Music Department — Upgrading Instruments

Each Giving Day, we ask for your support to contribute to the success of current and future students in the Department of Music through gifts that fund the vital equipment needed to future-proof our department. Your gift, no matter the size, will have a huge impact on the continued excellence of the department!

This year, we need your help to repair and replace department-owned instruments. Your donations will go toward critical repairs of department instruments that are made available to all students, including our percussion gear, bass clarinet, English horn, contrabassoon and African drums. These instruments allow our students who might not own these auxiliary instruments the opportunity to study, perform and grow with them during their academic career at Stony Brook. Knowledge of these instruments is vital to an orchestral or chamber music career, and the department is the only access point for many of our students.

Many of these instruments, like our African drums, are specialized. The only opportunity to work with these drums would be through a class like JB Gnonlonfoun’s VOLTA West African Drumming course. This course brings together graduate musicians, undergraduate majors and students who have never taken a music course before to bridge our wider campus community. These instruments and the course concert attire have suffered a decade of wear and tear. New equipment is vital to the growth of one of our most popular courses for the campus community.

We are raising $10,000 to jump-start a massive overhaul of our department instruments, and every dollar has a tangible impact on our department. The next time you attend the Stony Brook Symphony Orchestra, VOLTA, Wind Ensemble or any number of performances, you will be able to see your impact at work!