Alec Glasser grew up in a working-class family in Queens, New York, working night shifts as an elevator operator to put himself through college.
Now, UC Irvine is announcing the self-made real estate mogul has made one of the largest-ever gifts to the university by an individual.
His donation will endow the Alec Glasser Center for the Power of Music and Social Change, a new institution that will study how music can improve well-being and community. The center will also focus on teaching, community engagement and the celebration of music, officials said.
In addition, Glasser has endowed a scholarship fund for 10 UCI students each year who aim to infuse music in their professional lives, such as a medical student who plans to study music as an alternative therapy or a prospective social worker who sees music as a tool for community building.
“How many of us, if we truly hit it big, want to give back and truly do give back?” asked Jon Gould, dean of the UCI School of Social Ecology, where the new center is housed. “Alec Glasser has done just that. Not only is his the story of the American Dream, but he’s providing opportunities for the American Dream for generations of students to come after this.”
Music as a vehicle for change has been a recurring motif throughout Glasser’s life.
Back in the 1960s, he wasn’t an elevator operator just anywhere. He worked three summers at the Drake Hotel on Park Avenue in midtown Manhattan at a time when music had as big a cultural influence on America as ever.
At the Drake, Glasser took in concerts by John Coltrane and Sammy Davis Jr., Judy Garland and Jimi Hendrix. Those experiences never left him, he said. That’s why, decades later — long after the Drake closed in Manhattan — Glasser opened a restaurant and jazz bar in Laguna Beach by the same name.
It was there, enjoying music at The Drake in Laguna Beach a couple of years back, that he met Gould, and their idea for a unique school of music — not one focused on music performance but one focused on music and society — began to take root.
Glasser’s roots in music stretch back even further to his childhood.
From a young age, he was an aspiring saxophonist. He gigged with bands throughout high school.
“Music got me out of my shell,” he said. “It allowed me to develop personally.”
But, when Glasser graduated, his dad warned him that he wouldn’t make money playing, and he urged him to take the summer job at the Drake in order to save up for school.
Since his mother didn’t want him taking the subway home to Queens after his shift ended at 3 a.m., Glasser made an arrangement with the hotel’s general manager that allowed him to live at the hotel each summer, taking up unoccupied rooms in exchange for staying on call.
“It changed my life,” Glasser said. “I came from a very working-class background. To be in a Park Avenue hotel and to see what life was like at that level gave me aspirations that I just didn’t have before.”
Armed with cash from working summers, Glasser made his way to California and put himself through law school at USC, where he became editor of the law review.
Later, he struck it rich as a real estate investor and developer, building shopping centers.
His interest in music, while not as much in the foreground of his life as before, never stopped humming.
“Whenever I built a shopping center, we always put in a sound system for the tenants,” Glasser said. “Music is something that hits people’s emotions and it assists in facilitating their work. So, as a developer, it can be used as a tool.”
Moving forward, scholars at the Alec Glasser Center for the Power of Music and Social Change will invest in research projects to better understand just what sorts of tools music can be, and why it has such profound effects on the human brain.
“The emerging science of music is a field that’s only about 20 or 30 years old,” said UCI professor Richard Matthew, who will lead the new center. “Scientists around the world have slowly been discovering that music plays an incredible role in things like neurological development. It’s closely associated with health and healing. And, people who are musically engaged tend to do very well in areas like problem-solving, improvisation and teamwork.”
Matthew and his budding team want to find out more about why and how that is. The center will complement the UCI School of Arts, he added.
“The UCI School of Arts and its department of music is very focused on training musicians on music theory and performance,” Matthew said. “We’re focused on the health and cultural and social impacts of music. We’re looking at the way music works in society and works on the brain.”
This winter term, Matthew is teaching the center’s first course, which is aptly titled “Power of Music and Social Change.” A survey class, it introduces students to research and cultural episodes that showcase music’s ability to mobilize communities, improve health outcomes and promote justice.
Matthew expected about 20 students to sign up for the inaugural class. Actually, more than 135 students enrolled before the school had to cap the class size for lack of available auditorium space.
Matthew says the class is popular because it resonates with students. One of his most recent lectures, for instance, looked at the outpouring of music that took shape in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
“A lot of artists responded to the pandemic by releasing new music,” he said. “And, I know that this class will trigger some very powerful memories among students thinking about that time and the music they listened to then.”
It wasn’t long before the pandemic that a different type of health scare led Glasser to his most personal experience with the power of music.
At the age of 70, he had a heart transplant.
“I was in the hospital for four months, mostly isolated,” he said. “Music was an integral part of being able to deal with that situation. To cope.”
His records kept him company.
“Coltrane, Miles Davis, BB King, Teddy Pendergrass, Donny Hathaway,” he said, listing the performers who brightened that dreary room.
With his new heart, the rhythm of Glasser’s life keeps on beating.
While his latest chapter in life has led him to invest in the empirical study of music at UCI, Glasser continues to believe that there’s something about song that transcends rationality.
“The emotions of music are so strong, they can overpower our cognitive thinking,” he said. “Great music is the way to touch the emotion in our souls.”
