Schools with good music performance programs?

musicprnt
Tue, 15 Apr 2014 15:34:08 +0000

UCLA’s music program has had a major infusion of money into it (the Herb Alpert School of music came with a 100 million dollar donation:), and from what I know of it it is decent. However, the real question is how good the violin program is there, how good the teachers are, I can only say that I haven’t heard it mentioned as one of the better programs in terms of violin studies, but take that with a grain of salt and then some, that is simply my experience. USC has a strong strings department, Midori is the chair there and recently Glenn Dictorow (retiring CM of the NY Phil and long time teacher) joined the violin faculty.

As far as double majoring/dual degree programs, I agree with others, if the whole point is to have a ‘backup’ for music, I would rethink it, because doing both, while possible, is difficult and generally is a 5 year program. It sounds tempting, to have a ‘usable’ degree along with the music degree, but the reality of many college degrees is they may not be much more valuable than just getting a music degree, in terms of getting a job outside music (it varies, but many liberal arts degrees, even in sciences, as a bachelor is not going to be that much more valuable if at all than a music degree). If you want to go pre med, in theory you could get a music degree and take the necessary pre med track courses, or you could get a music degree, decide you want to go to med school, and take the necessary courses after you get the music degree( a lot of colleges now have programs specifically addressing this, people wanting to go to med school who didn’t take the pre med curricula). I don’t know your teacher, but unless she is teaching on the side and has a ‘full time’ job in the area she got her degree in, what value is the other degree in her life? Why would dual degree/double majoring do for you if you don’t want to do the other thing? I would agree with others, it might be better if you are passionate with music to major in that rather than doing another degree or whatever, because drudging through another degree that you don’t particularly like to have something ‘bankable’ is going to make you music experience a lot less fulfilling I suspect…