Liberal Arts/Music double major schools

mamenyu
Mon, 16 Feb 2009 13:03:20 +0000

At Harvard, there is an excellent music department, but it is proudly academic-only; there is a pianist on the faculty who sometimes teaches students, Robert Levin, a famous fellow, but other musicians are adjuncts, who coach chamber groups, etc. There is a lot of extracurricular student-run music at Harvard, several orchestral groups of varying quality including BachSoc, a Piano Society with concerts, concerto competitions. Yo Yo Ma went there, famously; John Adams went there; some conductors went there – it is a hotbed of smart, energetic, creative people who spend a lot of time in extracurricular pursuits. But it is not supported by the music department, financially or otherwise, to any significant extent. They took a long time to start the NEC program because they resisted diluting their own extracurricular activities by having top students go off to NEC, but now, it seems, they see it as a draw for certain students. You would be on your own to figure out how to work it out. Columbia also has music opportunities for its students, but, again, through adjuncts; its orchestra is ok, and it has some good chamber music opportunities, but it is a pretty small bunch of folks who do it year to year. It just is not the same thing as being in a school with a conservatory, and with other kids in significant numbers doing the same thing. One kid at Columbia-Juilliard complained that finding a practice room with a piano was like a homeless person looking for a dumpster, perhaps a reflection of life in upper Manhattan…