PUO and Glee Club receive anonymous $5 million

The Princeton University Orchestra and the Princeton University Glee Club have been left $5 million, to be equally divided between the groups, in the will of an anonymous, deceased alumnus.

Music lecturer and Glee Club director and conductor Gabriel Crouch announced to club members a week and a half ago that someone had left the two music groups $5 million, according to Glee Club president Tanyaradzwa Tawengwa ’14.

PUO director Michael Pratt announced the donation to the orchestra on Feb. 17. Crouch and Pratt declined to comment until an official statement is released.

“What this [donation] means first and foremost to us is that no student will ever have to pay to go on tour,” PUO co-president Kate Dreyfuss ’14 said, referring to the biannual tours the group takes abroad.

Dreyfuss explained that student payment for PUO tours in the past has operated under an honor system. The PUO committee would set a “suggested amount” and then let students pay what they could. The remaining cost would be subsidized by the music department.

Last year, the PUO committee suggested that students pay $1,300 for the PUO tour to Germany and the Netherlands during Intersession. Two years ago, students were encouraged to pay approximately $953 for the London tour.

Tawengwa said that the Glee Club will also be able to use the recent donation to pay for students to go on tour for free.

“There were just so many expenses that we had to pay for,” Tawengwa added. “Like our dresses — even for the guys, their coats and tails, those cost $200. And you don’t want it to seem that if you want to be a part of this Glee Club, you have to be able to pay.”

Tawengwa said that all of those expenses will now be borne by the Glee Club and that the group is open to anyone who wishes to join.

PUO co-president Nathan Haley ’14 said that the additional money from the alumnus’s will to the orchestra’s income is “substantial” and that he is unaware of a single donation that has been larger.

Haley also noted that the donation will help support the orchestra, which has grown in size over the past year.

“We’ve had this huge influx of talent from the Class of 2016, and, as a result, we see ourselves being able to give more concerts and more rehearsals,” Haley said. “Michael [Pratt]’s going to get more staff to conduct and help him out with the administration of the orchestra.”

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“Ultimately, it will allow us to put financial worries aside and just focus on our tradition of good music-making,” Dreyfuss said.

Tawengwa said that there is more meaning to the donation than its monetary value. “It just says something about what someone experienced when they were a part of the orchestra or the Glee Club,” Tawengwa said, speculating that the anonymous donor had participated in one or more of the music groups. “It must have touched him [the alumnus] in a very special way.”

Due to incorrect information provided to The Daily Princetonian, an earlier version of this article incorrectly stated the cost of the Princeton University Orchestra’s 2011 trip to the United Kingdom. The ‘Prince’ regrets the error.