Our program offers the best features of a music conservatory and a traditional liberal arts experience. You are challenged in the studio and classroom to be a first-rate performer, composer and scholar. Your professors work closely with you to tailor the program to your needs and interests. You can major in music or music and technology, with a concentration in performance, theory, ethnomusicology, music education, history or composition. Master classes and lectures will provide regular opportunities for you to work with internationally known performers, composers and scholars. Through Connections, you’ll integrate your music studies with your choice of an academic Pathway, and then practice everything you’ve learned in an internship. The discipline and critical-thinking skills you develop will prepare you for graduate school or a career in a number of fields.
Performance and private study opportunities
Public performances are a priority. You can perform during one of the many recitals each semester or join one of several ensembles, including the concert band, jazz ensemble, orchestra, percussion ensemble and chamber choir. If you are interested in musical theater, you can audition for one of our annual shows, produced in collaboration with the theater department. We also offer free music lessons to qualified students through the Jack Niblack '98 Music Lessons Fund.
Facilities
Cummings Arts Center boasts technology-rich classrooms, the Greer Music Library, two performance halls and numerous studios and practice rooms. We are also an "All-Steinway School." In Cummings, you have access to a recording studio, a control room with connectivity to two major recital halls and a production-quality electronic music studio.
An intensive study of the rudiments of music theory with particular emphasis on the development of musicianship skills.
MUS 122 Making Music at the Keyboard
Scales, intervals, chords at the keyboard. Introduction to melodic construction and harmonic progressions through exercises and selected piano pieces.
MUS 102 Music through Time and Society
A study of the significant works in music history from the Middle Ages to the present with an emphasis on developing skills for the art of listening.
MUS 132 Tonal Theory I
Introduction to the harmonic practices of the 18th and 19th centuries. Emphasis on writing skills as well as on the analysis of representative works and the development of aural skills.
MUS 323 Post-Tonal Theory
Theoretical and analytical study of 20th- and 21st-century music, focusing on developments in the areas of pitch, rhythm, texture, and form.
MUS 203 Electroacoustic Music I
Introduction to composing with the materials of electronic music.
Foundational Theory for Musicians, Making Music at the Keyboard, Music through Time and Society, Tonal Theory I, Post-Tonal Theory, Electroacoustic Music I, Music of the World, History of Jazz, History of Western Music, Ethnomusicology: The Social Science of Music, American Music, Composition, Jazz Harmony, Counterpoint, Counterpoint
People You Might Work With
John P. Anthony
Professor of Music, College Organist
John Anthony is the college organist. Anthony's courses include Making Music at the Keyboard, Basic Keyboard Skills, Seminar in Music History, and History of Western Music.
Theodore Arm
Adjunct Professor of Music, Violin
Theodore "Teddy" Arm has delighted audiences throughout the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia with his artistry. He has appeared as soloist, recitalist and guest artist with such well-known organizations as The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Group for Contemporary Music, New York's Festival Chamber Players and the Boston Chamber Music Society.
Thomas Brown
Adjunct Assistant Professor of Music, trumpet
Thomas Brown was born and raised in Sparta, Michigan and started playing the trumpet at the age of 12. He joined the Connecticut College faculty in 2014 as an instructor of trumpet.
Gary A. Buttery
Adjunct Associate Professor of Music, Director of Bands and Jazz Ensembles
From his hometown of Omaha, Nebraska, Gary attended the University of Kansas and the University of Northern Colorado where he received his Bachelor and two masterss degrees in tuba and music theory and composition. An active performer, conductor, educator, and composer, he is published by Cimarron Music and Theodore Presser.
John Clark
Visiting Assistant Professor of Music
John Clark has been a visiting assistant professor since 2004 working with the jazz band and teaching American Music, the History of Jazz and the History of Western Music, a first-year seminar dealing with jazz on film, as well as various music theory and Introduction to Music courses.
Christine Coyle
Adjunct Professor of Music
A native of New York, currently living in Essex, Connecticut, cellist Christine Coyle is a respected performer and experienced teacher of cello.
Ian Frenkel
Adjunct Instructor in Music
Ian (Yahn) Frenkel, an expatriate of the former Soviet Union, is active as an arranger, conductor, composer, educator, and pianist in the New England area, and currently holds the position of the Director of Cadet Instrumental Music and Bands at the United States Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut.
Patricia L. Harper
Adjunct Professor of Music
Patricia Harper, flutist, enjoys a career as performer, educator, and scholar. On the faculty at Connecticut College since 1975, she directed a "Back to Bach" series for ten years, a "Women in Music" for six years, and is a founding member of the Connecticut College Woodwind Quintet.
Maksim Ivanov Zhdanovskikh
Adjunct Associate Professor of Music
Maksim "Maks" Ivanov’s artistic career spans two continents and several art forms. As a singer, songwriter, poet and actor, he has appeared in opera, musical theater and concerts, on movie and TV screens, music festivals and clubs in the United States and his native Russia.
Peter Jarvis
Adjunct Associate Professor of Music
Over the years Peter Jarvis, an active percussionist, conductor, composer, copyist and educator, has played with and conducted new music and percussion ensembles in New York, New Jersey and elsewhere including the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Group for Contemporary Music, Talujon Percussion Quartet, The New York Art Ensemble and others including several distinguished orchestras and choruses.
Arthur Kreiger
Sylvia Pasternack Marx Professor of Music, Fellow, Ammerman Center for Arts and Technology
Arthur Kreiger has been composing for four decades. Performed worldwide, his catalog of works contains pieces for orchestra, chorus, mixed chamber ensembles, solo instruments and the electronic medium.
Mark McCormick
Adjunct Associate Professor of Music
Mark McCormick has performed in a wide variety of musical genres throughout the United States, Canada, and Japan. He has been a member of the United States Coast Guard Band since 1996, and with that organization has performed for three presidents, numerous foreign heads of state, and other high level dignitaries, as well as numerous tours across the United States and Far East.
James McNeish
Adjunct Associate Professor of Music, Classical Guitar Performance, Acoustical recording engineer
Jim McNeish teaches courses in solo classical guitar performance, Guitar Ensemble/Chamber Music, and Acoustics for Musicians. He also runs the College's Elizabeth Gilbert Fortune Recording Studio (a multi-room facility incorporating Fortune Hall, Evans Hall, Oliva Hall, a soundproof isolation booth and Harkness Chapel) and assists Professor Arthur Kreiger with electronic music and computer music courses in the Cummings Electronic and Digital Sound Studios.
Wendy K. Moy
Assistant Professor of Music, Director of Choral Activities
Wendy Moy hails from Washington State where she taught secondary music for 12 years and directed choirs at the University of Washington (UW), Seattle Pacific University (SPU) and Tacoma Community College. Also active within the community, she was a guest conductor with the Seattle Women’s Chorus and Bellevue Chamber Chorus.
Sean Nelson
Adjunct Instructor of Music
Sean Nelson plays trombone in the U.S. Coast Guard Band and the U.S. Coast Guard Dixieland Jazz Band. In addition, he is staff arranger for the concert band and music director and lead trombonist for the Guardians Big Band.
Patrice Newman
Adjunct Assistant Professor of Music
Pianist Patrice Newman collaborates frequently in chamber music and art song. She has performed in concerts in the New York area including the Riverside Church, Hudson Highlands Music Festival, Peconic Chamber Orchestra, and in a Weill Recital Hall chamber music debut as a winner of the Artists International competition.
Rebecca Noreen
Adjunct Associate Professor of Music
Rebecca Noreen, bassoonist, was a winner of the Artist International Competition in New York City with the Kammer Quintet which appeared in two recitals in Carnegie Recital Hall.
Kelli O'Connor
Adjunct Instructor in Music, Clarinet
Clarinetist Kelli O’Connor enjoys a varied and vibrant career as a soloist, educator and chamber and orchestral musician. A founding member of the Chameleon Arts Ensemble of Boston and the Radiance Woodwind Quintet, Ms. O’Connor is principal clarinet of the Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra and a former member of the Connecticut Orchestra, and appears frequently with the Vermont Symphony, Hartford Symphony Orchestra and as acting principal clarinet of the New Haven Symphony.
Kumi Ogano
Adjunct Associate Professor in Music
Pianist Kumi Ogano has earned universal acclaim as one of the authoritative performers of music by Japanese composers Toru Takemitsu and Akira Miyoshi. "The New York Times" praised her playing as “gracefully voiced, sensitively shaped, and richly emotional,” and "The Asahi" wrote, “Her rich musicality and technical virtuosity are simply amazing.”
Megan Sesma
Adjunct Assistant Professor of Music, Harp
Harpist Megan Sesma has performed in venues that range from Tchaikovsky Hall in Moscow Russia, the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, Carnegie Hall and numerous concert halls in South America. Her experience has placed her under the batons of some great conductors ranging from Neeme Jarvi and Yuri Temirkanov to John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith. Ms. Sesma has also shared the stage with such legends of contemporary and popular music as Quincy Jones, Herbie Hancock, Diana Krall and Dianne Reeves.
Mark Seto
Associate Professor of Music, Director, Connecticut College Orchestra
Mark Seto leads a wide-ranging musical life as a musicologist, conductor, teacher, and violinist. He directs the Connecticut College orchestra and teaches music history, theory, conducting, and orchestration.
Samantha Talmadge
Adjunct Assistant Professor of Music
Vocalist Samantha Talmadge has performed as a soloist with many major symphony orchestras, including the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, Hartford Symphony, New Britain Symphony and Chatter Chamber Ensemble. She has been a performer with professional companies such as Musica Romantica and Teatro Nuevo Mexico in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and has also performed with Santa Fe Opera’s outreach program in Donizetti’s "The Nightbell."
Joshua Thomas
Adjunct Instructor in Music, saxophone
Saxophonist Joshua Thomas has been a member of the U.S. Coast Guard Band since 2000 and recently joined the Connecticut College music department as an adjunct instructor.
Margaret (Midge) Thomas
Professor of Music, President, New England Conference of Music Theorists, 2013-2015
Devoted to teaching, Midge Thomas strives to share with her students the power music theory, aural skills, and analysis have to open new paths for understanding and performing music. Courses include Foundational Theory for Musicians, Tonal Theory, Counterpoint, Post-Tonal Theory, Service-Learning Practicum, and Music Analysis.
Jaime L. Thorne
Adjunct Instructor of Music, French horn
After nearly four years with the U.S. Coast Guard Band, Jaime Thorne left the Coast Guard with an Honorable Discharge and has resumed her focus on orchestral music, playing most recently with the Hartford Symphony, the Nutmeg Symphony and Penn's Woods, a music festival at the Pennsylvania State University. She was most recently principal horn with the Breckenridge Music Festival.
A: I wanted to pursue music within a broader liberal arts setting. And when I visited campus, the students and professors were incredibly friendly and welcoming. I felt at home. I was also interested in shared governance and the honor code.
Q: Did you study abroad?
A: I went to the Accademia dell'Arte in Arezzo, Italy, the fall semester of my junior year. The ADA had 32 music and theater students living together on campus and working with international faculty in a picturesque villa near vineyards and olive orchards.
Q: What role has the College's career development and internship program played for you?
A: The resume-building and personality workshops made an impression and helped me get organized. My career adviser reviewed my resume and helped me narrow down my job and grad school searches. I am realizing my dream and pursuing graduate studies in bassoon performance.
