A Musical Legacy Grows in Newark

by Helen S. Paxton

Family legacies take many different forms. Some families' names adorn buildings, and some are memorialized in businesses and charitable foundations. But family legacies don't need to be big or splashy, and many smaller ones contribute daily to the health, wellbeing, and joy found in countless communities across the country.

For the Scott family of Newark, honoring their beloved mother, grandmother, and great grandmother Ursuleen A. Scott is a legacy built around a love of music, and a belief in the life-changing power of arts education. Scott's daughter Lori Scott Pickens, newly appointed president of the Newark School of the Arts (NSA), describes the NSA’s Ursuleen A. Scott Memorial Scholarship Fund -- "we have created a powerful way of connecting the generations of our family around this belief, while also giving back to the community that was my mother's home for her entire life."

This past year the family raised the most ever for scholarships at NSA, a community music school that has been an integral player in Newark’s famed arts community for more than 50 years. Scott scholarships support tuition for low-income students, enabling them to share in the joy and life enrichment that are well proven byproducts of music education. “My grandmother’s interest in music has touched all of us -- she was a force,” says

Ursuleen Scott’s granddaughter Dr. Theri’ Pickens, Bates College Professor of English.

The Scott scholarship fund had a humble start in 2013. Soon after their mother and grandmother Ursuleen Scott’s passing the year before, members of the large family convened to figure out how best to honor her memory and pay tribute to her influence on them and so many others. A scholarship fund at NSA appeared a perfect fit, and an upcoming Lincoln Park Music Festival, nearby in downtown Newark, a perfect starting place. With “made from scratch” lemonade and iced tea, the scholarship fund was off to a healthy start with more than $1,200 in profits.

In the years since, the fund has raised tens of thousands, and impacted the lives of dozens of young music students at NSA. Current recipients include girls and boys studying piano, violin, cello, French horn, and voice. The recipients must be Newark residents whose families are unable to afford lessons, and a preference is given to those who are considering music as a profession. However, as Pamela Scott, one of the eldest of Ursuleen’s 12 children, commented, “there are no hard feelings if other paths are chosen,” as most know that “music is a very challenging way to make a living.”

Pandemic times make for creative ideas, in fundraising as well as other pursuits. Departing in 2021 from the annual Spring fund-raising musicale/reception which they began presenting in 2018, the family organized a virtual musicale to showcase current scholarship recipients as well as guest artists. “It was our most successful event ever,” Scott-Pickens noted, and continues to bring in donations, as the program remains accessible on YouTube.

Who was Ursuleen Scott who had such an outsize influence on her family? The lifelong Newark resident was born in 1930 to immigrant parents from St. Kitts, West Indies -- her father a lawyer and her mother a homemaker. Encouraged by her parents, Ursula and John O’Laughlin, Ursuleen, the youngest of four siblings, was drawn to music at an early age. By the time she reached adulthood she was proficient in piano and six additional instruments, and also studied voice.

As a young woman she met James Scott, also an accomplished musician who played clarinet and saxophone professionally, and they married soon after.

Music was thoroughly embedded in the Scott family life. This included Ursuleen’s daily piano practice -- Debussy’s Clair de Lune, which Pamela Scott noted was her mother’s “favorite piece,” was heard frequently. Pamela also remembers that mother and father “played together all the time...everything from classics to jazz and more.” Ursuleen gave voice and piano lessons both at home and around town, and also played the organ for services at local funeral homes. Lori Scott-Pickens remembers her mother as having a discerning ear – “if you think Simon Cowell is a tough judge of talent, you haven't met my mother," she said.

On Sundays, children were required to watch Leonard Bernstein conduct the New York Philharmonic in the popular television program “Young People's Concerts,” an entertaining journey through centuries of music history that created a musical legacy for an entire generation of American children.

For the Scotts, music at home was a natural complement to music at school -- at that time music was still considered an important field of study in most public schools. Pamela Scott, a retired nurse, and expert in early childhood education, laments that music is no longer considered essential in public schools – “all the more reason for low-income children to have access to affordable or free music instruction at schools such as NSA.”

Pamela Scott’s belief in the importance of music study has been echoed in numerous academic studies that document the positive effects of music on educational outcomes. “Music has the power to transform a family and especially a child,” noted Curtland Fields, CEO of the Turrell Fund, which assists NSA and many other community and arts organizations in New Jersey. In fact, Fields added, music study, especially Suzuki violin, “may be the single most dramatic way to improve a child’s life.”

Professor Theri’ Pickens played Suzuki violin as a child, and music has always been important to her. Her grandmother would be pleased to know that during stay-at-home pandemic times, Prof. Pickens began a new musical adventure. In her article “The Singing Professor,” recently published in Inside Higher Education, she shares how online singing instruction has helped her in her profession. “The lessons I learned as a student apply not only to me in my classrooms as an instructor, but also to me as a pedagogue,” she writes.

Peyton Scott, the eldest of Ursuleen’s grandchildren, played flute in her youth and attributes her broad knowledge of the arts to the enduring influence of her grandmother. “She constantly encouraged us to explore and try new things – and was fond of saying ‘walk with an openness to everything that life has to offer’.”

Pamela Scott, Peyton’s mother, continues to embrace her mother’s openness to experience. As a retiree, she has been studying violin at NSA, picking up where she left off many years ago to pursue a career and raise a family. She enjoys weekly lessons at NJS and looks forward to playing in an orchestra someday. Her brother Zachary is another in the tradition of musical Scotts, playing clarinet and saxophone.

Expanding the Ursuleen A Scott Memorial Scholarship’s impact is a shared Scott family endeavor. This year family members will gather again in late November to plan and organize. Committees will be formed, assigned to different tasks -- managing donations, publicity, and event planning. Monthly meetings will be set, progressing later to weekly and finally daily meetings as the main event -- the spring musicale -- approaches. Each year’s ultimate goal is to raise more funds, thereby enabling more children to afford quality music lessons at NSA.

In her new role at NSA as board president, Lori Scott-Pickens is eager to share her family’s success with others who may want to pursue something similar. “It takes a commitment to work, and to work consistently” she says, “in order to make a truly meaningful difference.” For the citizens of Newark -- and for many years to come -- Ursuleen A. Scott and the Scott family will be associated with making a beautiful difference in the city.

To learn more about the Ursuleen A. Scott Scholarship fund, please visit

www.newarkschoolofthearts.org/donate

or contact Carmen Santos-Robson 973.642.0133 ext. 20

Carmen@newarkschoolofthearts.org

September 15, 2021

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