Schools with good music performance programs?

musicprnt
Mon, 14 Apr 2014 20:01:53 +0000

There have been a lot of threads about this, and in a nutshell, a lot depends both on your academics and your playing ability about where to go. In general, the music schools in a university that might allow you to double major, also tend to be competitive on the music and academic fronts, and with your chosen instrument being the violin, almost any program that is decent is going to be very competitive to oh-my-goodness- competitive. Some of the schools others have mentioned are better at Academics than music IMO as a whole, some of the music schools within universities have strong music programs but not necessarily on the violin, and what generally happens is the student comes to some sort of happy median betweeen the academic school, the teacher and the overall quality of the music school. To me, if you are serious about performance, the teacher is going to weight heavily.

I agree with others, you need to talk to your music teacher and see what they know. Some music teachers are really knowledgeable, know the schools and faculty, but a lot IME don’t and that can be a problem, there are a lot of violin teachers specifically that live in la la land IME, they live in a world that either never existed or did 30 or 40 years ago and could give you bad advice…but they are the place to start with, to see if they know anything about programs, and also ask for feedback on where you are level wise as well. Like I said, any violin program of any worth is going to be uber competitive, so it is important to assess where you are and what you need to do to achieve your goals. One thing I would recommend, if you live anywhere near a school that has a highly regarded school of music, contact a teacher on the faculty and pay to get an assessment (try to see what kind of reputation the teacher has), that is huge and worth the money.