Stephen Adams, made Yale music school free

Stephen Adams, a billionaire whose anonymous $100 million gift to the Yale School of music granted a tuition-free education to talented students embarking on careers in a capricious profession, died march 14 at his home in Roxbury, conn. He was 86.

His death was confirmed by his wife, Denise (Rhea) Adams.

Mr. Adams, who graduated from Yale college in 1959, was not a musician himself. But after he turned 55 and was a prosperous business executive and wine collector, he became an amateur piano player.

In 1999, he marked his class’s 40th-anniversary reunion by donating $10 million to the music school — the largest contribution it had ever received. Six years later, he and his wife surpassed that record when they made their $100 million gift, anonymously.

They did not publicly reveal their identity as the donors until 2008, when Mr. Adams was asked to confirm their contribution by an interviewer from Wine Spectator magazine. He agreed to do so then, he said, to spur other contributors as his 50th-anniversary class reunion approached.

“My wife and I are christians, and the Bible speaks of giving in secret,” mr. Adams told The Yale Daily News in 2009.

In that same article, michael friedmann, a professor of theory and chamber music, said, “musicians, as opposed to doctors or lawyers, are not in a position to repay educational loans easily, and the profession has a capricious opportunity structure.” He added, “The new financial conditions at the school, however, put musicians in a very different position in relation to their post-Yale careers.”

In 2013, Yale announced that the campus music complex, which includes Leigh Hall and Hendrie Hall, would be known as the Adams center for musical Arts.

Among the other charitable causes mr. Adams and his wife supported through their Adams family foundation were the Adams Neurosciences center and the Stephen and Denise Adams center for parkinson’s Disease Research at Yale; the Stanford graduate School of Business, where he endowed three professorships; World Vision, a global christian humanitarian organization; and the Veritas forum, which hosts discussions about philosophy, religion, and science for christian students on college campuses.

In an interview with Yale Alumni magazine in 2008, mr. Adams explained that in the mid-1990s, with the encouragement of his wife, an artist, he had begun going to New York city twice a month to take piano lessons from a classmate who, after graduating from Yale college had earned a graduate degree from the music school.

“I would practice about an hour a day, and I got to the point that I wasn’t all that bad,” he said. “Then, a couple of years ago, I was diagnosed with parkinson’s. The right hand got to be a little bit of an issue. It had some tremors.”

His decade or so of piano playing was mostly behind him when he decided to make the gift to the music school that would relieve future alumni of tuition and the lingering debt of student loans as they struggled to begin their careers.

Mr. Adams was born Nov. 7, 1937, in minneapolis to cedric Adams, a columnist for The minneapolis Star and a broadcaster for local radio station WCCO, and Bernice (Lenont) Adams, who managed the household.

Mr. Adams’ first three marriages ended in divorce. In addition to his wife of 32 years, he leaves four sons, Stephen, mark, kent, and Scott, from his first marriage; his stepchildren, Weesa, forrie, and Nick Burke, from his second marriage; and nine grandchildren. His brothers, David and cedric II, died before him.