Memorial Donations for Composer Mel Powell
Composer and educator Mel Powell’s family requested Monday that any memorial donations be made to the Mel Powell Graduate Composers Scholarship at CalArts in Valencia. Powell, 75, died Friday of liver cancer in his Sherman Oaks home.
An obituary in Saturday’s Times stated that Powell had suffered from muscular dystrophy. His daughter, Mary Harpel, said Monday that his disease was misdiagnosed as muscular dystrophy at its onset in the mid-1980s, but doctors later concluded that he suffered from body-inclusion poly-myecitis.
Originally a jazz pianist with such bands as Benny Goodman’s, Powell had dedicated himself to teaching since the early 1950s. Also a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, Powell was the founding dean of CalArts School of Music and had taught there since 1969.
A public memorial service will be scheduled on the CalArts campus next fall, a CalArts spokesman said Monday.
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