They gave Fred Fox an honorary doctoral degree Wednesday night and feted him with speeches, a gala concert, a VIP dinner and an audience with the University of Arizona Fred Fox School of Music faculty and students.
But Fox, the former French horn player and renowned music teacher, seemed to revel in something much simpler to celebrate the $20 million donation from his son and daughter-in-law, Alan and Daveen Fox, to the school that landed Fox’s name on the College of Fine Arts building.
For an hour Wednesday morning, Fox slipped into the role that has suited him well for a big chunk of his 100½ years: that of teacher.
“I’ve seen him with students, and three to five minutes working with him and their playing is improved,” Alan Fox said, a few minutes before the elder Fox’s master class. “He’s really involved with students and he’s really amazing with them.”
Fred Fox didn’t wait for the hour-long master class to begin before he started doling out advice to aspiring musicians. As Alan Fox chatted with School of Music Director Ed Reid, Fred Fox cornered freshman French horn player Dan Hawthorne, a member of the school’s jazz ensemble, and encouraged him to reach deeper into his diaphragm when he played.
Hawthorne was caught a bit off guard but he listened intently, taking a few deep breaths as Fox instructed.
Fox gave similar advice during his master class, instructing graduate student Ethan Miller to sing the notes he was about to play on his bassoon.
“Higher,” Fox said. Miller blew into his instrument and produced a note an octave higher. The sound was richer with more pronounced coloration than the notes he had played moments earlier.
“Aha! You hear the difference?” Fox asked.
Fox followed the same exercise with a French horn player, another student playing trumpet and a couple of saxophone players including Florence freshman Emmanuel Bobo, who followed Fox’s advice and was able to easily sail to deeper, richer notes on his instrument.
“When I was playing in middle A and I wasn’t playing from my diaphragm, it was harder,” he said. “When I listened I was able to get it.”
Alan Fox’s donation is the single largest to the school of music and followed his $1.25 million donation in 2012 to endow the Fred Fox Graduate Wind Quintet.
The younger Fox, 74, who made his fortune developing shopping malls in California, Colorado, Phoenix, Denver and Dallas, said he had committed to giving the money to the UA back in mid-November after asking Reid, who had just been named director, how he could make an impact on the school.
“Name the school of music, $20 million,” Reid told him.
Fox said he took 20 minutes to think about it, then committed to the gift.
“Sometimes you buy something and you have buyer’s remorse,” Alan Fox told a group of faculty and students in Crowder Hall. “I’ve never had buyer’s remorse.”
Fred Fox’s relationship with the UA comes through one of his former students — UA horn professor Daniel Katzen. Each year, Katzen invites Fox, who lives in California, to come to Tucson and work with his students.
Reid said the $20 million donation is being used to create the Alan C. and Daveen Fox Endowed Chair for the Director of the School of Music; the Fred Fox Endowed Chair for French Horn Studies; and the Daveen Fox Endowed Chair for Music.
Another $2 million has been set aside to create the Fox Family Scholarship Fund to grant yearly scholarships to as many as three undergraduate students majoring in music, and three graduate students whose studies emphasize brass instrument performance.
