Sigma Alpha Iota

sai-national.org • Fall 2023 7 R uth Miriam Wolkowsky Greenfield, a 1946 Alpha Chapter initiate and longtime affiliate of the Miami Alumnae Chapter, died on July 27, 2023 at the age of 99. Ruth was an American concert pianist and teacher who was best known for using music education to break racial barriers. Ruth received her bachelor's and master's degrees in music at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She returned to her hometown of Miami to teach piano at the University of Miami but le in 1949 to study composition in Paris with Nadia Boulanger. ere she married Miami attorney Arnold Merwin Greenfield, a graduate of Harvard Law School. While abroad, she appreciated the integrated community of Paris, and upon returning to the US, decided to do something about the segregated situation in Miami. In response, she founded the Fine Arts Conservatory in 1951, one of the first fully integrated schools for music, art, and dance in the South. Before having a dedicated space, the school began as a roving enterprise, moving between Black and white neighborhoods, holding classes in people's homes, local community centers, and other available spaces, including a funeral home. Her work was controversial at that time and she was blackballed from numerous music organizations, but she determinedly continued her work and the Conservatory acquired a permanent location in 1961. The organization grew, expanding to six branches, until its eventual closure in 1978. Ruth continued to teach and serve as music department chair for 32 years at what is now Miami Dade College, Florida's first integrated college. In the 1970s she founded the Miami-Dade Community College Lunchtime Lively Arts Series, which showcased a variety of musicians, theater performers, and writers, including Dick Gregory, Odetta, e Ink Spots, Virgil omson, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and Gwendolyn Brooks. e college rededicated its Wolfson Campus auditorium in Ruth's honor in 2011. In 2013, director Steve Waxman released a feature documentary, Instruments of Change, about her and her history with the Fine Arts Conservatory (available to view at: bit.ly/ruthdoc). On November 18, 2022, a day aer she celebrated her 99th birthday, the city of Miami co-designated the street where she lived as Ruth Greenfield Way (bit.ly/ruthstreet). In December 2022 Ruth received the Florida State Music Teachers Association's Breaking Barriers Award. Grace Notes Ruth Greenfield is wearing the hat and is standing with Walter Ruth Greenfield is wearing the hat and is standing with Walter Palevova, manager of the Greater Miami Opera. The Fine Arts Palevova, manager of the Greater Miami Opera. The Fine Arts Conservatory was founded in 1951 by Ruth Greenfield and Conservatory was founded in 1951 by Ruth Greenfield and operated until 1978. It was the first interracial school for the operated until 1978. It was the first interracial school for the creative arts in Florida. creative arts in Florida. Ruth Greenfield's Legacy G loria Coates, a 1961 initiate of Sigma Phi Chapter at Louisiana State University and a member of the SAI Composers Bureau, passed away at the age of 89 on August 19, 2023 in Munich, Germany. Coates composed 17 symphonies, chamber music for varying ensembles, an opera, vocal pieces, and multimedia works. In addition to composing, she trained and worked as an actress, stage director, singer, author, and painter. Gloria studied at a number of universities, including the Cooper Union Art School, achieving a bachelor's degree in drama and painting in 1963, and in composition and singing the same year. She earned a Master of Music degree in composition in 1965, and continued with post-graduate studies in composition with Otto Luening at Columbia University in 1967 and 1968. Gloria moved to Munich in 1969 and remained there as a freelance composer. The Polish Chamber Orchestra premiered her first symphony, Music on Open Strings, under Jerzy Maksymiuk at the Warsaw Autumn Festival in 1978, and in 1986 the work was a finalist for the Koussevitzky International Award (KIRA). Her symphony achieved a breakthrough at Munich's Musica Viva in 1980, as it was the first orchestral composition by a woman composer to be played in the 34-year history of the Festival. She promoted American music with a German- American Music Series (1971–1984), writing articles and producing broadcasts for the WDR Cologne and Radio Bremen. From 1975 to 1983 she taught for the University of Wisconsin's International Programs, initiating the first music programs in London and Munich. Her music, originally under Edition Peters, in now available through Wise Music Classical at: www.wisemusicclassical.com. A Final Coda

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