Future Shell Oil Executive VP Roxanne Decyk earned dual degrees in English lit and advertising from the UI in 1973. But nothing the Bronze Tablet honoree experienced in the classroom matched what she heard at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts.
“I still get goosebumps thinking about just strolling into Krannert Center as an undergraduate and listening to Alfred Brendel,” she says. “He was at the U of I to record the Beethoven Piano Sonatas, as I recall.
“Though I wasn’t studying music, the idea that this great artist was there, and that I could just go listen to him play sublime music, was like dying and going to heaven.”
