With huge endowment, LACC looks to give more students a shot in music

Thanks to a $10.1 million donation, hundreds of music majors at the Los Angeles City College will be able to study for free starting next fall.

The gift from the Herb Alpert Foundation will create an endowment that will allow up to 250 students in LACC music academy to study tuition-free. It will also provide free private lessons for those applied music majors, who audition and commit to transferring to a four-year institution to continue studying music.

While there are some conservatories, like the Colburn School or the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, that offer free tuition, scholarship programs like this new program are very rare. Michael Blakeslee, executive director of the National Association for Music Education, says this is the first time he's heard of it at the community college level. 

"There are means barriers in all sorts of education, and music education isn't alone in that," said Blakeslee. "If we have more avenues so that people – especially people of limited means – have more access to a career in music, and I would hope music education as well, then that's a very nice thing."

Tuition for the average student at LACC is $1,500 per semester, including the cost of books, which for many students at the school is a big price tag.

"Music costs money. They need lessons, they need instruments, there are always extra costs," said Christine Park, chair of the LACC music department. "We are seeing a lot of high school students who are graduating and their families actually cannot support them to continue their studies in a four-year university or conservatory."

The Herb Alpert Foundation, co-founded by the trumpeter and his wife, singer Lani Hall, in the late 1980s, supports arts education throughout Southern California and has given smaller donations to LACC in the past. A nearly half million dollar donation to LACC three years ago funded full or partial scholarships to 80 music academy students.

Since then, Park says the average student age in the music academy, which offers certificates in instrumental performance, vocal performance, composition and music technology, has gotten younger. More students under the age of 26 began using the program as a stepping stone to more advanced study, whereas previously the program had been mostly students between the ages of 29 and 35.

One of those students was tenor saxophone player Owen Flannagan, 25, who said the scholarship enabled him to work just a part-time job rather than a full-time job while he studied. That helped him focus on school and successfully transferred to a four-year university. He starts his studies at Idaho State University this week.

"It was fantastic," Flannagan said. "Honestly, it was a godsend."  

Parks says the school currently offers about 100 course and they are looking forward to doubling those offerings.

"This is going to catapult this department and I think this school into a whole other level in terms of visibility, which it richly deserves," said Robert Schwartz, the director of the LACC Foundation, who says the gift comes after three years of discussion.

"People sometimes unfortunately refer to LACC as a hidden gem, and I've told the president of this campus that the last thing you want to be is hidden," he said.

Schwartz said this is the largest gift in the history of Southern California community colleges – next up is the $10 million the Broad Foundation gave to Santa Monica Community College arts education at the new Santa Monica College performing arts center in 2008 – and the second largest gift in the history of the California Community Colleges system.

This is the latest in a series of footprints Alpert has made on higher education in music. In 2008, the Herb Alpert School of Music was established at CalArts, and the University of California system got its first free-standing school of music earlier this year when the Herb Alpert School of Music was established. 

A number of notable musicians attended LACC including jazz musician Charles Mingus, opera star George London and Grammy award-winning jazz musician Diane Reeves. 

"LACC had a major heyday during the '40s and '50s and into the '60s and then community colleges I think, for all the wrong reasons, took a hit in terms of their visibility," said Schwartz. "I think that's now turning around because people are starting to recognize the importance of what these colleges mean."