<p>Hi,</p>
<p>I'm looking for jazz studies .I pley piano.</p>
<p>Is columbia college in chicago good??</p>
<p>Depaul,roosevelt,northwestern,columbia can anyone rank them ??Which is best??</p>
<p>1)
2)
3)
4)</p>
<p>Ok, first... Columbia College is not in Chicago... and I'm not quite sure about its music department.</p>
<p>there is columbia college in chicago.</p>
<p>There is a Columbia College on Michigan Avenue in Chicago -- specializing in the visual and performing arts but I am not familiar with it. I would say that it does not have a national reputation in classical training in music but I have no first hand information about its programs.</p>
<p>Northwestern is the most well-known of your list. Others may know about the piano performance area per se.</p>
<p>Northwestern's jazz department is undergoing some serious change, and they continue to be without a director.</p>
<p>I know kids who have gone to Columbia College for video and audio engineering, not for real performance training.</p>
<p>I have heard Northern Illinois has a reasonable jazz department.</p>
<p>You thinking about Southern Illinois at Edwardsville possibly? Tenor sax HS classmate of DD went there for jazz...</p>
<p>Interesting, we live in Northern Illinois and we haven't heard anything about nor know of anyone who goes to NIU for music. We know many people in the music programs at NW, Illinois, Columbia, DePaul, Roosevelt and Illinois State. Know a professor of Jazz at Vander Cook College in Chicago too.</p>
<p>Besides no knowledge of Northern Illinois University, music programs at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, Eastern Illinois University and Western Illinois University are all unknowns.</p>
<p>I don't live in Illinois, so have no first hand information at all, but the faculty looks pretty reasonable to me (Willie Pickens, Robert Chappell)!</p>
<p>NIU has an excellent jazz program; the faculty is excellent and the director of the program, Ron Carter, is nationally regarded as one of the best jazz educators around. He has just been elected, I believe, as Vice President of IAJE. We are from Chicago and my son my son just started at MSM, but had he stayed in the Chicago area, he would have gone to Northern. Several of his friends are there and are very pleased.</p>
<p>I should also add that Ron Carter has run a summer music program for years in the Chicago area, the South Shore Youth Jazz Ensemble. Out of that program this year there are students starting at Juilliard, MSM, New School and NYU. The kid starting at New School transferred from Columbia College in Chicago and there is another kid from the program studying at Columbia now, so although I don't have first hand knowledge of the program, I do think it is worth checking out. The Chicago Jazz Ensemble, directed now by John Faddis, is based out of Columbia College and I believe some of its members are on faculty there. DePaul has a good program, I understand;it seems to be particularly attractive to bass players and trumpet players. I think Northwestern has a solid program and there are aspects of it that I like very much, but the jazz department has been in flux for over a year, and I get the impression that it will be in transition for awhile, so I don't know if now is the best time to apply.</p>
<p>For piano, you would have a hard time finding a better teacher than Willie Pickens. I know him personally and not only is he a fantastic musician, he is one of the nicest people I have ever met. Check out the faculty at these schools( and you should probably add Indiana U to your list), and see who appeals to you most.</p>