The University of Northern Iowa School of Music will celebrate more than four decades of musical excellence with its 44th Annual Scholarship Benefit Concert, to be held at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 26, in the Catherine Cassidy Gallagher Great Hall at the Gallagher Bluedorn Performing Arts Center (GBPAC). This year’s theme, ‘Our History,’ pays tribute to the School of Music’s rich past, present talent and vision for the future.
The concert will feature dynamic performances from a wide array of student and faculty ensembles, including the UNI Wind Ensemble, Jazz Band One, Cecilians, Northern Iowa Symphony Orchestra, UNI Opera and several featured soloists. Highlights of the evening’s repertoire include selections from Strauss’s Die Fledermaus and Arturo Márquez’s Conga del Fuego Nuevo, showcasing both classical and contemporary works.
Following the concert, audience members are invited to enjoy a reception with chocolates, hors d’oeuvres, and beverages in the GBPAC lobby and the newly expanded Marquee Lounge. Music will continue into the evening, provided by talented student musicians.
The Scholarship Benefit Concert has become a cornerstone event for raising essential scholarship funds for UNI music students — both those with financial need and those demonstrating exceptional talent.
“The concert helps us do two things,” said Melinda Boyd, director of the UNI School of Music. “It helps us get our large ensembles into detailed rehearsal work early in the semester since the concert happens five weeks into the school year, and it helps us to promote the idea that music scholarships are important.”
Boyd also noted that donations tend to increase around the time of the concert.
“It gets our donor base going, so people can donate to the scholarship benefit account year-round, but those donations ramp up around the concert.”
Among the ensembles featured this year is the Cecilians, a large choral group with approximately 117 members — most of whom are non-music majors.
“They’re almost all non-music majors, so they sing because they just enjoy singing,” Boyd said. “They’re a part of our theme this year — ‘Our History’ — because they were the first organized music ensemble on this campus, originally called the Cecilian Glee Club, founded in 1888.”
The concert will also spotlight UNI’s proud jazz tradition, which celebrates its 75th anniversary this year. Mike Conrad, professor of Jazz and Music Education and director of UNI Jazz Band One, expressed his enthusiasm for both the upcoming concert and the larger milestone on the horizon.
“I’m excited for this year’s Scholarship Benefit Concert for a number of reasons,” Conrad said. “While I’ve been a part of many in the past — as a student performer back in the day, as a faculty guest performer more recently and as a spectator several times — this will be my first time appearing at the concert as an ensemble director.”
As part of the jazz area’s 75th anniversary, Conrad has been diving into UNI’s archives to uncover the origins of the program, which began in 1951 with a student-led concert called ‘Jazz at the Commons.’
“In those early newspaper archives from ‘The College Eye,’ I found that one of the songs performed at the very first UNI jazz concert was Rodgers and Hart’s ‘Where or When, ’ which UNI Jazz Band One will play to open our set,” Conrad said. “We’ll also perform a high-energy arrangement of ‘Ol’ Man River,’ which was sung by Bob Pierce at the second ‘Jazz at the Commons’ concert in 1952.”
Conrad noted that the full jazz anniversary celebration will take place on Feb. 20, 2026, also at the GBPAC, and promises “fantastic music and some amazing special guests.”
Complementing the musical performances will be a visual history component. Undergraduate students, in collaboration with Rod Library Special Collections, have curated digital projects on the histories of UNI’s bands, orchestras and choirs. These projects will be displayed on screens in the GBPAC lobby throughout the evening.
All seats for the Scholarship Benefit Concert are reserved. Tickets can be purchased in person at the Gallagher Bluedorn box office, by calling 319-273-4TIX or 877-549-SHOW, or online at unitix.uni.edu.
Special donor packages with complimentary tickets are also available by contacting the School of Music office at 319-273-2028.
For more information about the concert or to support music scholarships at UNI, visit music.uni.edu/sbc.
