The University of Arizona School of Music will change its name to the Fred Fox School of Music after the son of a prominent horn player gave the school $20 million.
The gift by Alan and Daveen Fox in Fred Fox’s honor, announced on Wednesday, comes three years after the couple endowed the UA’s Graduate Wind Quintet, also named after Fred Fox, with $1.25 million.
Fox, 100, played solo French horn with the National Symphony, the Minneapolis Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic before retiring from performing in 1969. He taught at several schools including California State University, Northridge; the University of Southern California; the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara; and California State University, Los Angeles.
One of his students was UA horn professor and performer Daniel Katzen.
“What a great way to start the year,” said Jory Hancock, the UA College of Fine Arts dean. “There are probably fine arts colleges that get named for that price, and even then, not very often. It will be a gigantic push for the music school, and the faculty and staff there are definitely deserving. And it helps the entire college when a school receives a gift like that.”
The UA will use the money 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 of the gift will be used to create the Fox Family Scholarship Fund, an endowed fund to provide scholarships each year for up to three undergraduate students majoring in music, and three graduate students whose studies emphasize brass instrument performance.
The school also will establish an endowed fund to support the Fred Fox Graduate Wind Quintet, under Katzen’s leadership, in perpetuity, Hancock said.
Katzen was introduced to Fox through a colleague at the Phoenix Symphony in 1976 when Katzen was a young professional horn player. Immediately after he began working with Fox, he recalled, “My playing was completely overhauled. ... It got me to a level of professionalism that I had not reached previously.”
Katzen went on to play horn with the Boston Symphony Orchestra for nearly 30 years, retiring in 2008 — the year he joined the UA staff. Every year since, he has brought Fox to Tucson to work with his students.
“Fred told me he really likes what I’m doing down here. He likes coming here because the students are good and the faculty is supportive,” Katzen said.
Katzen said that while he introduced Fox to Tucson, the school’s newly named director, Edward Reid, was the one who secured the donation not long after the Foxes saw the graduate wind quintet in concert last November.
Hancock said the school’s name could be changed as early as mid-February, after the proposal goes through the proper channels including the faculty senate. The school will host a celebration and has invited Fox and his son and daughter-in-law, who all reside in California.
“He’s really happy that his name will be on this,” Hancock said.
Until this gift, the largest donations given to the UA College of Fine Arts were two $3 million gifts.
In a written statement, the UA Foundation said the Fox family gift pushes the organization closer to its $1.5 billion fundraising goal as part of Arizona Now, the university’s largest fundraising campaign ever. The campaign has brought in more than $1 billion thus far.
