At the music department’s 21st Annual Benefit Gala this past Saturday, the 20 winners of the Fulhage Music Scholarships, “a gift of a quarter-million dollars,” according to an Emporia State press release, were announced.

One of these recipients was Anastasia Motiti, sophomore piano performance major, who is originally from Cyprus.

“You can imagine me and my mom jumping in the air,” Motiti said, about hearing the news of receiving the scholarship.

Without this particular scholarship, Motiti said she may not have ever been able to achieve her dream of studying in America.

The Fulhage Music Scholarship is a financial award that was created at the end of last year’s spring semester in honor of Mildred Fulhage, an ESU alumna. Fulhage passed away in June of 2012.

The gala, according to Allan Comstock, chair of the music department, is the music department’s mains source of revenue for non-music major scholarships.

“(The money the event takes in) varies. Usually, it’s anywhere from ($6,000 to $1,200),” Comstock said. “Overall, in the music department, we tend to give higher scholarships to music majors. We sort of have it tiered based on music major, minor, and non-major.”

Raymond Horvat, freshman music education major, said that he thinks should go to support the music department.

“You should get to see really cool performances, and meet interesting people,” Horvat said. “I will attend these in the future. It was a lot of fun.”

The gala this year only included faculty performances. The faculty ensembles, included the Great Plains Trio, a piano ensemble, the ESU Faculty Jazz Combo and a short duet from “La Boheme.”

Comstock was the head of the event and said he was very excited about finally showing the music professors in action. He also personally played in the concert, playing his bassoon in the Mid-America Woodwind Quintet

“Unanimously, the favorite concerts are always the ones where we feature our own faculty,” Comstock said. “Every year, I have requests for them. We also want to have a chance to honor alums and former faculty, and this is the way to do that.”

Horvat said hearing the faculty play was “awesome.”

“I loved the brass quintet,” he said. “I play brass and love hearing good brass music.”

The concert was set up in conjunction with the first person to be placed in the Beach Hall of Distinction back in 1994, an award that was given to Fulhage this year as her scholarship was set up.