April 8, 2004

Pianist And Actor To Perform The Naked Gershwin
May 2 At UCSD To Benefit The Hirschman Memorial
Fund For Students At The Preuss School

By Jan Jennings

Pianist Cecil Lytle and actor Arthur Wagner will perform The Naked Gershwin at 5 p.m. May 2 in the Robinson Amphitheater on the campus of the Preuss School at the University of California, San Diego.

Cecil Lytle

The concert is open to the public and will benefit the Lisa Hirschman Memorial Fund for Psychological Counseling Services for students at the Preuss School.

“The concert includes the music and words of the Gershwins, George and Ira,” says Lytle of the program that has been described as both hilarious and educational. “We [seek] to ‘reveal’ a side of their professional and personal lives through their music and letters to, from, or about the Gershwins.”

Arthur Wagner

Lytle will play the music, while Wagner reads the words. Lytle is a professor of music, Provost of Thurgood Marshall College, and one of the founders of the Preuss School. Wagner is a professor emeritus and the founding chair of the UCSD Department of Theatre and Dance.

The Preuss School was founded in 1999 to help students from disadvantaged backgrounds become eligible for admission to selective colleges and universities. The Lisa Hirschman Memorial Fund pays licensed psychologists to provide therapy to students who may experience emotional problems or stress that inhibits their learning. Since its inception, the fund has provided more than 580 hours of help to more than 60 students.

“This is the kind of help parents in more affluent schools are able to provide their children, but which public schools cannot afford,” says Peter Gourevitch, the husband of Dr. Lisa Hirschman, in whose memory the fund was created. Dr. Hirschman died in 1999 after years as a psychotherapist in the San Diego region, with special interest in the Preuss School and its students. Gourevitch is a professor of political science in UCSD’s Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies and was its founding dean in 1986.

“The Hirschman fund helps our students in such valuable ways,” says Doris Alvarez, director of the Preuss School. “It has been a wonderful resource for us.”

The school, which has an enrollment of more than 700 students, grades 6-12, will graduate its first students in June. Students have been accepted to outstanding institutions including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, New York University, UC Berkeley and UCSD. Admission to the school is by lottery from a pool of applicants whose parents have not been to college and whose family incomes qualify them for school lunch assistance.

Tickets for the concert to benefit the school are $35. Tickets may be reserved by writing to the Preuss School, UCSD, Mail Code 0536, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92036-0536, enclosing a check made out to the UCSD Foundation, or by contacting Porta Bibb at (858) 534-1957.

Media Contact: Jan Jennings (858) 822-1684