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Wilma Salzman

Seeing UTEP students excel

When Wilma Salzman contributes to a scholarship in the UTEP Department of Music, she experiences an immediate benefit. “When I give, I get to see a student’s performance—to feel and hear it first hand— and this tells me they are more than worth the investment.” Salzman said.

Wilma and Michael Salzman began their major support of the music department in 2003 when they presented the Claude Herndon’s collection of musical scores to UTEP. In 2004 Wilma planned to surprise her husband, Michael, on his 60th birthday, with a concert and the announcement of the Michael Salzman Excellence Endowment in Piano Performance. Michael died before this happened and yet she decided to make it a memorial concert in his honor, and announce the establishment of the endowment.

“This experience was so rewarding,” Wilma said, “that I just keep on giving.”
Today she also supports the Wilma Salzman Annual Flute Scholarship and the Wilma Salzman Annual Vocal Scholarship at UTEP. The three scholarships afford her the opportunity to keep in touch with the students and to follow their musical careers.
In 2010, Wilma became a member of UTEP’s Cornerstone Society, a distinguished group of UTEP friends and alumni who choose to name the University as one of the beneficiaries in their estate planning.

Wilma owns Table Top Press, a publisher of materials designed to help children learn music and be inspired by it. She was influenced by German composer Carl Orff, who developed an influential approach to the music education of children.

Born in Ottawa, Canada, Wilma won a scholarship her senior year at the University of Toronto to attend the Orff Institute in Salzburg, Austria. Wilma expresses her genuine gratitude for the financial assistance, “this scholarship afforded me the opportunity to study in Austria,, it would not have happened otherwise…” . ”Wilma earned her master’s degree in early childhood education from Middle Tennessee State University where she became the director of the Kindergarten program at the Lab School at MTSU.

She met and married her husband, Michael in Tennessee and followed him to El Paso in 1975, where he became Vice President of Kurland-Salzman Music Company. Since then, Wilma Salzman has been an influential voice for the preservation of music education in the secondary school curriculum, and has spent a lifetime teaching, writing and composing music.

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