Lawrence kicks off year-long celebration of 150 years of Conservatory of Music and LCMS

Lawrence University will celebrate 150 years of the Conservatory of Music and the Lawrence Community Music School (LCMS) throughout the 2024-25 academic year. 

Banners celebrating the 150 years of history now decorate campus. The logo marking the anniversary is showing up on T-shirts and other apparel as students begin classes. Concerts giving a nod to the brilliance of the Conservatory will be presented in the coming weeks and months. And a proclamation delivered at the Sept. 20 Matriculation Convocation by Appleton Mayor Jake Woodford ’13 applauds the Conservatory for building and sustaining “world-renowned programs in music and music education.”

“As we celebrate this milestone, we will honor our rich legacy and embrace our promising future through special events, commissioned music, and other showcases highlighting the talent of past, present, and future musicians,” President Laurie A. Carter said in her Convocation address.

The Conservatory debuted in 1874, launched with a single faculty member. It has grown over the past century and a half into the celebrated music conservatory it is today. With more than 25 areas of study, 360 students currently pursuing one of three music degree options (plus a possible dual degree), and 48 full-time and 23 part-time faculty, the Conservatory prepares students for music careers of today and tomorrow.

See Lawrence web page celebrating the 150th anniversary, including a historical timeline

LCMS, meanwhile, continues to provide an important connector to the Fox Cities community. A division of the Conservatory, it has delivered high-level music instruction to area residents of all ages since the Conservatory’s founding. Once a preparatory school, it was known as the Arts Academy and then Lawrence Academy of Music before assuming its current name, Lawrence Community Music School, in 2020. It now serves about 900 students via private lessons, ensembles, early childhood classes, and more, presenting more than 40 public concerts a year.

“The 150th anniversary of the Conservatory of Music and the Lawrence Community Music School is a momentous event,” said Conservatory Dean Brian Pertl ’86. “Throughout our 150 years, the Lawrence Conservatory has produced exceptional musicians, scholars, and educators whose influence has extended across the nation and across the globe.”

As it has from the beginning, the Conservatory remains an integral part of the university. Music education, performance, composition, dance, technology, entrepreneurship, and arts leadership are all woven into the programming of today’s Conservatory. State-of-the-art recording studios are readily available. Award-winning ensembles explore everything from classical to world music to jazz. Internships take students to Carnegie Hall, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the New York Jazz Academy, among others. Conservatory faculty teach, mentor, perform, and inspire in studios, classrooms, and on stage.

It is all part of the university’s liberal arts landscape, a cohesive blend of a conservatory and a college of liberal arts and sciences that makes Lawrence distinctive. Alumni sing its praises for the ways their Conservatory experiences have informed their journeys.

Alexander York ’14, a member of the soloist ensemble at the State Theater in Linz, Austria, where he is singing Papageno in Mozart’s Magic Flute this season, said the Conservatory prepared him to reach high. He got a master’s at Northwestern University, received a Fulbright Award to study art song in Munich, Germany, and was a member of the Paris Opera Young Artist Program.

“Because of the huge number of performances that I had as an undergrad, I was able to feel really confident going into my graduate work and then eventually into the professional world,” York said. “I developed such a wide set of skills during my time at Lawrence—Shakespeare acting, dancing, language skills, text interpretation—and I keep drawing on things that I never thought would be important at the time but have since shown themselves to be extremely useful in my chosen profession. The integration of the Conservatory and the College made me into a well-rounded lifelong learner, and I am very grateful for that.”

Kirsten Lies-Warfield ’94, a retired trombonist with the United States Army Band, said she and her classmates in the early 1990s were buoyed by the culture of the Conservatory, always supportive and inspiring. She went on to earn a master’s degree at Indiana University before becoming the first woman trombonist ever hired by the U.S. Army Band “Pershing’s Own.”

“The faculty and my peers gave me room to find my way and inspiration as to what was possible,” she said.

Lies-Warfield said she’s even more excited about what Lawrence Conservatory students now have available.

“I loved it when I was there, and I am a bit jealous of what is offered to students there now,” she said.

Ongoing evolution

It was in 1894, 20 years after it debuted, that the Conservatory really started to take shape, hinting at what it would become. From 1894 to 1924, it grew from one faculty member to 16.

In 1918, the 1,200-seat Memorial Chapel—funded in a joint effort between Lawrence and the Appleton community—opened, a game-changer for the Conservatory and the community. In 1959, the Music-Drama Center was built near the Chapel. Shattuck Hall was added in the early 1990s, connecting the Music-Drama Center and Memorial Chapel, providing the infrastructure of today’s Conservatory.

In the 50 years since the Conservatory celebrated its Centennial in November 1974, it has continued to evolve and thrive. The jazz and improvisational music program that was launched in the early 1970s has grown into a widely recognized program, bringing home more than 30 national DownBeat Awards. The opera theatre program, with legendary leadership dating back to the early 1960s, took a major step forward in 2014 when a generous grant allowed for Copeland Woodruff to be brought in as the Conservatory’s first director of opera studies. The program has consistently drawn national honors while producing alumni who have risen to lofty levels in the opera world—among them Dale Duesing ’67, a Grammy winner, Heidi Stober ’00, a lyric soprano performing in major opera houses around the world, and Emily Richter ’20, a rising star who won the 2024 Metropolitan Opera Eric and Dominique Laffont Competition.

In 2019, a Bachelor of Musical Arts (B.M.A.) degree was added to Lawrence’s degree options, providing new musical paths into and through Lawrence while complementing the existing degrees—Bachelor of Music (B.Mus.), Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), and Bachelor of Arts & Bachelor of Music Dual Degree (B.A./B.Mus.). The new degree expanded on the classical music component in the Conservatory, allowing students for the first time to audition with non-classical repertoire and focus on jazz and contemporary improvisation.

The Conservatory’s Presto! tours have taken students to Chicago, the Twin Cities, and Houston for a blend of music-making and community outreach. Kaleidoscope concerts are held at the Fox Cities Performing Arts Center to showcase the breadth of music within the Conservatory. Dance instruction was introduced. Arts entrepreneurship has been built into classes across the curriculum.

In addition to the LCMS, numerous community partnerships—most notably with the Mile of Music festival, the Music for All program, and the Appleton Area School District—have added layers to the Conservatory’s relationship with Appleton and the wider Fox Cities.

In addition, the Conservatory has frequently been graced by music superstars as part of the Performing Arts Series and the Fred Sturm Jazz Celebration Weekend. The likes of John Philip Sousa (1924, 1926), Marian Anderson (1941), Louis Armstrong (1960), Ella Fitzgerald (1961), Yo-Yo Ma (1986), Wynton Marsalis (1988, 2022), Joshua Bell (1990, 1998), and Marilyn Horne (1994) have come to Lawrence to perform at Memorial Chapel.

The Performing Arts Series continues that tradition with a wide-ranging roster of touring artists each year. That includes the 2024-25 season, with two-time Grammy Award-winning Roomful of Teeth, which features Lawrence voice professor Estelí Gomez, and Sō Percussion with Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw.

The 150th anniversary will be showcased on Lawrence and Appleton stages throughout this academic year. Kaleidoscope 2024 will kick off the events at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 12 at the Fox Cities Performing Arts Center. Featuring students from almost every corner of the Conservatory, it will be a non-stop music blitz that celebrates the Conservatory’s past, present, and future.

Upcoming performances also will feature commissioned pieces from Lawrence alumni, including composers Nicolas Bizub ’16 (Oct. 25) and Evan Williams ’10 (Nov. 20). Keep an eye on the calendar of events on the Conservatory 150 page for details on these and other performances throughout the year.