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 Distinguished Indeed
By Bruce Dries
Photography by Kevin Stiffler
The Clarks, recipients of the
2004 Distinguished Alumni Award, demonstrated ongoing support for
IUP by raising more than $25,000 in a benefit concert for a new
recording studio in the renovated Cogswell Hall, home to the
Department of Music.
The final rock concert in “old” Fisher
Auditorium, itself now undergoing renovation, saw generations of
alumni come together to provide an enduring gift to the university.
The band members—Scott Blasey
’87, Robert James Hertweck ’87, Greg Joseph ’85, and David Minarik
’88—were approached in the fall of 2005 by Shari Trinkley ’81, IUP’s
director of Major and Planned Giving. Construction at Cogswell was
nearing completion, and naming opportunities for various rooms were
still available.
“When deciding who, among the
university family, the recording studio would be a perfect fit for,
the first name that popped into my head was the Clarks,” Trinkley
said. “I developed a proposal for the naming opportunity, met with
Greg and Rob when they were in town for a concert, and plans just
steamrolled from there.”
The Clarks were immediately on
board with the idea. With help from artist and longtime friend Chuck
Olson ’74, M’76, the fundraising concert took place in April, 2006,
in Fisher Auditorium. (It was the last major show in Fisher before
the auditorium closed for renovation that is scheduled for
completion in Fall, 2008.)
 “When Shari approached them
with the idea, it just about knocked them out,” said Olson, a
2001
Distinguished Alumni Award recipient. “The Distinguished Alumni
thing really affected them, and this was like a second rush of joy,
realizing that they have the chance to give something of such value
for succeeding generations of musicians—classical, jazz, or
whatever—at IUP.”
 That single night of music was
wildly successful and included the opening act of Dan and Dave.
While planning the concert, Hertweck remembered Dan Murphy ’91 and
David Antolik ’88, musicians who were playing bars and frat house
basements around the same time as the Clarks and who had also kept
up with their music for the last twenty years. Olson recalled
Hertweck’s saying, “Those two, get those two.”
Hertweck and Olson ended up
joining Dan and Dave on stage for their last song that night. “When
you connect with certain people, you create a kind of infectious
energy in each other,” said Olson. “The feeling backstage was all
about that collectivity of one generation of IUP wanting to give
back and of having a moment, that the university gave to everybody,
to be able to do something that will endure. Who knows what’s going
to come out of that recording studio?”
The concert included a raffle
for an autographed guitar, tickets to one of the Clarks’ summer
shows, and an autographed copy of their greatest hits DVD, Still
Live. “We joke about the fact that the last song played at old
Fisher was “Cigarette”—performed by an all-Distinguished-Alumni
band!” Olson said.
The
New Studio
The Clarks Recording Studio
will allow ensembles, groups, or individual students to record
performances or rehearsals for study, for application to graduate
programs or competitions, and for other uses. The band deferred to
the College of Fine Arts to determine what the new recording studio
needed. The room, deceptively small and plain, will contain
state-of-the-art equipment.
 “The room is a luxury,” said
Jack Stamp ’76, assistant chair of the
Department of Music. “All
quality music schools have this advantage, the ability to record in
a rehearsal room. We never had anything like this before, never had
the opportunity to record rehearsals, lectures, at the push of a
button. Without the Clarks’ help, it would have progressed very
slowly.”
The recording
studio has windows looking into two of the four rehearsal rooms that
will be wired together by next fall: choral, percussion, jazz, and
ensemble. Two permanent microphones will be installed in each of the
rehearsal rooms and will join a slew of high-quality equipment,
including a sixteen-channel stereo mixer, a high-definition stereo
recorder, a studio effects processor, a CD recorder, monitors, and
stands—plus two ultra-sensitive ribbon microphones, a
battery-powered field recorder, and a recorder capable of
duplicating fifty CDs at a time.
“We’ve met a lot of really great people from the university, like
[Music Department chair] Lorraine Wilson and her husband,” said lead
vocalist Blasey. “They couldn’t have been nicer or more appreciative
of what we were doing for them, and we felt the same way about what
they were doing for us. It was a situation where everybody came away
winners and feeling really good about it. I can’t use a better word
than ‘thrilled’ to be involved with it.”
The Clarks were also featured in the Fall, 2002, issue of IUP
Magazine.
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