forte2x

How are the music opportunities for a serious musician? Practice rooms? Columbia-Juilliard program? This is for piano.

Denzera

Lots of practice rooms, and high-quality pianos in various lounges.

The practice rooms are probably about half really good instruments and half older stuff. they junk a lot of pianos every year to buy new ones.

Two of the dorms, Schapiro and Broadway, have several practice rooms in them that you can borrow a key to and sign up for timeslots. There are pianos in the main lounges of these dorms: John Jay, Hartley, Wallach, Wien, McBain. (although McBain's was a piece of junk as of 2 years ago). And in Dodge hall, home of the music department, there are some really fine instruments.

Lots of performing groups on campus need pianists, although I didn't join any of them (no time). But there are very good teachers available - especially at Teachers College where there's an exchange program, you can get two free credits a semester with basically an automatic A if you sign up and pay a nominal fee. They also have lessons with the Columbia music dept in Dodge, but preference is given to music majors and there's a big waiting list.

There's a Columbia-Juilliard program but I don't know anything about it.

sac

The Columbia-Julliard program requires admission to Julliard and is very difficult to complete, according to an article in the Spectator last year and some past threads on here. At Columbia, there are practice rooms, and excellent pianos but (according to my S) they are often locked and the sign-up system does not necessarily work well. The music department does give private lessons, as Denzera says. My S doesn't play piano, but has a friend who has taken both piano and violin there though not a music major. My S, also not a music major, was on a waitlist his first year for lessons on his instrument, but still played in music department ensembles, and this year is also getting lessons which he really enjoys.

Skraylor

close friends of mine do this program and its supposed to be like some ridiculously small amount of time (think 10 1/2 hour practices a semester) but all have had really great teachers that do MUCH more than that. also, the "nominal fee" really is small but most of the time you dont even get charged for it

or so i hear