The TIMARA Founder's Fund

The TIMARA Founders Fund

Oberlin’s ties to computer music and electronic music extend to the late 1960s and to groundbreaking faculty members Olly Wilson and John Clough ‘53, who established a forward-looking curriculum that far surpassed the sounds emanating from most other college campuses of the era. In 1969, the first courses that would eventually become TIMARA—shorthand for Technology in Music and Related Arts—were offered at Oberlin. Twenty years later, under the guidance and vision of faculty member Gary Lee Nelson, TIMARA conferred its first degree.

Now 50 years after those initial courses, TIMARA is celebrating its milestone anniversary with a series of events taking place throughout the 2019-20 academic year and involving many TIMARA devotees, from faculty to alumni to current students.

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of electronic music at Oberlin, a crowdfunding campaign will be launched with the goal of raising $50,000 to establish TIMARA’s first endowed fund, The TIMARA Founders Fund. In an effort to generate excitement and support for this fund, Peter Flint, Jr. '92 will generously match each gift dollar-for-dollar up to $25,000! This means your donation will have double the impact!

In part, the TIMARA Founders Fund will be used to create two annual student awards, the Olly Wilson Award and the John Clough ‘53 Award, to recognize outstanding TIMARA student achievements. While many departments at Oberlin Conservatory have endowed student awards, which are presented annually at a year-end awards ceremony, the TIMARA department does not currently have one. Establishing an endowed TIMARA fund would honor Oberlin’s groundbreaking founding faculty in electronic music and establish a tradition of supporting outstanding TIMARA students each year in perpetuity.