Music

The Music Program in the Fine and Performing Arts Department at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts offers a Music Concentration and Music Minor within the Performing Arts degree.  

Drummer

MCLA's music faculty maintains that music education within the context of a Liberal Arts Education is one of the best paths for music study in the 21st Century. Recently, The College Music Society released a manifesto for progressive change in the undergraduate preparation of music majors:

The creative and expressive dimensions of music have been progressing rapidly over the past several decades.  Factors include an expanding, interconnected global society with its cross-cultural influences, crossover stylistic expressions, electronic as well as acoustic performance and production, advances in technology, access and transmission afforded by the internet and digital media, and growing creative impulses for many real-world musicians in the form of improvisatory and compositional endeavors.  The task force sees these evolutionary changes in two ways: 1) as untold opportunities for musicians to embrace the ubiquity of music interest and fascination across wide segments of populations and society; and 2) as a return to certain fundamentals of musical understanding, craft, and artistic expression that have been largely absent  from longstanding models of music curriculum and teaching in our colleges and universities.

The MCLA music faculty believes that the music student who has the fundamentals of musical understanding, craft and artistic expression, coupled with a creative expression developed in the larger Liberal Arts design has greater opportunities than ever before for careers, advanced degrees and further application of their acquired skills from higher education and specifically from MCLA.

Saxophone playersMusic Degrees

Students can purse several different degree options in Music including:

Music Courses

MCLA offers a wide variety of courses in music, performance opportunities for solo and ensemble participation and preparation for internships, graduate programs and employment.

music courses

For more information contact Department Chair Jerome Socolof or Department Administrative Assistant Terrie Pratt