Sid Dewberry

A Note from Rick Davis on the Passing of Sid Dewberry

Pam Muirheid — Wed, 20 Jul 2022 14:46:10 +0000

A Note from Rick Davis on the Passing of Sid Dewberry Pam Muirheid Wed, 07/20/2022 - 10:46

In This Story

Sid Dewberry

Dear CVPA Community,

I am so very sorry to be writing to you today with such sad news. Our wonderful friend, tireless advocate, and generous supporter of the arts at Mason (and so many other important things), Sid Dewberry, has left us. He passed away on Saturday, July 16, at the age of 94.

The obituary and information about the memorial service this Saturday are linked here and will appear in The Washington Post. A lovely story from the university is also linked here and will appear in tomorrow’s edition of The George.

Sid was such a great friend to so many, has been a such strong believer in the power of music and the arts to exert a positive impact on the world. Acting on that belief, has made a transformative impact on the arts at Mason, most visibly through the sustained philanthropic commitment that led to the naming of the Reva and Sid Dewberry Family School of Music.

I hope you will take the time to read and reflect on both the eventful and purposeful life described in the obituary, and the Mason story as well, which reflects Sid’s many forms of service and contribution to ��AV. We will miss him greatly, even as his legacy lives on here through his visionary generosity and his wonderful family.

At an appropriate moment this fall, we will celebrate Reva and Sid Dewberry in full. In the meantime, please join me in offering our deepest sympathy and condolences to the Dewberry family.

Sincerely,

Rick Davis, Dean

Topics

Sid Dewberry

Reva and Sid Dewberry Family School of Music

College of Visual and Performing Arts (CVPA)

Dewberry School of Music Announces $5 Million Commitment for Scholarships

Pam Muirheid — Wed, 18 May 2022 17:15:16 +0000

Dewberry School of Music Announces $5 Million Commitment for Scholarships Pam Muirheid Wed, 05/18/2022 - 13:15

In This Story

Dr. Linda Apple Monson

Gregory Washington

School of Music students with Sid Dewberry (center) and Dr. Linda Monson (far left).

At this year’s Grand Piano Celebration, the school honored Sid Dewberry for his lifetime spirit of generosity.

The annual Grand Piano Celebration at ��AV, 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.

Fulfilled through both current and pledged support, these gifts add to the Dr. Linda Apple Monson Scholars Endowed Fund, established by the Dewberrys to support scholarships for Mason music students. Additional generous donors to the endowed fund are Nina Toups, the Claude Moore Foundation, and Anne and Ronald Abramson.

“We are thrilled and honored that the school of music is now renamed the Reva and Sid Dewberry Family School of Music in honor of the Dewberrys’ lifetime legacy of giving and generous support of our beloved school,” said Monson in the Grand Piano Celebration introduction.

“You’ve expressed that your dream is to put Mason music on top of the heap,” Monson continued. “Well, it’s happening. Your transformational gifts of incredible scholarship endowment support for our Mason music students are indeed helping to make this dream come true.”

Topics

Dewberry School of Music

A Piano Novice Strikes Just the Right Chord

Pam Muirheid — Tue, 03 May 2022 17:45:31 +0000

A Piano Novice Strikes Just the Right Chord Pam Muirheid Tue, 05/03/2022 - 13:45

In This Story

Dr. Linda Apple Monson

Copied from a Washington Post article by Karin Brulliard, Washington Post Staff Writer

The story began nearly six decades ago with a young man's dream to play piano. Its most dramatic chapter ends this month with 16 sleek, black Steinway grand pianos, each worth tens of thousands of dollars.

"If you really want to hear what makes a Steinway a Steinway," ��AV keyboard studies professor Linda Apple Monson said on a recent morning as her fingers danced across the keys of one of the new pianos, summoning the delicate notes of a Chopin piece. "Oh! That singing quality."

Linda Monson and Sid Dewberry

The young man is now 79, an "old person," as he puts it, and a novice pianist. Sidney O. Dewberry, who made his fortune helping design and engineer developments including Pentagon City and Montgomery Village, took up the instrument four years ago under Monson's tutelage. This spring, he raised the money to bring the Steinways to GMU.

When the final three Steinways are delivered this month and the 350-student music department's upright pianos are gone, GMU will join the ranks of "all-Steinway" schools, a list that includes the Juilliard School, Yale University and the University of Maryland. Monson and her students -- who describe the handmade Steinways as having a "richer, rounder tone," "variety of color" and "more action" -- say the title is a badge of honor. To GMU officials, it is a key recruiting tool for a school that has long strived to transform its identity from suburban commuter campus to first-class university.

"I'm tickled to death," said Dewberry, a white-haired man with a gentle smile and a drawl that betrays his southern Virginia roots. "This performing arts school, I think, is going to really help Mason come into its own as a cultural institution."

That is what Dewberry wants. A George Washington University graduate, he founded his Fairfax County-based engineering and architecture firm, now named Dewberry, in 1956. He joined the GMU foundation board in the 1980s, figuring that a thriving university would only aid Northern Virginia's economy and his business. Dewberry became a top fundraiser for the school, served as chairman of its board of trustees and is now the outgoing rector of its board of visitors.

But the story of the Steinways started long ago.

When Dewberry was in college, an English professor assigned him and his classmates to write down 25 things they wanted to accomplish in life. Dewberry's list included what he calls "the usual things you'd expect" from a young man in that era: "Marry a beautiful woman and have six kids, be a millionaire, and fly an airplane and float down the Mississippi River in a raft."

Also on the list: Learn to play piano.

Dewberry went on to do many of those things. He married his wife, Reva, 57 years ago, had four children and used to fly a plane from a small Falls Church airport that stood on the land where Loehmann's Plaza strip mall is now. But he never studied piano.

A few years ago, Dewberry mentioned the list to a friend, who mentioned it to William Reeder, dean of GMU's College of Visual and Performing Arts. Reeder introduced Dewberry to Monson, the associate chair of the music department.

The two began lessons in the GMU practice rooms and started with basic scales. Dewberry brought a list of songs he wanted to learn. If they were advanced, Monson penned simpler arrangements for him.

Some older students grow restless after one year, Monson said, but not Dewberry. Dewberry credits his focus to Monson, whose boisterous laugh and gushing praise for her students echo through the GMU practice rooms.

"I wanted to prove when I got into piano that an old person can do something as hard as this," Dewberry said. "I would have given up a long time ago if it wasn't for her."

Along the way, Monson suggested that Dewberry buy a Steinway. "You can afford it," Dewberry said she told him.

So he plunked down $45,000 and put the piano in a soundproofed "secret office" on the top floor of the Dewberry headquarters on Arlington Boulevard in Fairfax.

The two meet for a couple of hours every few weeks, when Dewberry feels "ready." He totes a notebook in which he indexes the pieces he has learned and Monson writes down what he should practice for the next lesson.

On a recent Thursday, Dewberry unlocked the door to his secret office, revealing a cozy space decorated with mahogany-hued leather furniture and a long wooden desk topped by a little golden piano ornament, given to Dewberry by his teacher. He sat at the piano and played two familiar pieces -- Beethoven's Bagatelle in A Minor and an arrangement of the finale of the Ninth Symphony, better known as Fur Elise and Ode to Joy -- by heart.

"I'm a real amateur," he said apologetically after he finished.

Some time back, over the course of their lessons, Monson mentioned to Dewberry her wish to make GMU an "all-Steinway" school. In December, Dewberry told her he wanted to make it happen.

To earn the official designation from the company, Monson learned, 90 percent of GMU's pianos would have to be Steinways. That meant 16 pianos. Factoring in discounts for being a school and buying in bulk, they would cost about $800,000.

To a man with friends in high places -- Dewberry chaired GMU's capital campaign from 1998 to 2005, raising $142 million -- that did not seem an unattainable goal.

"So I volunteered to see if I couldn't raise half of that money from just a few friends that I know," Dewberry said. "So I did that."

The university matched the donations, and soon Monson -- accompanied by colleagues and Dewberry -- was selecting Steinways at a College Park piano store.

The first nine were delivered last month, each marked with a small golden plaque designed by Dewberry -- down to the font -- and bearing Monson's name and the name of each donor. Monson did not tell Dewberry they had arrived. She let him find out when he showed up for a lesson.

"It actually brings tears to my eyes" to remember, Monson said. "It was just one of those beautiful, beautiful moments. He was just speechless. I said, 'Which one would you like to have the lesson on today?' "

GMU's piano majors -- there are 40 of them -- seem even more overjoyed.

On a recent morning, senior Jorge Luis Martinez Padron, 24, sat on the padded black bench at one of the new Steinways and wrapped up the final, dramatic notes of Franz Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2. He grew up poor in Cuba, where, he jokes, he learned to play on pianos that lacked keys and strings.

"The piece has many colors that you can definitely bring out on this piano," he said. "This is like a Lamborghini -- it responds fast."

For his part, Dewberry said playing a Steinway is like driving a Rolls-Royce.

Dewberry still serves as chairman of his company and said he has no plans to retire. He is still working on his list, plotting the purchase of a houseboat so he and Reva can float down the Mississippi.

So it is no surprise that after 58 lessons -- logged diligently in his notebook -- Dewberry intends to stick with piano, which he said "stimulates the brain." These days, he is working on breaking himself of the habit of looking at his fingers while he plays and on mastering a simplified version of a Tchaikovsky concerto.

And he will do those things on Steinways.

"I'll get there," Dewberry said. "I got plenty of time."

Topics

Dewberry School of Music

Reva and Sid Dewberry Family School of Music

Sid Dewberry