01T16:59:30","modified_gmt":"2023-11-01T16:59:30","slug":"a-living-legend-returns-famed-composer-school-of-music-founder-87-to-debut-new-work-on-campus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fiualumni.com\/stay-connected\/alumni-news\/newsroom\/index.php\/2023\/11\/01\/a-living-legend-returns-famed-composer-school-of-music-founder-87-to-debut-new-work-on-campus\/","title":{"rendered":"A living legend returns: Famed composer, school of music founder, 87, to debut new work on campus"},"content":{"rendered":"

Frederick Kaufman has circled the globe during a storied six-decade-plus career as a composer, educator and musician. But this week, the former director of the FIU school of music has come “home,” back to a university that loves him as much for his engaging character and passionate, inspired leadership as the timeless, beautiful music he has written to wide acclaim. A piece he composed especially for the\u00a0Wertheim Music Festival<\/a>\u00a0will premiere at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 28.<\/p>\n

A jazz trumpeter with\u00a0the Woody Herman Band in his early days, and a distinguished professor at various institutions over the years both in the United States and abroad, Kaufman has cultivated an ardent following among lovers of classical music and more. His compositions\u00a0have won numerous prizes and been performed and recorded internationally by renowned artists.<\/p>\n

His \u201cKaddish,\u201d a concerto for cello and string orchestra dedicated to his late parents, premiered at the Lincoln Center and landed him the first of two Pulitzer nominations. His multi-cultural \u201cKaminarimon,\u201d for taiko drums and flamenco dance, has been called “remarkable” and “stunning” and was voted the number one classical composition of 2002 and “the most imaginative new work of the year.” His \u201cGuernica\u201d piano concerto, inspired by Picasso\u2019s painting of the same name,\u00a0was recorded in Prague by the Czech National Symphony Orchestra, with\u00a0foreign music publications calling it \u201cbrilliant, emotional, passionate and vivid,\u201d \u201ca poignant work,\u201d \u201cwritten in the soul.\u201d He has 152 compositions to his credit.<\/p>\n

Closer to home, the 87-year-old Kaufman remains a beloved, catalytic figure in FIU history and someone the university claims as its own.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the pantheon of people who built the university, there is a place for Fred,\u201d states none other than FIU\u2019s fourth president, Modesto A. Maidique, who presided over unprecedented growth during his 23-year tenure. \u201cFred and I just hit it off from the moment we met,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was his energy, his temperament, his creativity. His vision of the future and mine coincided.\u201d<\/p>\n

A CHANGE OF PLANS<\/strong><\/p>\n

With their home up for sale in Philadelphia, where he was academic dean of the Philadelphia College of the Performing Arts, and every intention to move to Paris with his artist wife, the maestro was encouraged by a composer friend to visit little-known FIU in 1993 for a job interview. Despite arriving on campus with some skepticism, he quickly found himself smitten with the roughly 60 students in the small department of music. \u201cWhy would you come here?\u201d he remembers them asking him. \u201cI said, you\u2019ve got professional baseball and palm trees,\u201d the Julliard-trained artist and diehard Yankees fan replied. (The Marlins had just started their first season.) \u201cThey all laughed,\u201d he recalls, \u201cbut I meant it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maidique promised Kaufman the world if he would take the job. And in short order, the new hire garnered accreditation for the music program, guided from start to finish the construction of a campus performing arts center, more than doubled the faculty and added some big names, grew by five-fold the number of music majors, established the first artists-in-residence, launched the first music festival in 1996 with luminaries he personally invited and accepted the position of founding director of the newly established\u00a0school\u00a0<\/em>of music.<\/p>\n

All of those accomplishments continue to impact FIU today as does another of Kaufman\u2019s early decisions: to hire Karen Veloz as the first administrator of a production program to teach students the business end of the industry. Today, the veteran concert and music producer is director of the school and appreciates that Kaufman saw in her the value she brought at a time of great possibility. It is she who commissioned a concerto from him and invited him back to the school and festival that she now runs.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe allowed the faculty to flourish,\u201d Veloz says of one secret to his success. \u201cHe understood that we\u2019re all artists.\u201d<\/p>\n

A DYNAMIC PATRON\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The professor emeritus \u2013 he retired in 2008 \u2013 retains a bond not only with Maidique and Veloz but with the man who lends his name to both the performing arts center and the music school: Herbert Wertheim.<\/p>\n

(Notably, the Wertheims have generously also supported the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine and the Nicole Wertheim School of Nursing & Health Sciences.)<\/p>\n

It was in 1999 that Kaufman joined Wertheim on a trip to the Shantz Company in Ohio to inspect the making of a grand concert organ paid for by the benefactor (and named in honor of his late mother) and on which the director had set his heart years earlier. Nearly a quarter-century later, the crown jewel of the Wertheim Performing Arts Center\u00a0– one of the largest and finest pipe organs in the American Southeast –\u00a0will see the world premiere of a Kaufman concerto commissioned for this very instrument.<\/p>\n

The composer notes that the third movement of the 18-minute work is called Jubilation, \u201cwhich really is Herb Wertheim,\u201d he says of the music\u2019s explosive energy.<\/p>\n

A LATE-LIFE MUSIC LESSON<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not easy to write an organ concerto,\u201d says the man who has tackled only one other piece for organ – a short burst of music, known as a fanfare,\u00a0for Wertheim\u2019s 80th<\/sup>\u00a0birthday. \u201cI must tell you, this was a challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n

The challenge, as Kaufman explains, arises from the sheer number of ways in which an organ can generate sounds. With 4,226 pipes and 55 stops, FIU\u2019s instrument offers a seemingly infinite number of options.<\/p>\n

In town from his home in Colorado Springs, he has spent the week working with virtuoso Luca Scandali, an organist from Italy, to determine how to achieve the exact sounds he had in mind while composing at his kitchen table.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday was fascinating for me,\u201d Kaufman says of a recent rehearsal with Scandali, whose assistant marked the various combinations of stops \u2013 49 \u2013 that represent the registration changes in his work. \u201cI\u2019m standing there, learning all these things,\u201d he explains about the complicated instrument. \u201cIt was an eye-opener.\u201d<\/p>\n

And while he adds that this particular concerto, out of his standard repertoire, makes him \u201ca bit nervous,\u201d it also includes what he finds easiest: composition for orchestra. The organist will be accompanied by the FIU Symphony Orchestra, a group of some 60 student musicians.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt means a lot for us students to work with someone who has had a part in the formation of the school and making it what is today,\u201d says violinist Bethany Xiques, a master\u2019s student and member of the orchestra. \u201cAs a classical musician, you kind of get used to playing the well-known works, so it\u2019s a really cool experience to play a work by a living composer. This concerto is kind of special, named for the organ it will be played on.\u201d And she adds of Scandali, with whom the students have been practicing, \u201cThe soloist is doing a beautiful job of capturing the drama and excitement and intensity that the organ has to offer.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Frederick Kaufman has circled the globe during a storied six-decade-plus career as a composer, educator and musician. But this week, the former director of the FIU school of music has come “home,” back to a university that loves him as much for his engaging character and passionate, inspired leadership as the timeless, beautiful music he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":16475,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[369],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni-spotlight"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fiualumni.com\/stay-connected\/alumni-news\/newsroom\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16474"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fiualumni.com\/stay-connected\/alumni-news\/newsroom\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fiualumni.com\/stay-connected\/alumni-news\/newsroom\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fiualumni.com\/stay-connected\/alumni-news\/newsroom\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fiualumni.com\/stay-connected\/alumni-news\/newsroom\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16474"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fiualumni.com\/stay-connected\/alumni-news\/newsroom\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16474\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16476,"href":"https:\/\/fiualumni.com\/stay-connected\/alumni-news\/newsroom\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16474\/revisions\/16476"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fiualumni.com\/stay-connected\/alumni-news\/newsroom\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fiualumni.com\/stay-connected\/alumni-news\/newsroom\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fiualumni.com\/stay-connected\/alumni-news\/newsroom\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fiualumni.com\/stay-connected\/alumni-news\/newsroom\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}