Eklund quarterfinalist for Grammy Teaching Award
calendar icon24 Jun 2013
Peter Eklund, Professor and Director of Choral Activities in the University of Nebraska–Lincoln's School of Music, has been named one of 217 quarterfinalists for the Grammy® Foundation’s first-ever Music Educator Award.
The Music Educator Award was established to recognize current educators (kindergarten through college) who have made a significant and lasting contribution to the field of music education and who demonstrate a commitment to the broader cause of maintaining music education in the schools.
More than 30,000 nominations were received from all 50 states. Eklund will find out if he is a semi-finalist in August. Ten finalists will be selected, and one winner will accept the award at the Grammy® Awards and receive a $10,000 honorarium. The nine finalists will each receive a $1,000 honorarium as well.
“To be among this top 0.66 percent of the 30,000 initial nominees says something very important about the accomplishments Dr. Eklund has achieved over his career and the high regard in which he is held across the profession,” said School of Music Director John W. Richmond. “Dr. Eklund’s standing as a Grammy® Music Educator Quarterfinalist is a point of pride for the entire UNL School of Music.”
Eklund was told that somewhere between 30 and 40 former and current students nominated him for the recognition.
“More importantly than being on the list, I was even more pleased to see former students on that list,” Eklund said. “It means that I must have done something right. They are out there doing what we taught them to do—recruiting young people and using music to inspire other students. I’ve always had the honor of teaching in nice towns and cities, in nice buildings, with wonderful colleagues and with wonderful and motivated students.”
Eklund heads the Masters and Doctoral choral conducting programs and conducts the University Singers and Varsity Men’s chorus. He conducts instrumental and choral ensembles in eight European countries and throughout North America. Prior to coming to UNL, Eklund taught for more than a decade at Thomas Jefferson High School in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where he and his colleague Carol Tralau built one of the finest high school choral programs in America.
Also among the quarterfinalists is Laurie Scott of the University of Texas at Austin, who graduated from UNL with a Master of Music in violin performance and received the College’s Alumni Achievement Award in Music in 2009.
To see the full list of quarterfinalists, visit go.unl.edu/fkw.