By Tiffany Edwards University Relations
George Dickieson
The School of Music will pay tribute to George Dickieson, the late founder of its instrumental music program, with a Brahms-inspired faculty concert Thursday, Sept. 8, at 7:30 p.m.
The free, public concert will be the first in the school’s annual Artist Faculty Chamber Series and will celebrate the establishment of the George W. Dickieson Chamber Music Endowment. Formed by Dickieson’s widow Anna Bell, the endowment will promote chamber music in the School of Music through the funding of master classes and visits by guest artists.
The centerpiece of the concert program will be Brahms’ “Clarinet Quintet in B minor, Opus 115,” which was one of George’s favorite pieces. Performers will include Kelly Burke (clarinet), John Fadial (violin), Janet Orenstein (violin), Scott Rawls (viola) and Brooks Whitehouse (cello). The program will also include “Liebeslieder Walzer,” featuring piano and the voice of Robert Wells, among others.
A former professor of violin in the UNCG School of Music, Dickieson died May 23, 2004, at Wellsprings in Greensboro. He held a bachelor’s degree in music from Salem College and a master’s degree from the Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music.
Dickieson joined the Woman’s College music faculty in 1938 and began to develop the school’s fledgling instrumental program. He established a Summer String Institute for young people that flourished for more than 20 years. It was under his leadership that the school’s orchestra joined the American Symphony Orchestra League, cultivated interest and support from the general community, and gradually became the Greensboro Symphony.
During Dickieson’s 39-year tenure at the School of Music, he instituted the first graduate degree courses, Chamber Music and Symphonic Literature, which are still in the catalogue today, in addition to teaching conducting and orchestration and organizing a student orchestra and faculty chamber ensembles. He also founded and was the first president of the N.C. Chapter of the American String Teachers Association, was a member and officer of Pi Kappa Lambda, and was honored by Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia Fraternity for his “significant and outstanding contributions to the cause of music in America.”
Dickieson retired from UNCG in 1979 and lived with his wife Anna Bell, a 1943 alumna of the School of Music, until his death at the age of 92.
