<p>I sent you a private message.</p>
<p>musicmom26 – UNiversity of Miami (Florida) is not as difficult to get into as Rice, but it is selective and posted a 4.0 GPA average for freshman last year when my daughter was applying. The school is very expensive but offers significant scholarships to music students. Frost has undergone some turmoil, but is definitely worth looking into. I’m a great proponent of practice lessons as a way of identifying the right teacher, identifying the wrong teacher, as a way of learning more about the department, and as a general marketing tool. Vanderbilt is also very selective academically and musically. I don’t have any experience there however. Have you given some thought to the University of Florida in Gainsville? It has fairly high academic standards, but it also seemed to have a very nice program. The campus is beautiful. As I think other people have said on this thread, regardless of the academic standards at the school, the audition is the major factor for acceptance into the music school; however academics frequently play into the generosity of the scholarship offered.</p>
<p>If he gets into a good conservatory program and wants to be a musician, encourage him to take it. Some universities with mediocre music departments, such as UC Berkeley, have a reputation of punishing conservatory students and highlighting weaker musicians for whatever reason. </p>
<p>If a university vocal music program is run by a choral director, then weak voices will preferred over strong voices.</p>
<p>My kid went to UC Berkeley - and that was simply not the case! The academic music department at Cal is first rate - one of the best in the US; though there is not really a performance faculty, there are lots of fine teachers in the Bay Area (including those at SF Conservatory, who teach privately); the orchestra is quite respectable and the conductor is ambitious about the repertoire; there are noon concert opportunities. The coaches for chamber music can be quite excellent, but it best to put together your own group. The San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra is also popular for Cal students, and accepts students up to age 22. There are certainly some conservatory level students.</p>
<p>I agree that UC Berkeley has a terrible music program. I heard their Women’s Chamber Choir recently and the two student soloists had week voices with poor tonal quality.</p>
<p>Berkeley has a reputation for recruiting conservatory students and then punishing them after they give up their spots in conservatories. Most students handle the disappointment in an upbeat manner. I heard of one student, some time back, committing or almost committing suicide over the way things were handled. </p>
<p>If you are majoring in something other than music and you want to perform, Berkeley has a great extra curricular ensemble program that is better than the program through the music department. I’ve attended their concerts and they are excellent. I think a guy named Mark Summers runs the ensemble program and he’s a first rate music director.</p>
<p>To call UC Berkeley’s music department “terrible” is a gross misstatement. UC Berkeley’s music department is one of the most prominent in the US, for music history; it includes Richard Taruskin and other luminaries in the field. It is not a performance department with any pretense to stealing away potential conservatory students; it does not purport to be conservatory-like experience: students who go to the music department generally do so because they decide they do NOT want to go to a conservatory or a double degree program at a place like Oberlin, and are primarily interested in music history, but also want to have performance opportunities. There are a lot of performance opportunities, too, not only for the department students, but also for many students who major in science, etc., but have a lot of music training and ensemble experience, including Cal students who were/are in SFSYO and other top California youth orchestras. David Milnes, who conducts the UC Symphony, is a well-respected conductor with a strong pedigree (he was assistant conductor at SF Symphony among other things). I haven’t heard the women’s choir, but certainly Berkeley does not claim to have a vocal program anything like you’d find in a conservatory. There are students who go from UC Berkeley undergrad to grad school in performance - but it is not the most common trajectory.</p>
<p>This is nuts. </p>
<p>I typically think it’s in poor taste for me, a college rep, to comment on the quality of another school’s program, but here I can’t resist. “Terrible” is a really strong word used to describe any music program, and certainly not appropriate for Berkeley. I know with music there’s always an element of subjectivity, and we need to allow for differences of opinion on these forums, but Berkeley is a plausible destination for many serious musicians. We have a first-year pianist here at Bard, who I can confidently say is one of the best pianists in the country her age, and she also applied to Berkeley in addition to many conservatories. You may say the fact that she’s here and not at Berkeley proves your point, but my response is that it’s clear that very talented musicians are drawn to elements of the program as well as the overall campus atmosphere, and that can hardly be the case if it’s literally terrible. I’m also aware of several singers there who’ve gone on to conservatories in the east for MM degrees, so while there may be some amateur warblers in the chorus, it’s not useful to paint the entire performance side of the dept. with the same brush. </p>
<p>(And it’s clear we’re discussing Berkeley as a destination for music performance, as in scholarly respects it is peerless).</p>
<p>I’m challenging your statements but would welcome mine being challenged as well. What exactly do both of you mean when you say conservatory kids are “punished” when they go to Berkeley?</p>
<p>Mamenyu and N8Ma—Bashing the UC’s is now one of the most popular spectator sports on CC. I’m just a little surprised to find that sort of behavior here in the music forum.</p>
<p>Given what I have seen on some other CC forums, I am surprised that our little corner has remained as civil and as mutually supportive as it has been for the last few years.</p>
<p>Perhaps some of the tension is related to a phenomenon that I have noted over the past few decades as both a soloist and a choral singer. During that time, I have seen choruses trending toward wanting singers who can produce a quieter, more blended, straighter tone than was fashionable when I was in college. Perhaps this is unique to my experience, but it seems that there used to be more choruses that were happy to have some fairly large, soloistic voices that could be heard over the orchestra in the loud portions of the Classical and Romantic period warhorses that were the mainstays of their repertoire. Nowadays, it seems like a lot more groups want to get into early music, vocal jazz, pop arrangements, unaccompanied modern choral repertoire and the like that places more of a premium on softer dynamics, vocal blend and the ability to sing with little or no vibrato. </p>
<p>This has exacerbated the long-standing rift between choral directors looking for appropriate voices for their new repertoire and voice teachers who are looking to produce soloists with loud, colorful voices that sometimes use a fair amount of vibrato and other techniques that would be out of place in a chorus. I have heard professional voice teachers complaining about their students participating in choruses as early as the first couple of years of high school because they say that the directors are not allowing them to develop their voices and are trying to beat any sense of individuality out of them.</p>
<p>Personally, I value both types of singing. It is difficult enough to do one or the other well, but particularly so to be really good at both. That can cause hard feelings when someone who is highly valued at one is told that they are not wanted at all for the other. Of course, this is a phenomenon that has happened before and will happen again. Over a generation or two, tastes can change considerably and one style increase in popularity at the expense of another.</p>
<p>aha–so perhaps the “punishing” in question refers to a classical singer at Berkeley who felt “flattened” by the choral director. </p>
<p>You know times are tough when a Trojan is standing up for a UC…</p>
<p>^…USC? And you seemed like such a nice, intelligent person. ;)</p>
<p>Musica(UCLA)</p>
<p>That is so very reasonable, Bassdad! You are one of the main reasons that this forum has been so congenial!
The explanation for the reaction to the UC Women’s chorus may be that it is not one of the choruses that are part of the music department. The music department’s choral director, Marika Kuzma, conducts a Chamber Choral Ensemble and a larger University Chorus, but not a chorus for women.
The UC Women’s Chorale is one of several extracurricular choral music groups. It describes itself as follows:
“The Women’s Chorale is a performance group composed of female undergraduate and graduate students at UC Berkeley who love to sing for FUN! Auditions are held at the beginning of every semester.
The UC Women’s Chorale draws its repertoire from the wealth of choral music for female voices from all historical periods, from classical selections to modern style.”</p>
<p>I have heard the department chorus, years ago, and I thought it was great…but I’m not an expert on choral music by any means. Kuzma is a serious conductor, and demanding on her groups, as I understand.</p>
<p>The women’s chorale is great and has some great soloists. Don’t get this confused with the womens chorus that is taking the place of the chamber choir this year. They are two different groups.</p>
<p>I mentioned this elsewhere but will repeat it here. Berkeley is OK for musicology. The school is lacking in performance, possibly because of budget cuts and partially because of the direction the department wants to take. </p>
<p>Just about everyone at Berkeley knows students at Berkeley who were led to believe they would have opportunities they didn’t wind up having. After they got there, the opportunities disappeared. I’ve heard some horror stories, particularly of students from past years going over the edge after expected opportunities turned into nothing. I haven’t heard of anyone offing themselves this year.</p>
<p>A lot of schools with choral directors for music directors don’t want strong voices. They fear that the choir will be overpowered by powerful singers and, so the powerful and probably the best singers get cut out of the opportunities.</p>
<p>If you are a soloist, pick a school with a music director with an opera or solo performance background.</p>
<p>Non music majors have it the easiest as there is an ensemble music program that is higher quality than the regular music program. It won’t give you any units, though. Most of the ensemble practices conflict with music department choirs and students usually can’t do both.</p>
<p>I would suggest that performance students considering Berkeley pick another major and join the ensemble groups.</p>
<p>Well, here we go again: the UC Berkeley music department is tops in music history; Cal does not offer a performance degree - instead the undergraduate program is a “music” degree, with music history, ethno, performance, and theory requirements, like most BA programs. The graduate program offers no performance, and it does not particularly encourage it, either - it is academic. It has an orchestra with a long-standing conductor; choruses with a long-standing choral director, and lots of chamber music coaches; there are concerto competitions with the orchestra, there are noon concert recital opportunities, there are several generous music performance awards for music majors, including the Hertz fellowship for study for up to a year overseas. Cal does not have an instrumental performance faculty (though perhaps some of the pianists on the faculty offer lessons…and there is a small subsidy for lessons), but does offer courses in conducting. Whether someone or other was disappointed by “promises” I can’t speak to…anecdotal information is often unreliable…but students would do well to go into programs with their eyes open, after thorough investigation of opportunities.</p>
<p>This thread has spun far away from it’s origins, but I have to add something to take it yet further…
BassDad,thank you, you have hit that nail right on the head. There no longer seems to be a place for young singers with larger voices in choruses/choirs at the school,county or state level here. The kids who make All County/All State need to sing as the directors demand, or they may be subject to public browbeating and humilation at the hands of directors who should certainly know better. My D held on as long as she could, but after a miserable experience at an All-County during her junior year- and the director of that group is very well known-she never participated again. The man decreed that all 300+ would sound a certain way and he had one day to quite literally, force them into submission.There was no instruction, no learning experience and no pleasant memories, just a very sore throat and a few days of total vocal rest (and she only “marked” some of the selections so as not to cause permanent damage).
After that, my D’s voice teacher told her that when someone said,“You aren’t blending, your voice is too big”, she should simply say,“Thank you” and leave if she wasn’t appreciated! D went one step futher and selected a college which had no choral requirement whatsoever!
You are correct when you said that there used to be a place for those larger voices-they still participate as “section leaders” in many larger church choirs- but they are not wanted any more at even the highest student levels. It’s a shame because I think it’s a loss to both sides.</p>