Don Anderson was looking for a way to honor his late father, a long-time choral director, educator, and alumnus of Michigan State University. Anderson was also looking for a way to help heal pain, injustices and turmoil in the modern world. He found an answer by setting up a fund in his father’s name at the MSU College of Music.

Established in March 2019, the Edward D. Anderson Choral Music Scholarship and Commissioning Fund supports selected graduate students in achieving educational and career goals in the choral arts. The fund also enables the college to commission new choral works for on-campus and community performance, with the two most recent works reflecting university-wide efforts focused on diversity and inclusion.

“Dad was as devoted to church music as he was to secular music,” said Don, an Austin, Texas-based physician-scientist and consultant for the MSU Office of Research and Innovation. “He always encouraged his students to sing in all types of choirs. This fund is created with that in mind—to develop the next generation of choristers, be they involved in professional, church or community choirs—with outstanding music and fundamentals being at the core.”

Building from example

Don tells the story of a father dedicated to music, and of a man who devoted his life to furthering choral music and education across the United States—particularly in Northern Colorado and the Midwest.

Edward “Ed” Anderson was driven to teach music in his native North Dakota after studying music at Concordia College in Minnesota in the late 1930s. His career in music was initially inspired at Concordia by Paul J. Christiansen, a leading 20^th century American composer and conductor. Although Ed was called to serve in the U.S. Navy during World War II, he resumed his musical quest by going to MSU on the GI Bill to earn his master of music degree.

Don was 1-year-old when his dad attended MSU. And while he doesn’t remember campus, he does recall his father’s stories about college life in the late 1940s.

“Dad liked to tell me about how he walked across campus from their apartment to the Music Building,” he said. “And although I can’t say for sure, he told me he was probably the first person to receive a master’s in music from MSU since his last name put him first in line at his commencement.”

After graduating in 1948, Ed moved his family to Fort Collins, Colorado, where he served for 37 years as director of the choral music department and a professor of music at Colorado State University. His choral groups performed and toured extensively, and he created a university fine arts festival and madrigal singers group. Honored by CSU for his distinguished service, Ed was also named a “choral music legend” by the Colorado Chapter of the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA). He conducted youth choirs and was a sought-after soloist. Devoted to choral music ministry, Ed directed choral music at two prominent churches in the Fort Collins area.

“Dad always talked about how he modeled his programs after MSU and his experience in East Lansing,” Don said. “He said he owed much of his style and approach to choral music and directing from what he learned from MSU.”

Don remembered his father’s high regard for the MSU College of Music as he decided on collegiate and community beneficiaries of the choral scholars fund he established after his father died in 2014. Since that time, the program has supported the music education of over 200 student scholars in colleges, universities, children’s choirs, secondary schools, and music camps and festivals in several U.S. states and Canada. Don knew his father would want to support students and programs at MSU, and seized the opportunity to expand the fund’s reach by talking with David Rayl, the director of choral programs at MSU.

“We’re delighted that Don chose MSU to build on a program that honors his father and his father’s legacy,” said Rayl, professor of music and senior associate dean of graduate studies and research. “His father had an enormous influence on students and on advancing choral music in the U.S., and this fund is a way to perpetuate his commitment to our art.”

Promoting new works

While Don knew his father was devoted to advancing choral scholarship, he also knew his father would support building choral repertoire. In 2019, he sat down with Rayl to discuss commissioning a choral work that could contribute to MSU’s need for healing in the aftermath of the Larry Nassar scandal, and have the work premiered by the MSU University Chorale.

Rayl knew just the composer.

Rayl contacted Andrea Clearfield— an award-winning American composer of music for opera, orchestra, chorus, chamber ensembles, dance, and multimedia collaborations. As she began to develop the work, she asked to collaborate with poet Charles Anthony Silvestri. Rayl and Don agreed, and anticipated the arrival of a definitive new work to premier in the fall of 2020.

“At the time we initially commissioned the work, we had no idea we would be dealing with a pandemic, and that society would require healing from the boiling over of anger and frustration at the unaddressed issues of racial injustice in our country,” Rayl said. “The work became even more relevant than we originally thought.”

Because of COVID-19, the premier of Clearfield’s composition is postponed until 2021. In the meantime, a second work commissioned through the fund will be part of a presentation by Liza Calisesi Maidens, an MSU doctoral student in choral conducting, at the March 2021 virtual conference of the ACDA. Composed by Brittney Boykin, a young African American composer who serves on the faculty of Spelman College in Atlanta, the piece draws from the poetry of a 13^th-century troubairitz who scholars believe to be a woman of color. Boykin received support through the Anderson fund to set Na Castelloza’s text to a contemporary choral work, penned in the style of late Medieval and Renaissance music.

Rayl said Boykin’s composition reflects the college’s focus on diversity, inclusion, and social justice. Maidens will introduce the new work with her co-presenter and colleague Katy Lushman from Denver, Colorado. “(re)Consider the Canon: Bringing the Past to the Present” will feature approachable works by well-known composers from the Renaissance and Baroque eras, as well as highlight voices often excluded from the choral history.

“This commissioned work is the perfect intersection of curriculum, research and patron support,” said Rayl. “Ideally, it’s a great example of how those three strands—which are essential in the modern American University—can converge to create something of lasting value that will contribute to society.”

Maidens hopes the ACDA presentation encourages conductors to create engaging experiences that draw on a overlooked part of the choral canon. She hopes, too, to provide examples and rehearsal strategies for how conductors can program and adapt repertoire for their specific ensembles.

“The generosity of donors like Dr. Anderson and the Edward Anderson Fund breathes life into these ideas, which enhances and strengthens the student/faculty experience in a really meaningful way,” Maidens said. “Music doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and if you sit with the repertoire and its corresponding history and theory long enough, ideas like these present themselves.”

Sustaining the legacy

While securing his father’s legacy through the support of the college’s choral program, Don also contributes to the Spartans Will to serve the greater good. As a consultant for the MSU Office of Research and Innovation, Don applies his experience as a physician, pediatric cancer researcher, drug discoverer, infectious disease expert, and entrepreneur to drive field studies and commercialization of MSU’s new technologies and intellectual properties. In 2016, Don launched the Ian Gray Scholarship in Entrepreneurial Studies for MSU students trained within the MSU Innovation Center. He is currently serving on data monitoring safety boards with oversight of clinical trials of COVID-19 drug candidates seeking FDA approval. He also recalls a short time in the 1970s when he lived in mid-Michigan, supporting a young family while working his first medical appointment in pediatrics at MSU.

“The bottom line is, this fund is not about me, it’s about Dad,” he said. “He loved MSU and would be totally supportive of the scholarships and commissioned works. This is a way to help aspiring students in the choral arts, and to support the creation of repertoire that reflects a new world and generation.”