Teaching and performing

with a little help from School of Music friends

Stella Branzburg Sick

Photo by Dan Marshall

by Mike Peluso

From M, winter 2003

Stella Branzburg Sick is the type of School of Music student who benefits from the generosity of donors like Harvey Berneking.

Branzburg, a native of Novosibirsk, Russia, began as many youngsters do, with piano lessons when she was 7. After training at a conservatory in Russia, she emigrated with her family to South Florida when she was 17, just months before the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Her journey led to the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., where she left with undergraduate and master's degrees in piano performance, and many thousands of dollars in student loan debt. When she and her husband, Brian Sick, began looking for schools where he could complete a double medical residency in pediatrics and internal medicine, and she could continue her music studies, they found the perfect fit for them both at the U of M.

A visit to the U cinched the deal. "My husband told them he was interested, but after one visit, we were really interested," Branzburg says. "We love it here."

She found a friendly, welcoming faculty and a graduate fellowship to support her studies. In her second year at the University, she became a teaching assistant and discovered another niche she enjoys. Now, when she completes her Ph.D. in May, she wants to both teach and perform.

She's even found a way to combine the two. "When I'm performing, I really enjoy talking to the audience about the music," Branzburg said. "I think it adds something to their appreciation for the music to know something about it." Teaching would-be musicians age 5 to 9 in a community music program this year has brought new pleasures. While her young charges may not log all the hours of practice she remembers, "there's nothing more satisfying than when a kid really gets it," Branzburg says.

Last spring, Branzburg won the School of Music's prestigious Elinor Watson Bell Piano Competition and, with it, a $15,000 fellowship. The family of Mrs. Bell, longtime patron of the arts and supporter of the School of Music, created the Bell competition and prize as a birthday gift to her in 1999. Elinor Bell, who died in October at 91, was a prolific pianist and chamber music performer who studied with composer and pianist Ernst Krenek in the 1930s.

The likely subject of Branzburg's dissertation? The music of Krenek, whose compositions, she says, are in themselves a virtual history of 20th century music forms.

Sounds like she's closing the circle with a flourish.

To find out about making a gift to support scholarships at the University, call the U of M Foundation at 612-624-3333.