Calling all DON NEUEN students (past and present)

If Don Neuen has been your conductor, teacher, mentor, or an inspiration in your life, we want to invite you to join us in celebrating and thanking him! After 60 years of conducting and 50 years of collegiate teaching, he is retiring from UCLA and preparing to launch into a more active phase of guest conducting, clinician work, and private teaching. His music ministry with the Hour of Power will also continue with gusto! I am sure if you were to see him conduct/teach, you would swear he’s never changed, except he’s better!

 

Don is still filled with the energy of a 45-year-old and his UCLA student evaluations are overwhelmingly positive. In fact, Don was just selected by the UCLA student body for a prestigious award, the My Last Lecture Award. This is the only student-selected award available for a faculty member and an enormous honor. Don was also recently awarded the highest honor available to a University of California faculty member, the rank of Distinguished Professor.

 

We are preparing a celebration to honor Don in conjunction with his final UCLA performance June 7th at 8 p.m. in Royce Hall at UCLA. We are reaching out to Don’s former students around the world to share their voices, memories, gratitude, and love with our teacher and mentor, who is near and dear to us all.

 

We would like to invite you to submit (via e-mail to  ) the following:

These will be used to create a book, “Don Neuen’s Life in Song” which we will present to Don for his retirement.

 

If you are available to attend Don’s June 7th concert in Los Angeles, it would mean the world to him! Please RSVP to Rebecca Lord so we can make arrangements for tickets and include you in post-concert festivities. The concert will include Beethoven’s C Major Mass, Choral Fantasy, and Hallelujah from “The Mount of Olives.”

 

I hope to hear from you soon!

 

Rebecca Lord, Associate Director of Choral Activities, UCLA