The Enduring Legacy of Herb Alpert and Lani Hall: Music, Art, and Philanthropy at UCLA and Beyond

Herb Alpert and Lani Hall are not only accomplished musicians but also dedicated philanthropists whose contributions have significantly impacted the arts and education, particularly at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Their story is one of artistic innovation, business acumen, and a deep commitment to giving back to the community.

Herb Alpert: A Multifaceted Career

Herb Alpert's career is marked by remarkable achievements in music, art, and philanthropy. Born in Los Angeles, Alpert's musical journey began at the age of eight when he discovered the trumpet in elementary school. This early exposure to music proved pivotal, shaping his future trajectory.

Musical Achievements

Alpert's musical talent led him to become a legendary trumpet player with five #1 hits and nine GRAMMY® Awards. His 2014 album, “Steppin’ Out,” earned him his most recent Grammy. He has fifteen Gold albums and fourteen Platinum albums and has sold over 72 million records. Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass propelled his sound into the pop music limelight, at one point outselling the Beatles two to one. In 1966, they achieved the since-unmatched feat of simultaneously having four albums in the Top 10- and five in the Top 20. Herb Alpert also has the distinction of being the only artist who has had a #1 instrumental and a #1 vocal single.

Some of Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass’ fourteen Top 40 singles include; The Lonely Bull, Mexican Shuffle, Spanish Flea and the GRAMMY®-winners “A Taste Of Honey” and “What Now My Love,” and the #1 hits “This Guy’s In Love With You” and “Rise.” In 2016 the Herb Alpert Presents record label released 30 deluxe re-masters of the entire TJB catalogue plus all of Herb’s solo albums from the ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s. In all, Alpert has recorded over forty albums and produced for many other artists, including Sergio Mendes & Brasil ’66, Stan Getz, Michel Colombier, Gato Barbieri and Alpert’s wife, GRAMMY winning vocalist Lani Hall, to name a few.

A&M Records: A Legacy of Innovation

As an industry leader, Alpert’s commitment to artists with personal vision guided A&M Records (with partner Jerry Moss) from a Hollywood garage operation into one of the most successful independent record labels in music history that started in 1962 with Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. Stars including Janet Jackson, Quincy Jones, Sergio Mendes & Brasil ’66, Stan Getz, Cat Stevens, Supertramp, The Carpenters, Carole King, Sheryl Crow, Peter Frampton, The Police and scores of others that are evidence of the consistent quality and diversity of the A&M Records family. In 2006, Alpert and Moss were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in recognition of their accomplishments and are a part of the Grammy Museum’s ”Icons of the Music Industry” series.

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Artistic Exploration

Herb Alpert has continually explored other artistic ventures, always acknowledging a connection between music and visual art in his creative process. A painter for over four decades, Alpert’s bold, abstract expressionist canvases have been exhibited internationally and are a part of the permanent collections of MoCA (Museum of Contemporary Art) in Los Angeles, the Tennessee State Art Museum in Nashville, the Kranzberg Arts Foundation in St. Louis as well as the University of California Los Angeles. Herb’s work has been exhibited in galleries around the U.S, Europe and Asia.

A sculptor for over three decades, Alpert has installed his lyrical sculpture and his massive, bronze Totem sculptures on public display throughout Los Angles, New York City, Nashville Tennessee, and most recently a permanent installation at the Field Museum in Chicago.

Alpert explains, “There is a certain satisfaction and energy that comes from playing the horn - a feeling that I am really in my element. I am passionate about what I am doing, whether painting, sculpting or playing the trumpet. I am just trying to create whatever comes out in the spontaneity of the moment.”

Philanthropic Endeavors

With his desire to bring the arts back to young people, the Herb Alpert Foundation is helping to change the educational environment. The Herb Alpert Foundation supports a number of educational, arts and compassion oriented programs, dedicated to serving young people to help them reach their potential and lead productive, fulfilling lives and to support their unique creative energies and special talents. HAF supports young people to live free from prejudice and, with its many programs, nurtures a capacity for empathy, compassion, mutual respect, tolerance and kindness.

Broadway theatre is another arena in which Alpert has enjoyed success. His producing credits include the Tony Award/Pulitzer Prize-winning production of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, Jelly’s Last Jam, Arthur Miller’s Broken Glass, August Wilson’s Seven Guitars and The Boy from Oz. In 2013 Herb Alpert was awarded The National Medal of Arts Award by President Barack Obama for his musical, philanthropic and artistic contributions.

Lani Hall: A Voice of Distinction

Two time Grammy Award-winning vocalist and producer Lani Hall started her singing career in 1966 as the lead singer of Sergio Mendes’s breakthrough group, Brasil ’66. She left behind her city roots in Chicago and for 5 years performed throughout the world. While Lani’s singing career took her on the road, she also focused on her writing-committing to the page her personal impressions of the world around her. Sergio Mendes further expanded her writing career by asking Lani to write the English lyrics for many of the band’s Brazilian songs.

Musical Career

In 1966, A&M Records signed Brasil ’66 and Lani met her future husband, music legend, Herb Alpert, who is also the co-founder of A&M Records. Herb and Lani married in 1973. Lani has the distinction of recording more than 22 albums in three different languages (English, Portuguese and Spanish, and in 1983, she sang the title song for the James Bond film, Never Say Never Again. In 1986 Hall won with her first Grammy Award for Best Latin Pop Performance for her album, Es Facil Amar. Hall picked up her second Grammy Award as producer on Herb Alpert’s 2013 Grammy winning album, Steppin’ Out. Since 2006, Hall and Alpert have been touring with their band to sell out performances.

Literary Pursuits

After establishing a successful solo career in music, and becoming a wife and mother, Lani began to explore new creative outlets for her writing. In the early 1980’s, while singing in Mexico City, she started writing in short story form. Her writing process is similar to her singing process in so far as she can visually see a song/lyric unfold before her, as if she were watching a movie.

Her debut book, Emotional Memoirs & Short Stories, compiles 10 short stories from 30 years of writing short fiction and true stories from her life-all woven together by a connecting personal narrative, with the city of Chicago as the backdrop. Her characters are intelligent, modern women struggling to navigate the uncertain waters of adultery, therapy, cosmetic surgery, postpartum depression and their own sexuality. Lou Adler describes Lani’s book as “free-form as a jazz piece weaving in and out of intriguing situations and indelible characters. She writes as she sings, with emotion and passion.” With the release of her audio book, Emotional Memoirs & Short Stories, Hall has mixed her two creative expressions to make one total experience.

The Herb Alpert Foundation and UCLA

The Herb Alpert Foundation, which Herb created with his wife Lani Hall Alpert in 1985, was instrumental in establishing the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz graduate program at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, founded with an endowment from the Foundation in 2007, aspires to educate the whole student through productive collaborations between performance and scholarship and preparatory training for a broad range of careers in music.

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Fifteen years ago, Herb and Lani Alpert invested $30 million from the Herb Alpert Foundation to establish The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. This remarkable gift spurred the evolution of the school into an incubator for ingenuity, leadership, scholarship, and artistry, supporting hundreds of students through scholarships, leading-edge technology, real-world career preparation, and much more. Herb and Lani Alpert have continued to invest in the future of the school and its students through additional generous philanthropy. These gifts, plus the impact of the endowment and its annually generated income, has resulted in double that dollar amount benefitting the School of Music.

“I continue to be tremendously inspired by Herb and Lani’s generosity to UCLA and appreciative of the mark they’ve made on music education,” said UCLA Chancellor Gene Block. “It’s a joy and honor to celebrate fifteen years since their gift to establish the Herb Alpert School of Music, their continued investment since then, and their incredible legacy in the music world. I am deeply grateful for their commitment to our university as well as their leadership, creativity, and passion for supporting the arts.”

“Ever since discovering the trumpet in my elementary school music appreciation class, I have understood the transformational power of music in education and the importance of music to the fabric of society,” said Herb Alpert. “Watching the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music thrive these past 15 years has been incredibly gratifying and I am confident that the future will lead to even greater accomplishments.”

Areas directly impacted span student scholarships to space renovations, curriculum expansion to new academic programs. Transfer students from Los Angeles Community College have a much more supportive path to the School of Music thanks to the Herb Alpert Foundation LACC Transfer Student Scholarship. This pathway has resulted in a 46% increase in enrolled transfer students since 2019 when the process was streamlined and funding was specifically earmarked for these scholars.

And since 2008, the school has been enriched by the establishment of two new interdepartmental degree programs, creating bridges between areas of study to expand research, performance, teaching, and career opportunities. The school’s Global Jazz Studies major was created in 2018, providing students with the opportunity to earn a B.A. in jazz. This fall, students will be able to enter the new Music Industry degree program and earn a B.A. in an area with vast career potential.

Lani Hall Theater

When live-streaming technology was installed in the school’s main theaters-Schoenberg Hall and Lani Hall-these capabilities were the first of their kind in the University of California system. Lani Hall itself received a complete makeover, thanks to a $3 million gift from the foundation; formerly known as Jan Popper Theater, the space was renamed in Lani’s honor in 2019.

The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music renovated this 133-seat theater in the Schoenberg Music Building in December 2019 thanks to a $3 million gift from the Herb Alpert Foundation. The theater was renamed Lani Hall, in honor of Alpert’s wife, the singer Lani Hall. The redesign of the performance space was led by acoustician John Storyk, a founding partner of Walters-Storyk Design Group. Among Storyk’s best-known projects is his 1969 design of Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Lady Studios in New York City.

The theater, previously known as the Jan Popper Theater, was named in 1981 in honor of the professor of music who founded the opera program and served on the faculty from 1949 to 1975. His legacy will continue to be recognized with a new plaque in the theater’s foyer. UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music receives $3 million to renovate theater

Matthew Ballos, WSDG partner and co-designer of Lani Hall with founding partner John Storyk, reports that the tubular overhead wooden stage treatments, are complimented by twin ‘rounded’ wooden ceiling cloud/lighting fixtures, positioned over the audience seats, to further enhance listener audio quality. An elegant, cantilevered wooden rear wall diffuser fine-tunes the theater into an auditorium-size ‘sweet spot.’ A 400sf multipurpose rehearsal room with a raised platform for performance and training purposes is fashioned in the style of a pro recording studio ‘live room,’ with acoustic wall treatments and a ceiling-mounted screen for potential film score recording to picture projects.

“I was attracted to the idea of combining forces with the university to create a jewel of a performance space with excellent acoustics for the school’s students, faculty and audiences,” said Herb Alpert, the pioneering musician who started the foundation with his wife, Lani Hall. “Lani is the girl of my dreams. I know she does not seek this type of attention, but I was thrilled to surprise her with this recognition of her own artistry and to celebrate our 46th wedding anniversary.”

Imagination Hall

In 2022, the Herb Alpert Foundation committed $5 million to renovate the school’s 46 practice rooms-critical spaces for the vast majority of its students-to state-of-the-art specifications, including enhanced acoustics, modern LED lighting and hardwired Wi-Fi. The renovated space will be named Imagination Hall, as a tribute to the breadth of musical creativity that it will foster.

Impact on Students

Perhaps most notably, thanks to the Alperts’ investments, over $10 million in scholarships has been generated-more than 43% of all the scholarships awarded in the school-793 talented students to enroll in the School of Music and benefit from all that it has grown to offer as they pursue their musical dreams.

“21st-century music is truly being made here. The School of Music has become a beacon of change, opening doors for students from a variety of backgrounds to benefit from all that we’ve grown to offer,” said Inaugural Dean Eileen Strempel.

Additional Facilities at UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music

Our programs and faculty are housed in the award-winning Evelyn and Mo Ostin Music Center, a pair of facilities completed in 2014, and in Schoenberg Music Building, named in honor of famed composer and former UCLA music faculty member Arnold Schoenberg. Across these facilities, students can access the latest advances in music technology, research and pedagogy. The center includes a state-of-the-art recording studio, the Mike Curb Music & Technology Lab, four editing rooms, a large ensemble room for rehearsals and masterclasses, as well as a café and social space for students, and teaching studios and faculty offices.

Schoenberg Music Building includes Lani Hall Theater (a 133-seat recital hall) and Schoenberg Hall (a 500-seat concert and lecture hall) and also houses the Henry Mancini Media Lab and the Ethnomusicology Archive, as well as a keyboard lab, a computer lab, six classrooms, 36 practice rooms, an orchestra room, a band room, a choral room, and the headquarters for the UCLA Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz Performance. Established by a grant from the Herb Alpert Foundation, The Herb Alpert School of Music on the UCLA campus is dedicated to providing students with academic opportunities that balance cutting-edge scholarship with sophisticated performance and composition mastery. Students are immersed in a multitude of learning and performing opportunities and have access to world-class archives and related study options.

Vibrato and Continued Performances

In addition to his on-going creative outlets in music, philanthropy and the arts, Alpert owns the noted Vibrato restaurant/jazz club in Bel-Air, California. He also continues to perform and tour across the country with his wife, Grammy-winning vocalist, Lani Hall and their band.

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