A longtime former director of the Eastman School of Music has been honored for his contributions. A dedication ceremony held Tuesday at the Sibley Music Library on Gibbs Street named the atrium of that library after Freeman.
He also received an honorary Doctor of Music degree from the University of Rochester.
Freeman, who led Eastman for 24 years until 1996, was always focused on teaching entrepreneurial skills to music students and he says that’s especially important today.
“Traditional kinds of employment opportunities don’t exist in sufficient numbers to be really meaningful and thus each young musician is responsible for his own employment which means developing sales techniques for what he’s playing and singing.”
The Sibley Library is the largest music library of any school of music in the world, and Freeman says while its contents may change over time, he does not see any end to the need for printed music.
“I don’t foresee the day when printed music is going to disappear and be replaced only by digital music, though, when this building was built, I did provide for the fact that the Sibley Library could either expand or contract in the years ahead as the digitization of libraries took over,” he told WXXI News.
During his time at Eastman, Freeman oversaw a number of renovations and projects including work on the music library. He currently teaches at the University of Texas.
