Barbara Hill Moore & Bruce Foote Foundation
The Barbara Hill More & Bruce R. Foote Foundation was founded in 1995, although scholarship awards in memory of Bruce R. Foote have been given annually since 1989. In 2022, the foundation was renamed to the Barbara Hill-Moore and Bruce Foote Foundation to recognize the tireless work of its founder, Barbara Hill-Moore. The foundation’s mission is to encourage and support students with a background that has been historically under represented in the advanced pursuit of classical vocal study. Scholarships are awarded for matriculation in the Graduate and Artist Certificate Programs at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.
The Foote Scholar, Schollmaier Scholar, David M. Crowley and Rosemary Haggar Vaughan Grants and Scholarships are awarded annually for matriculation in the graduate and artist certificate programs at SMU and are chosen on the basis of talent, career potential, scholarship and financial need.
Barbara Hill Moore
Soprano, Barbara Hill-Moore, has enjoyed and balanced an illustrious career as an artist/teacher for more than five decades. She began teaching full time in 1965 and has maintained a simultaneous career in singing, while prioritizing her first love, teaching. She has been presented in concert, opera and recital, performing in concert halls and theaters throughout the United States, Asia, and in Europe, especially Germany. Concerts in the U.S. include more than a dozen appearances with the Dallas Symphony performing such varied works as Alexander Nevsky by Sergei Prokofiev, Goyescas by Enrique Granados, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and including return performances of the Knoxville: Summer of 1915 by Samuel Barber and Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. Other orchestra concerts include several performances of the Strauss’ Vier Letzte Lieder, the Verdi Requiem, Beethoven Ninth Symphony, with the SMU Meadows Symphony Orchestra, Cinco Canciones Negras with the San Antonio, Texas Symphony, and Hector Berlioz’s Les Nuits d’Ete with the Sherman, Texas Symphony.
Barbara received numerous grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and other arts organizations to premiere the works of American composers in recitals for Deutches/Amerikanisches Instituts throughout Western Europe, especially Germany. She was invited on many occasions to sing in the summer music festivals in Germany, including the Zelt Music Festival in Freiburg, where she premiered five song cycles written for her by American composer Simon Sargon on the poetry of African American poets Paul Laurence Dunbar and Langston Hughes. It was following a concert of American art songs in Freiburg that Justis Franz invited Barbara to sing the cycle “I Hate Music!” in a recital at the Schleswig Holstein Musik Festival during the weekend celebration of the 70th birthday of the composer and guest of honor, Leonard Bernstein.
Opera lovers in Berlin know Barbara Hill Moore for her interpretation of Jenny in Kurt Weill’s Threepenny Opera, which she sang in more than 50 performances in Berlin and Cologne, repeating the role with the Pittsburgh Opera in Philadelphia. She sang the role of Serena in the 50th anniversary performances of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess in Charleston, South Carolina. Afterwards, she sang the role of Bess with the Florentine Opera, in opera productions and in concerts throughout Europe and North America. Other roles include Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni with the Houston Ebony Opera and the title roles in Dido and Aeneas with Dallas Chamber Opera and Aida with the Shreveport Opera. Most recently, Barbara was invited to sing a concert of American music in the 7th International Festival of Strings in Sarajevo, Bosnia.
Professor Hill Moore is President and founder of the Bruce Foote Memorial Scholarship Foundation in support of singers from underserved communities throughout the world. The Foote Foundation, established in 1989, has given awards to hundreds of singers and awarded full VISA support to 25 South African singers. Foote Scholars are National NATS Winners, Chair voice programs throughout America and in South Africa, at the University of Cape Town, University of KwaZulu-Natal and North-West University in Potchefstroom. They are contracted this season with the Metropolitan Opera, Dallas Opera, Ft. Worth Opera and companies around the world.
Barbara Hill Moore is Senior Associate Dean for Faculty and Meadows Foundation Distinguished Professor of Voice in the Meadows School of the Arts of Southern Methodist University where she has taught since 1974 and served as chair of voice from 1977 through 1992. She received a B.S. from Lincoln University of Missouri and an M.S. as a Graduate Fellow from the University of Illinois in Champaign, Illinois.
Bruce R. Foote
Bruce R. Foote chaired the voice faculty of the University of Illinois from 1933 to 1970. With his family of six children, Bruce and his wife Doris, also a singer were widely recognized for their television appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show, This Is Music and the Foote Family Folio, which was presented on television from 1953 to 1955.
Bruce Foote was a featured baritone on the Chicago Theatre of the Air and made more than 20 appearances with the St. Louis Bach Festival. He gave solo performances with orchestras throughout the United States — including Chicago, Cleveland, St. Louis, Indianapolis and Syracuse — and sang over 125 concerts of Handel’s Messiah with celebrated oratorio societies throughout the world. He was a principal bass baritone with the Chicago Opera Company for many years.
Earning both the graduate and undergraduate degrees in voice and piano from Syracuse University in New York, Bruce Foote was considered a rare and consummate musician. In the Syracuse area, he was widely known as the first trumpeter with the Parisians, a Central New York band led by Eddie Williamson.
A very active member of the SMU voice faculty following his retirement from Illinois, Bruce gave many oratorio performances throughout Texas and the Southwest until his second retirement in 1985. He was perhaps best remembered for his recruitment and mentoring of minority students throughout his career in Illinois and Texas.
Bruce was a teacher for present and former SMU faculty and students including Thomas Hayward, Donnie Ray Albert, Virginia Dupuy, Richard Poppino, Anne Weeks Jackson and Barbara Hill Moore. Many of his former students are teachers, music administrators, opera directors, conductors and ministers of music. Bruce Foote was a remarkable human being with a passion for helping his fellow man.