Big List of Schools for Piano Performance

College Majors Music Major
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<p>What schools are recommended for piano performance? Our goal is to have a big list with both top programs and next-tier programs, and then start cutting it down to a do-able number of schools by the end of this (junior) school year. Both university music programs and conservatories are ok. </p>

<p>Our list so far: Eastman, Oberlin, McGill, USC, Rice</p>

<p>Thank you! And please don’t limit your suggestions to the East Coast…unless those are the only schools you can recommend! And do say something if the school is incredibly hard to get into, academically or talent-wise.</p>

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<p>Second Rice and Eastman. Certainly two of the top-tier programs; both very selective.</p>

<p>I would add to the list Indiana, Northwestern, and CIM if you are looking for programs that are not on the East Coast. IU is top-tier. Not sure about NW and CIM but I do know that they have good programs. </p>

<p>I would also recommend Peabody. Piano is certainly their strongest program. Leon Fleisher teaches there and you really can’t do much better than him.</p>

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<p>We know a fine pianist who got very good merit aid at Lawrence Conservatory in Wisconsin.</p>

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<p>Not sure if you already looked at these and decided against them, Juilliard, NEC and Curtis (two of which are incredibly tough, the other one, well, seems to be like getting hit by lightening (curtis). In NYC, there also is MSM and Mannes, which are competitive but not in the same class as Juilliard et al (from what I know).</p>

<p>Outside the east coast, there is the Colburn school (very difficult, it is I believe totally free, room and board, and is extremely selective). There is the SF conservatory, reputedly as good program, it is competitive. . For one that may be off the beaten track, there is the university of North Texas that reputedly has a good music program. </p>

<p>Michigan state’s music program has a good reputation, though I don’t know about its piano department and it is very competitive.</p>

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<p>Curtis, Rice, Juilliard and Colburn are all at the top of the heap. They are all incredibly selective and have the best faculty around along with the highest caliber students. Like musicprnt mentioned, Colburn is totally free, which is a nice bonus!</p>

<p>I don’t know that I would recommend SFCo. I certainly would recommend UT Austin since you mentioned you were looking for a next-tier school as well.</p>

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<p>Thanks! From what I have gathered so far in this forum, there are the getting-hit-by-lightning prodigy schools like Curtis, Colburn and Juilliard. I don’t anticipate D is going to apply to that tier.
The next tier I’m guessing is the top for non-prodigies: programs like Rice, Eastman, Indiana, Northwestern? Peabody?
The next tier: I don’t know. Are Lawrence and McGill top piano programs also, or are they slightly less selective? I had never heard of either of those schools till very recently.
I want to make sure that my D doesn’t apply ONLY to the tippy-top programs next year and then not get accepted anywhere. (Or, maybe she’ll get accepted everywhere! But I can’t predict the future and want her to apply to a range of schools.) Are there some programs that are very good but a little less selective? She definitely DOES want a very good audition-based program.</p>

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<p>The University of Minnesota has a strong piano faculty, and though it is not a particularly good music school generally, there is substantial cultural stimulation in the Twin Cities, and the academics there are good.</p>

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<p>For piano I would recommend: USC, Colburn School, Rice, Northwestern, Peabody, Curtis, Manhattan School of Music, and Eastman. Def not Julliard…</p>

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<p>Lifeofsolitude, why not Juilliard?</p>

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<p>I’m going to school for Piano Performance at Illinois Wesleyan, if you want a nice small LAC with a great School of Music!</p>

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<p>Juilliard isn’t what it was 30 yrs ago…plus most of the faculty are Juilliard trained so you aren’t getting a well-rounded education, in my opinion. Plus, I know a lot of ppl at J-yard who complain that all of the teachers double or even triple book students with lessons…so some students don’t even have lessons for weeks. However, with that being said, Juilliard would be good for someone who wants a masters because they already have a strong foundation w/ their BM…</p>

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<p>I must disagree. Juilliard is MORE selective than it was 30 years ago.
It’s true that Juilliard no longer has the kind of sovereignty over American musical training that once it did, but that doesn’t mean the school itself is worse. Yes, some departments are weaker than others, but that is true absolutely everywhere. I can’t really comment for piano in particular; it is certainly true that the piano faculty is very “in-house,” and the merits of that situation are questionable. But a rounded education from studio faculty? How many studio teachers do you expect to have substantial contact with? I did my master’s degree at a school with four very different violin teachers. If a violinist in one studio started sounding like the students of another, their teacher would get quite upset! The combination of diversity and internal politics actually /constricted/ imitation.</p>

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<p>I’m not saying they all sound alike, but, they are ALL JUILLIARD TRAINED! I’m afraid I’m not getting my point across and if you disagree, that’s perfectly fine. All I’m trying to say is that Juilliard wasn’t what it was 30 years ago and there are other schools that are on par, if not better than Juilliard. It’s just a name now…other schools such as Curtis, and Colburn are on the same level, if not better…but that’s just my opinion.</p>

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<p>The point being made in the last couple posts is a good one. </p>

<p>“Hit-by-lightning prodigy schools” is no longer a phrase that should be limited to Juilliard. Many of the so-called “prodigies”, lol, are going to schools like Rice, Curtis and Colburn. Juilliard’s history and prestige often distorts people’s view of the program’s quality. They have a wonderful program and I wouldn’t NOT recommend it to anyone who is a serious musician (or pianist in this case) but most professional musicians would probably agree that it is no longer the sole music school at the top.</p>

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<p>I think I would agree with violoncello here. The level at the other schools mentioned (although I have never visited Colburn) is certainly on par with Juilliard. I too find it frustrating the degree to which Juilliard’s name distorts the view of other music schools. BUT HEY! It’s really just about the music so let’s not squabble about it.</p>

<p>That said, I would recommend University of Maryland since it hasn’t been mentioned. It is a fairly difficult admit and the professors there (Mikhail Volchok in particular) are great.</p>

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<p>Lifeofsolitude, what you say about the faculty at Juilliard /and/ the equal or greater prestige of other schools is absolutely true, as I explicitly said in my previous post. I was simply pointing out that the only sense in which Juilliard “isn’t what it used to be” is that other schools have gotten better – not, so far as I can see, that Juilliard itself has gotten worse. Perhaps the faculty in the piano department has declined in quality. I really wouldn’t know. If that’s what you meant, I don’t disagree.</p>

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<p>Oberlin has an excellent piano faculty, lots of performance opportunities, and the opportunity for courses in the college, or even a double degree. It can be generous with merit money, unlike a lot of other places. Don’t take it off your list.
Colburn is free, but it has a tiny piano department andthe lead teacher there also teaches at 2 other conservatories at the same time…so may not there much of the time.
Juilliard has a fine piano department; it does not only take “prodigies” though there are a fair number of them. Nor is all the faculty Juilliard trained: Matti Reikallio, Julian Martin…not</p>

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<p>The issue here is evaluating what makes a good music school/program and that is part of the problem, especially when trying to compare something like Juilliard 30 years ago to what it is today…</p>

<p>-Was Juilliard better then other music schools 30 years ago? I think that there are a lot more choices for high level music schools today, I think programs like Shepherd at Rice and others that have come into prominence since then give Juilliard or any other top conservatory a run for its money (it is why statements like “juilliard is the best” are ridiculous…). On the other hand, I would argue that Curtis, because it is a free program and has top level teachers, has at least been as good as Juilliard and was 30 years ago. Likewise, I am not so certain that NEC or CIM were necessarily “worse” then Juilliard back then…</p>

<p>There are always elements of hype around any school. 30 years ago Dorothy Delay was still the doyenne of the violin department at Juilliard, and everyone wanted to study with her…she literally had hundreds of students technically, yet no one is worth that kind of hype (I am not saying Delay was or wasn’t a good or great teacher, I am saying that no one is that good, period…and for every great product she turned out, she also turned out a lot of students who went nowhere…). </p>

<p>-Inbred? I am not so certain Juilliard 30 years ago was any less or more inbred, while they obviously have had a changing of the guard at Juilliard, I suspect if you looked at Juilliard’s faculty 30 years ago a large percent of those teaching there went to Juilliard. Many years ago, I am talking 50, 60 years ago or more, there probably was more diversity at Juilliard, because back then the big deal tended to be having european trained faculty, so you had people like Galamian teaching there and so forth…but I really wonder if 30 years ago it was all that much different (be interesting to get a faculty list from 30 years ago)…I am pretty certain that 30 years ago a lot of the violin faculty were already juilliard trained…</p>

<p>I also will point out that most of the Curtis faculty went to Curtis…the other thing to keep in mind is that schools like Rice and so forth, being relatively new, don’t have the long length of time with being in the top tier of music schools, so they are kind of forced to look outside their programs…I haven’t looked at NEC’s faculty, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of them didn’t come from there…and I wouldn’t be surprised in 25 or 30 years if Rice, etc didn’t have a lot of people teaching who went there…</p>

<p>And at Colburn, how can you have diversity, when they have a relatively small faculty? On violin, for example, most of the teaching is still done by one man, Robert Lipsyte, and on other instruments it tends to be a very small number…</p>

<p>I am not saying that isn’t a valid point, about diversity and such, there do seem to be cultures at music schools that evolve, in violin, for example, schools tend to have a dominant strain of playing, whether it is russian school or franco/belgium or German (or some hybrid of those…), and you can argue that that alone could stultify things (not saying it does), or lead to ‘group think’ or whatever. There is another side to that, though, and that is that the teachers themselves at a place like Juilliard, even if trained there, had teachers who were probably different (students on violin who studied with Galamian are very different then students who studied later on with Delay and her acolytes who still teach there), it isn’t that easy to stultify things in that manner. </p>

<p>For me personally, what I would look in a faculty is what skills they bring from life, and how mixed those experiences on (just me and my opinion, which given I am not a musician, should be taken with a pound of salt). For example, if a school is heavy on ‘teachers’, those who have never been out there as working musicians, I would be concerned about that, I would much prefer my child go to a place where teachers have done a range of things, hopefully a mix of solo and ensemble work, etc…people who have performed, who understand what music is really about. Quite frankly, having seen teacher juried competitions, I really wonder if they have ever performed or understand what it takes…obviously, that is me speaking. </p>

<p>Also keep in mind that it is a different world then it was 30 years ago. My child had a teacher who went to one of the top notch conservatories, who is a member of a well known orchestra, got a chair right out of school, who quite frankly, I doubt would get into conservatory these days (put it this way, she didn’t get ‘serious’ until college, try that on violin today and see what happens). The playing level is uniformly higher from everything I can gather in my wanderings, and one of the reasons that schools like Rice and so forth have flourished I suspect is that the talent pool is much, much deeper. 30 years ago the top students were a relatively limited group I suspect, relatively small in number, and a lot of them probably aimed right for Juilliard or Curtis (and maybe a few other places), and they would generally get in there (and I would suspect that even then, there was a wider range of students back then). </p>

<p>These days I think the level of talent is much, much higher, there are a lot more students at the top levels, and what has happened is this has allowed a lot of programs to flourish (obviously, programs also have to provide excellent faculty, etc). There is one thing to be said about Juilliard and probably curtis, where their name means something, it is that the attract a lot of really talented music students based on their names, and as a result I think they are still getting the creme de la creme (Juilliard not only admits about 6% of those who apply, they also have an acceptance rate that by CW is around 95%…)…whether the program actuallly helps those kids more then a different program would is going to be debatable…on the other hand, it also means that other programs are getting kids who are as good as anyone who gets into Juilliard, it isn’t like Juilliard and Curtis are getting the cream and everyone else is getting 2%, 1% or skim:).</p>

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<p>In regards to the last paragraph, they are certainly not. I have three friends (two vocalists, and one violinist) who all chose Rice over Juilliard. </p>

<p>But i don’t know that I necessarily agree with the concept of “inbreeding” even being a bad thing. I mean if you like a teacher and feel like they could give you the tools necessary for your career goals then go with that teacher! Who cares if they were taught by a long line of a teachers who all went to that school as well?</p>

<p>Musicprnt may have been trying to get the exact same idea across but I wasn’t sure. There was a lot of stuff to read (no offense)… ;)</p>

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<p>Violincello-</p>

<p>Yep, I was pretty much agreeing with you. My point was simply that top music students have a lot of choices out there and Juilliard (or any top level program) may or may not work for them. There are still a lot of music students out there who think the name Juilliard means something in of itself, a lot of people still hold the conception that having that name on your BM or whatever necessarily means something in of itself, when the reality is as you say, it depends on whether the teacher and/or program does something for the students in preparing them as musicians, that is the real proof in the pudding. There are plusses and minuses with any school, and Juilliard has both IMO, as I am pretty certain other programs do, too.</p>

<p>Rather then inbreeding, I would be more concerned about the culture, about what the school and students ‘put out there’, the environment, whatever you want to call it, and all schools have their own culture. People on here have talked about music schools where the students are ‘off by themselves’, others have talked about schools where music students are integrated into school life more; some music schools have the reputation of being cutthroat competitive, others more collegial, some programs have the rep where the students all seem to think like music is about being a soloist and where ensemble work seems to get short shrift, others have the rep of being more ensemble oriented, etc…</p>