A $2 million gift from the Dallas Morse Coors Foundation for the Performing Arts will rename the Cornell Concert Series and allow it to continue its efforts to bring world-class musicians to campus.
“The Concert Series at Cornell has existed for well over 100 years, and this gift from the Dallas Morse Coors Foundation will lead us into its next brilliant chapter,” said Benjamin Piekut, professor and chair of the Department of Music in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S). “We plan to continue to offer high-quality musical events that the Cornell and greater Ithaca communities expect and deserve.”
The gift is the latest from the Dallas Morse Coors Foundation to Cornell, gifts that have funded enhancements to the Kiplinger Theatre and other spaces in the Department of Performing and Media Arts; new percussion and stringed instruments and lockers for the Department of Music; and a new clavichord for the Cornell Center for Historical Keyboards.
The concert series, housed within the Department of Music, has been hosting musicians and ensembles of international stature since 1903, including performances by Fritz Kreisler, Sergei Rachmaninov, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Alfred Brendel, Zakir Hussain, and the Mozarteum Orchestra of Salzburg. Originally featuring only Western classical artists, the series presented Indian sitar player Ravi Shankar in 1987 and has since grown to encompass a broader spectrum of musicians and musical traditions.
Piekut said Laurel Gilmer, the music department’s director of events, has been concentrating on integrating the concerts with the curricular activities of the department and other academic units on campus.
“In so doing, these esteemed guests offer not only sublime artistic experiences, but also profound wisdom about the role of art in the 21st century,” he said. “We hear constantly from the Concert Series audience – students, staff, community members, faculty – that they value these events in precisely this expansive and affirming sense. That is another way that the performing arts can create a thoughtful and meaningful community.”
Dallas Morse Coors ’40 graduated from the College of Arts and Sciences and went on to have a successful career in the U.S. Foreign Service and with the Bank of America.
“He told me that some of the best experiences of his life were singing in the chorus at Cornell,” said Doris Blazek-White, trustee of the Dallas Morse Coors Foundation for the Performing Arts. At Cornell, Coors was also a member of the Quill and Dagger senior honor society and the Kapha Alpha fraternity.
After graduation, Coors joined the Navy for mandatory duty and became a project manager for North American Aviation during World War II. After the war, he joined the U.S. Foreign Service in the State Department, where he served as a vice consul in Calcutta, India, and then in Saigon, Vietnam.
Coors joined the International Banking Department of the Bank of America in 1953 and stayed with the company until his retirement. He died on July 7, 1996.
His love of music and the performing arts prompted him to support various organizations throughout the Washington, D.C., area, where he lived, including the Washington National Opera and the Washington Performing Arts Society. He created the foundation to continue supporting performing arts and music, Blazek-White said.
“He was a very active member of the musical community in D.C. and gave to organizations that were involved in opera, in ballet and in the creation of new work,” said Douglas Wheeler, a member of the foundation’s advisory board and president emeritus of the Washington Performing Arts Society.
View the full 2025-26 season of the Dallas Morse Coors Concert Series on the series website.
