Hammond nominated to lead national arts

Hammond
nominated to lead national arts endowment
…………………………………………………………………

BY MARGOT DIMOND
Rice News Staff

President Bush
announced Sept. 19 his intention to nominate Michael Hammond,
dean of Rice’s Shepherd School of Music, to be chairman
of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).

The nomination
will be sent to the U.S. Senate for confirmation. If confirmed,
Hammond would succeed Bill Ivey, a folklorist and musician.

“I am deeply
honored by President Bush’s confidence in me,”
Hammond said. “The National Endowment for the Arts
is an increasingly important agency. The arts can help heal
our country and be a source of pride and comfort. If the
Senate confirms me, I would eagerly welcome the opportunity
to serve our nation.”

The NEA chairman
manages a budget of almost $105 million. The federal agency
was created in 1965 and is the largest single funder of
the nonprofit arts sector. The NEA offers educational programs,
preservation and fellowships and has awarded 115,000 grants
in all 50 states. Examples include grants to winners of
the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize in fiction
and poetry, the Public Broadcasting series “Great Performances”
and the design of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington,
D.C.
“America will gain an eloquent, dedicated spokesman
for the arts in the appointment of Michael Hammond as the
eighth chair of the National Endowment for the Arts,”
said Rice President Malcolm Gillis. “For 15 years,
Michael Hammond has been to the Shepherd School of Music
what Edgar Odell Lovett was to Rice as a whole. Both are
examples of leaders of great vision and integrity.

“An inscription
adapted from Horace on the front of Lovett Hall applies
equally well to both: ‘Exegit monumentum aere perennius’
— He has built a monument more lasting than bronze.

“Our task
now is to find a dean of music able to build on the plentiful
achievements of Michael Hammond.”

Hammond has
served as dean of the music school at Rice since 1986, leading
it to its standing as one of the finest university-based
music schools in the nation. He wrote the architectural
program for Rice’s new music building, Alice Pratt
Brown Hall, and has served on the university’s strategic
planning committee, library planning committee and numerous
search committees. In 1999, the Rice alumni association
awarded him its Gold Medal for distinguished service to
the university.

“Over a
decade and a half Michael Hammond guided the Shepherd School
of Music to international prominence,” said Bill Barnett,
chairman of Rice’s board of trustees. “In Michael,
we had someone who fit Rice in ways that those outside might
find difficult to understand. President Bush has chosen
very well; Rice’s great loss is the nation’s great
gain.”

Before coming
to Rice, Hammond was the founding dean of music for the
new arts campus of the State University of New York at Purchase,
N.Y. He also was responsible for planning the facilities
and curriculum of the music school there and later served
as president of the college. Before going to New York, he
had been director of the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music
in Milwaukee.

He also has
served as the founding rector of the Prague Mozart Academy
in the Czech Republic, now the European Mozart Academy.

Hammond grew
up in Wisconsin and was educated at Lawrence University,
Delhi University (India) and as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford
University, where he was president of the Junior Common
Room at Oriel College. As a composer and conductor, Hammond
has written numerous scores for theater in the United States
and abroad. His special interests include the music of Southeast
Asia, Western Medieval and Renaissance music and the relationships
between music and the brain. Hammond gave the keynote address
at the International Symposium on the Neuroscience of Music
in Niigata, Japan, in 1999.

He earned his
degrees at Oxford in philosophy, psychology and physiology
and has taught neuroanatomy and physiology at Marquette
Medical College and the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee.

Hammond has held
positions as associate conductor of the American Symphony
with Leopold Stokowski, conductor of the Bergen Philharmonic,
musical director and conductor of the Dessoff Choirs in
New York City and as composer in residence for the Milwaukee
Repertory Theater. He worked with Donald Kendall of Pepsico
and Brooks Jones at the Purchase Center for the Performing
Arts in founding Pepsico Summerfare.

Hammond currently
is director of Canticum, an ensemble for the performance
of Medieval and Renaissance vocal music, and is a vice-chairman
of the board of Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan.