Applied Studios

Individual Attention & Mentorship

Applied studios are purposefully small to allow for meaningful relationships and a more personalized education. Highly trained faculty who are active performers and scholars provide applied students with a weekly studio class in which students perform for one another and offer critiques to their peers. In addition to connecting you with students who share your creative passion, weekly one-on-one lessons with your studio faculty professor prepares you for public performance and pushes your creative boundaries.

Learn more about the Music, Applied Voice, Comprehensive Major

Learn more about the Music, Applied Instrumental, Comprehensive Major
 

Career Preparation

With its emphasis on technical mastery and high-level musicianship, our specialized studios will give you the skills and experience needed to pursue a graduate-level performance program, establish your own private music studio, or go wherever your dreams take you. Graduates have gone on to receive Grammy awards, join professional ensembles, as well as consistently advancing to graduate programs at prestigious institutions. Students are encouraged to actively shape their careers while in school. They gain confidence and professional skills through:

• Enriching masterclasses and concerts with critically-acclaimed guest artists
• Training in management skills relevant to freelance careers
• Performing regularly locally and internationally
• Producing original albums
• Recording studio experience

Beyond the piano, students have opportunities to play the harpsichord in a Baroque chamber orchestra and to pursue an interest in organ with regular access to a unique Aeolian Skinner organ in the main concert hall. Students regularly gain experience accompanying for student lessons and recitals, as well as rehearsals for operas, musicals, choirs, jazz bands and more. Students have access to Steinways in the performance halls, practice rooms with grand pianos, a harpsichord and one practice organ. 

Faculty serve as active mentors in faculty-student research projects with topics that range from the biography of Beethoven to the challenges of performing Britten's pieces. Guest pianists from across the country are regularly invited to perform and provide masterclasses for students. Recent graduates have gone on to teach in the schools, to open private studios, to pursue degrees at top graduate programs, to conduct Broadway productions, to serve as accompanists for opera companies and more.

Throughout the composition program, you'll enrich your academic experience with regular opportunities to write for a variety of ensembles. The composition curriculum exposes students to contemporary models of composition while steadily encouraging students to develop their own personal compositional style. You'll also contribute to masterclasses with internationally renowned guest composers and professional ensembles who will respond to your music with valuable critiques and perspectives on the current music composition industry. Recent departmental residencies with groups such as yMusic, Zeitgeist, Yarn and Wire, Blue Streak Ensemble and Eighth Blackbird have provided one-on-one personal interaction and specific insights into writing for a particular instrument, genre or setting

Program curriculum is designed so that students can lear how to approach music composition from different perspectives, think broadly and critically about incorporating different musical parameters into their own voice, apply different compositional techniques, develop their own musical languages and write idiomatically for various instruments.

Learn more about our Music - Composition, BM degree program