Sallyport - The Magazine of Rice University - Winter 2002

Music Dean Tapped to Lead NEA - Through the Sallyport
strategic planning committee, library planning committee, and numerous
search committees. In 1999, the Rice alumni association awarded him its
Gold Medal for distinguished service to the university.
“Over a decade and a half, Michael Hammond guided the Shepherd School
of Music to international prominence,” said Bill Barnett, chair of Rice’s
Board of Trustees. “In Michael, we had someone who fit Rice in ways that
those outside might find difficult to understand. President Bush has chosen
very well; Rice’s great loss is the nation’s great gain.”
It is easy to understand why Hammond was nominated. Before coming to
Rice, he was the founding dean of music for the new arts campus of the
State University of New York at Purchase and later served as president of
the college. Before going to New York, he had been director of the
Wisconsin Conservatory of Music in Milwaukee. He also has served as the
founding rector of the Prague Mozart Academy in the Czech Republic, now
the European Mozart Academy.
Hammond grew up in Wisconsin and attended Lawrence University and
Delhi University (India) and studied as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford
University, where he was president of the Junior Common Room at Oriel
College. He earned his degrees at Oxford in philosophy, psychology, and
physiology and has taught neuroanatomy and physiology at Marquette
Medical College and the University of Wisconsin.
As a composer and conductor, Hammond has written numerous scores for
theater in the United States and abroad. His special interests include the
music of Southeast Asia, Western medieval and Renaissance music, and the
relationships between music and the brain. Hammond gave the keynote
address at the In-ternational Sym-posium on the Neuroscience of Music in
Niigata, Japan, in 1999.
Hammond has held positions as associate conductor of the American
Symphony with Leopold Stokowski, conductor of the Bergen
Philharmonic, and musical director and conductor of the Dessoff Choirs in
New York City, and he was composer in residence for the Milwaukee
Repertory Theater. He worked with Donald Kendall of PepsiCo and Brooks
Jones at the Purchase Center for the Performing Arts in founding PepsiCo
Summerfare. He currently is director of Canticum, an ensemble for the
performance of medieval and Renaissance vocal music, and is a vice
chairman of the board of Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan.
—Margot Dimond
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