A bagpiper, a mariachi band, and steel drums will join the Concert Band, Glee Club, and pipe organ at the installation ceremony for Maurie McInnis, Yale’s 24th president, taking place Sunday, April 6.
In keeping with the preceding week of inauguration events, the musical program for the installation not only celebrates McInnis and the university, but New Haven and the broader community as well, said José García-León, the Henry and Lucy Moses Dean of Music at the Yale School of Music (YSM) and a member of the musical planning committee for the inauguration weekend.
“It’s something that came from the president — she was very eager to include music from beyond Yale,” he said. “It’s a beautiful way to bring people together.”
The Sunday morning events will open to the strains of Scottish bagpipes, an expression of McInnis’ pride in her Scottish heritage. The musician, Jesse Ofgang, a Connecticut native, will play the highland bagpipes as he leads a procession comprised of McInnis, deans, tenured faculty, and university delegates from around the world from Yale Law School to Cross Campus.
There they will meet up with a second procession made up of university leadership. Then, as is traditional, the Yale Concert Band, joined by guest musicians from the marching band and Yale Symphony Orchestra, and under the direction of Thomas Duffy, director of university bands and professor in the practice at YSM, will lead the combined group to Woolsey Hall, where the installation will take place.
The Yale Concert Band rehearses for its performance in the inauguration procession
“The band is like the cowcatcher on the train — we clear the way for the procession to follow,” Duffy said. “We let people know that it’s coming, and we provide a cadence that people can walk to — that’s the function, along with the excitement of a march. We want people to hear the call of the percussion and the brass. We want them to come to the event. So it’s both artistic and functional.”
The band will play a special fanfare composed exclusively for McInnis by Duffy based on a motif created by matching her initials, M.D.M., to the musical scale — a technique called soggetto cavato. Duffy, who began at Yale in 1982, started this tradition with the inauguration of Yale’s 20th president, Benno C. Schmidt Jr., and has continued it for succeeding presidents.
“We will play this fanfare for the 1,000 feet or so we need to walk from Cross Campus to Woolsey, along with a percussion cadence for processing,” he said.
Meanwhile, guests arriving at Woolsey Hall will be treated to a lively pre-ceremony musical program, beginning with mariachi music played by local public-school students, YSM grad students, and faculty. The mariachi band is part of YSM’s Music in Schools Initiative, which provides New Haven Public Schools students with free, after-school musical instruction from graduate students.
“It’s a program that we feel very strongly about and they’re doing great things,” said García-León.
Next, two members of St. Luke’s Steel Band will fill the hall with the metallic chimes of steel drums. The band, which was formed in 1999, is based at New Haven’s historic St. Luke’s Episcopal Church.
The program will then shift to a performance by a brass ensemble led by William Purvis, professor in the practice of horn at YSM, and accompanied by Martin Jean, university organist, on Woolsey Hall’s renowned Newberry Memorial Organ.
Once the presidential procession arrives at the hall, McInnis will enter as Jean plays “Processional for the President,” an organ solo composed by the late Charles Russell Krigbaum, who was an organ instructor at YSM for 36 years until his retirement in 1995.
The installation ceremony itself will include another significant musical moment when the Yale Glee Club premieres a hymn composed for the occasion by Jeffrey Douma, the Marshall Bartholomew Professor in the Practice of Choral Music at YSM and director of the Glee Club. The verses for the hymn, chosen by McInnis, were written by the late poet and Yale professor Marie Borroff. The composition of a hymn, sung by a university choir at the installation of an incoming president, is a longstanding Yale tradition.
“The hymn will be premiered, and then it will become part of Yale history — for her and to celebrate her,” García-León said.
At the conclusion of the ceremony, Ofgang will play the bagpipes to accompany McInnis as she exits, and then guests will make their way out of the hall to a celebratory postlude played by the brass ensemble and organ. The addition of the bagpipes to the program represents a “merging of McInnis’ heritage with Yale tradition,” said García-León. “I find that very poetic.”
