The Stentor

Issue date: 10/2/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Kathryn Appelhans Reid Hall, home of Lake Forest College's Music Department. [Click to enlarge]

Lake Forest College's Department of Music suffered a hurtful blow last week when a computer was stolen from the Nelson Electronic Music Studio in Reid Hall's basement. The computer was more than three years old and of little monetary value, but it held hundreds of original compositions by students and faculty - many of which were not backed up and may never be recovered.

Associate Professor of Music Donald Meyer, who chairs the department and specializes in use of the studio, called the incident "a devastating loss." Besides taking away important work by his students and himself, the theft has disrupted his ability to teach Songwriting this semester. Productivity in the class came to a halt, since the stolen computer was the only one students could use to record and compose in the department.

Meyer says he was saving important works by alumni, including a complete album by former music student Justin Lansing '07 and works of electronic music by Mark Fancher '07, another of Meyer's former students. Fancher was featured in Spectrum this summer when "Disco Sunrise," one of his original electronic works, was made available on iTunes.

But Meyer himself has lost all of his personal compositions dating back to 2005. Dozens of his works were not backed up, and he said that they will be impossible to reconstruct.

"This affects my work as a composer," he said, clearly pained by the loss. "I was in the middle of two original film scores. Now I've had to stop work on them, and I may not even be able to complete them because of this."

Senior Natalie Molina, a student in Professor Meyer's Songwriting class and an active participant in the music department, experienced the effects of the theft first-hand. "I had a [song] due the next day, and it remains unfinished and unedited," she said. "Now I can never work on it again.

"Everyone is very upset that [Professor Meyer's] compositions are gone, "she said, "and we don't know if we'll ever get them back. And I think whoever took [the computer] needs to know that what they did affects everyone in the music department."

Continued...

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