Dear Students, Colleagues, Alumni, and Friends,

We are looking forward to seeing you this Saturday evening at 7 pm for a live-streamed celebration of ARTS by George! This is truly "an evening like no other" as we celebrate each of the artistic disciplines within our wonderful College of Visual and Performing Arts at Mason. 

We hope you will also join us for our many upcoming virtual events in the Dewberry School of Music: Jazz 4 Justice, Black Artist Series, student recitals, lectures and masterclasses. During this challenging time of Covid 19, we are grateful that we can continue to make music (via live-stream performances) and that we are able to share our music with you in our new virtual world. Thank you for joining us and for supporting our talented and gifted music students in their journey! Your gifts of scholarship funds truly make a difference in our music students' lives. 

We are happy that so many of you were able to join us recently for our Grand Piano Celebration and Tribute to the Dewberry Family as we celebrated the re-naming of our School.  What a joyous concert celebration we had with marvelous student and faculty performances and a beautiful post-concert reception hosted by our wonderful Friends of Music at Mason!  Our hearts are overflowing with gratitude to the Reva and Sid Dewberry Family for their transformational gift of scholarship endowment support for our music students. 

Let the music continue...

Dr. Linda A. Monson, Director

Join us online for an evening like no other with A Celebration of ARTS by George! Saturday, September 26 at 7:00 PM. Streamed live on social media and GMU-TV, the event will take a look back at the tremendous success of ARTS by George! during the past 14 years.

The annual Grand Piano Celebration at George Mason University, always dedicated to the joy of music, this year celebrated something more: the spirit of generosity embodied by Sidney O. Dewberry, in whose honor the school was recently renamed.

During the virtual event, livestreamed on Sunday afternoon, September 13, Linda Monson, director of the Reva and Sid Dewberry Family School of Music, announced recent additional gifts from the Dewberrys that bring the total commitment for the Linda Apple Monson Scholars to $5 million.

Read the full article by Rob Riordan here.

Please click to view the video above (The Spirit of Generosity).

Jazz 4 Justice™

Established in 2001 by Fairfax, Virginia attorney Edward L. Weiner, Esq. and Founder of Mason Jazz Studies, Jim Carroll, Jazz4Justice™ is an award-winning annual concert presented by Legal Services of Northern Virginia (LSNV) and Mason Jazz Studies. This year's celebration concert will be a virtual highlight of Mason Jazz students and faculty. Proceeds from the evening benefit LSNV to continue its mission of service to the Northern Virginia community as well as providing financial support for the Mason Jazz Studies area for trips, recordings and student projects.

All student recitals this semester will be live-streamed! View the full list of recitals here.

Student recitals through mid-October include:

Friday, Sep 25 at 8:00pm

Thursday, Oct 8 at 8:00pm

Saturday, October 17 at 8:00pm

Sunday, October 18th at 5:30 PM

The Mason Flute Choir (directed by Prof. Julianna Nickel) recently performed at Fairfax City's Park(ing) Day, a global event where citizens, artists, and businesses collaborate to temporarily transform parking spaces into pop-up areas.

Congratulations to Mason student composer Lisa Robinson on having her original composition, "Thinking of Water", professionally recorded on September 19th by the Christman Opera Company in New York City. Lisa Robinson is a graduate composition student of Dr. Glenn Smith, Director of Composition at Mason. Lisa used a poem by Rita Dove, "In the Bulrush" as a source for the text of her composition.  Performers for the recording included soprano Lauren MacAllister and pianist Kathryn Woodard.