It might be of interest that a few of your son’s choices appear in this Forbes article from several years ago:
Just don’t look at the costs in the over six year old article posted above. They are higher now.
While these are someones choices for colleges worth the money (in 2017), I would argue that there are tons of colleges that are worth every penny to the families of students who attend.
But back to the topic of the thread. Enjoy some summer visits. See if you can connect with the applied instrument teachers where you visit. Our not music major kid was able to do so and these were wonderfully helpful to the kid when deciding where to apply (or not)
Deleted, no longer relevant.
If he still wants cold and rural, take a look at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. It has an amazing music program, that is also accessible to non majors. When I went there, my teacher would fly back to Juilliard for her own voice lessons. The campus is beautiful and was literally surrounded by corn fields.