This article contains promotional content .(February 2021) |
Established | 1895 |
---|---|
Parent institution | Northwestern University |
Dean | Jonathan Bailey Holland |
Academic staff | 125 |
Undergraduates | 425 |
Location | , , U.S. 42°03′02″N87°40′50″W / 42.050556°N 87.680556°W |
Campus | Suburban |
Website | music.northwestern.edu |
The Bienen School of Music (formally the Henry and Leigh Bienen School of Music) is the music and performance arts school of Northwestern University. It is located on Northwestern University's campus in Evanston, Illinois, United States.
The school was previously known as the Northwestern University School of Music from 1895 until September 2008, when it was renamed to honor retiring University president Henry Bienen and his wife, Leigh Buchanan Bienen. [1] [2]
The Bienen School offers performance degrees in all orchestral instruments, piano, guitar, voice, jazz studies, and conducting, as well as academic degrees in composition, musicology, music history, music education, and music theory and cognition. It offers a dual-degree undergraduate program in liberal arts, journalism, engineering, communication, or education and social policy in conjunction with those respective university schools. The Bienen School has approximately 125 faculty members, 400 undergraduate students, and 200 graduate students. [3] [4]
The Bienen School of Music is one of the oldest degree-granting music schools in the United States. Its beginnings date to 1873, when the Northwestern Female College and the Evanston College for Ladies were incorporated into the Northwestern University Woman's College. This new institution established the Conservatory of Music, and in 1891, Peter Christian Lutkin was named its director. In 1895, it became the School of Music, with Lutkin serving as its first dean.
During Lutkin's 33-year tenure, a new music building opened, the "Beehive" practice facility was constructed, and the first honorary doctor of music degree was awarded in 1915 to Frederick Stock, conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Lutkin was succeeded in 1928 by Carl Beecher, who had earned the school's first bachelor's degree. Music education professor John W. Beattie was appointed the school's third dean in 1936. During his administration, the graduate program was expanded and Lutkin Hall constructed in 1941. George Howerton assumed the deanship in 1951. Under his leadership, the school established an opera program, began a series of guest artist master classes, and increased the music library's holdings. He was succeeded in 1971 by Thomas Miller, whose tenure brought revisions to the undergraduate curriculum as well as the opening of Pick-Staiger Concert Hall in 1975 and Regenstein Hall of Music in 1977. Bernard J. Dobroski became the school's sixth dean in 1990. His term expanded the course offerings for non-majors and community engagement programs.
Toni-Marie Montgomery served as dean from 2003 to 2023. Under her leadership the school has established two international awards, the Jean Gimbel Lane Prize in Piano Performance and the Michael Ludwig Nemmers Prize in Music Composition; established the Institute for New Music; provided all doctor of musical arts candidates with full-tuition scholarships; opened the Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Center for the Musical Arts; appointed the Dover Quartet as the school's quartet-in-residence; and secured funding for a tour to Asia in 2018 by the Northwestern University Symphony Orchestra.
Since September 1, 2023, Jonathan Bailey Holland, alumnus of the Curtis Institute of Music and Harvard University and previous chair of the music department at Carnegie Mellon University, has been the dean of the Bienen School of Music.
The Bienen School of Music offers 15 academic majors in six degree programs. The Bienen School offers programs in the following areas of study: [5]
The Bienen School of Music currently sponsors 20 ensembles: the Symphony Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra, Baroque Music Ensemble, Symphonic Wind Ensemble, Symphonic Band, Contemporary Music Ensemble, Philharmonia, Concert Band, Jazz Orchestra, Jazz Small Ensembles, University Chorale, University Singers, Bienen Contemporary/Early Vocal Ensemble, Alice Millar Chapel Choir, Northwestern Camerata, Brass Choir, Cello Ensemble, Saxophone Ensemble, Percussion Ensemble, and Guitar Ensemble. Some ensembles are open to music majors only. In addition, students can form chamber music groups of their own. Victor Yampolsky is the director of orchestras, [6] Donald Nally is the director of choral organizations, [7] and Mallory Thompson is the director of bands.
The Bienen School of Music currently hosts four professional guest artist subscription series.
Established in 1993, the Segovia Classical Guitar Series brings artists and young rising stars, including winners of the Guitar Foundation of America International Competition, to Chicago's North Shore. Recently, the series has welcomed classical guitarists Eduardo Fernandez, Ekachai Jearakul, lutenist Paul O'Dette, the Assad Brothers, and Raphaella Smits, among others.[ citation needed ]
The Skyline Piano Artist Series was established in 2015 to bring pianists from around the world to perform in the Mary B. Galvin Recital Hall. Recently, the series has hosted Jonathan Biss, Emanuel Ax, Sergei Babayan, Jorge Federico Osorio, Maria João Pires, and 2017 and 2022 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition winners Yekwon Sunwoo and Yunchan Lim.
The Tichio-Finnie Vocal Master Class Series debuted in 2014 and has featured such vocalists as Renée Fleming, Isabel Leonard, Marilyn Horne, Matthew Polenzani, and composer Jake Heggie. The series allows Bienen School voice and opera program students to perform for and be coached by opera professionals.
The Winter Chamber Music Festival hosts guest artists and Bienen School faculty for three weekends each January. This series is focused heavily on string quartets and other chamber ensembles and has featured artists including the Dover Quartet, Pinchas Zukerman, Simone Lamsma, and the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio.
In fall 2003, the Bienen School of Music established the Michael Ludwig Nemmers Prize in Music Composition, a biennial award honoring classical music composers of outstanding achievement. Nominations are solicited worldwide and the winner is determined by a three-member selection committee, comprising individuals of widely recognized stature in the music community. The prize includes a cash award of $100,000 and a performance by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The recipient is expected to participate in two to three nonconsecutive weeks of residency at the Bienen School of Music interacting with students and faculty. In addition to the Michael Ludwig Nemmers Prize in Music Composition, Northwestern University administers four other Nemmers prizes: the Frederic Esser Nemmers Prize in Mathematics, the Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize in Economics, the Mechthild Esser Nemmers Prize in Medical Science, and the Nemmers Prize in Earth Sciences.
Past winners include:
In 2005, the Bienen School of Music established the biennial Jean Gimbel Lane Prize in Piano Performance to honor pianists who have achieved the highest levels of national and international recognition. Winners receive a $50,000 cash award and spend two to three non-consecutive weeks in residence at the Bienen School of Music, interacting with students and faculty. As part of one of the residency weeks, winners offer a public performance.
Past winners include:
In its earlier Days, the Bienen School of Music was housed in two buildings. The Music Administration Building was designed by Gurdon P. Randall and built in 1873 as the Women's College of Northwestern University. In 1901 it was named for Frances E. Willard, and served as a women's dormitory. It became the home of the Northwestern School of Music in 1940, and was renovated in 1988. [8] Vocal studies, piano, and composition departments were housed in this building, in addition to administrative offices and academic classrooms. The organ department, which formerly occupied a wing in this building, was controversially closed in 2003.
Regenstein Hall of Music was built in 1977. This building sits on the "Lakefill" and overlooks Lake Michigan. It houses studios for the instrumental and conducting programs, practice rooms, a rehearsal room, and a recital hall.
In February 2008, the University announced that a new $105 million five-story building was to be erected as part of a renovation plan for the southeast corner of the campus. Construction began in June 2012. The new building, named after donors Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan, opened in Fall 2015. The building unites all music faculty and departments in a common location for the first time since the early 1970s and includes classrooms, teaching labs, teaching studios, practice rooms, student lounges, a choral rehearsal room and library, an opera rehearsal room and black box theater, and a 400-seat recital hall. [9] [10] [11]
Designed by Chicago-based architectural firm Goettsch Partners, the music building is situated on the lakefront, connected to Regenstein Hall of Music. The Ryan Center houses teaching studios, faculty and administrative offices, 10 classrooms, 99 practice rooms, and three performance spaces: the Mary B. Galvin Recital Hall, the David and Carol McClintock Choral and Recital Room, and the Shirley Welsh Ryan Opera Theater. The design features a limestone base supporting a primarily glass exterior.
Designed by Edward D. Dart and dedicated in 1975, the Pick-Staiger Concert Hall's 1,000-seat venue is the main performance space not only for the Bienen School but for the university as a whole.
Founded in 1945, the Northwestern University Music Library occupies the second floor of the Charles Deering Library and serves the Bienen School of Music.
The Crane School of Music is located in Potsdam, New York, and is one of three schools which make up the State University of New York (SUNY) at Potsdam.
Thomas Joseph Edmund Adès is a British composer, pianist and conductor. Five compositions by Adès received votes in the 2017 Classic Voice poll of the greatest works of art music since 2000: The Tempest (2004), Violin Concerto (2005), Tevot (2007), In Seven Days (2008), and Polaris (2010).
The Boston University Tanglewood Institute (BUTI) is a summer music training program for students age 10 to 20 in Lenox, Massachusetts, under the auspices of the Boston University College of Fine Arts.
Margaret Eleanor Hillis was an American conductor. She was the founder and first director of the Chicago Symphony Chorus.
Bernard Rands is a British-American contemporary classical composer. He studied music and English literature at the University of Wales, Bangor, and composition with Pierre Boulez and Bruno Maderna in Darmstadt, Germany, and with Luigi Dallapiccola and Luciano Berio in Milan, Italy. He held residencies at Princeton University, the University of Illinois, and the University of York before emigrating to the United States in 1975; he became a U.S. citizen in 1983. In 1984, Rands's Canti del Sole, premiered by Paul Sperry, Zubin Mehta, and the New York Philharmonic, won the Pulitzer Prize for Music. He has since taught at the University of California, San Diego, the Juilliard School, Yale University, and Boston University. From 1988 to 2005 he taught at Harvard University, where he is Walter Bigelow Rosen Professor of Music Emeritus.
The Schulich School of Music is one of the constituent faculties of McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is located at 555, Rue Sherbrooke Ouest. The faculty was named after the benefactor Seymour Schulich.
The Rebecca and John J. Moores School of Music is the music school of the University of Houston. The Moores School offers the Bachelor of Music, Bachelor of Arts in Music, Master of Music, and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees in music performance, conducting, theory and composition, music history and literature, pedagogy, and music education and also offers a Certificate of Music Performance. It is a component of the University of Houston's Kathrine G. McGovern College of the Arts. The Moores School is a fully accredited member of the National Association of Schools of Music (NASM). Its namesakes are UH alumni John Moores and his former wife Rebecca. As of 2023–2024, the Director of the Moores School is Brian Kai Chin.
Donald Nally is an American conductor, chorus master, and professor of conducting, specializing in chamber choirs, opera, and new music. He is conductor of the professional new-music choir, The Crossing, based in Philadelphia. He is the director of both the Westminster Choir and Westminster Symphonic Choir at Westminster Choir College in New Jersey.
The Blair School of Music, located in Nashville, Tennessee, provides a conservatory-caliber undergraduate education in music performance, composition, or integrated music studies within the context of a major research university, Vanderbilt University. Blair also provides music lessons, classes and ensembles to over 800 precollege and adult students each semester. Blair is the youngest and smallest of Vanderbilt's ten constituent schools and colleges.
The Conservatory of Music (COM) is one of eleven schools and colleges at University of the Pacific. It is located on the school’s main campus in Stockton, California.
Alan Heatherington is one of the leading orchestra conductors in Illinois. He has conducted and/or played with virtually all of the major orchestras in the Chicago area. He was the Music Director of Ars Viva Symphony Orchestra, the Lake Forest Symphony Orchestra and the Chicago Master Singers, and is Music Director Emeritus of all three ensembles.
The Conservatory of Music at Wheaton College is a music conservatory located in Wheaton, Illinois. It is both a department and professional school of Wheaton College. It currently has 21 full-time faculty members and approximately 200 undergraduate music majors, and is fully accredited by the National Association of Schools of Music. The Conservatory also operates a Community School of the Arts, serving the music and arts education needs of the surrounding community.
Kevin R. McMahon is an American, orchestra/opera conductor, composer/orchestrator/arranger, clinician/adjudicator, and violinist.
Music of the Baroque is an American professional chorus and orchestra based in Chicago, Illinois.
The Northwestern University Lakefill is a large area of Northwestern University land that was reclaimed from Lake Michigan in 1962–1964 by creating a seawall of limestone blocks quarried in Illinois and Indiana and using landfill materials from the construction of the Port of Indiana. The lakefill resulted from the university's need to expand the campus's physical footprint; Northwestern President J. Roscoe Miller received permission from the town of Evanston and the Illinois legislature to reclaim 74 acres of underwater land. This almost doubled the size of the previously 85 acres campus. In 1968, the lakefill was expanded by an additional 10 acres on the southern end of the campus.
The Faculty of Music at the University of Toronto is one of several professional faculties at the University of Toronto. The Faculty of Music is located at the Edward Johnson Building, just south of the Royal Ontario Museum and north of Queen's Park, west of Museum Subway Station. MacMillan Theatre and Walter Hall are located in the Edward Johnson Building. The Faculty of Music South building contains rehearsal rooms and offices, and the Upper Jazz Studio performance space is located at 90 Wellesley Street West. In January 2021, the Faculty announced Dr. Ellie Hisama as the new Dean starting July 1, 2021.
The Michael Ludwig Nemmers Prize in Music Composition is awarded biennially from the Bienen School of Music at Northwestern University. The prize money is US$100,000 and the prize includes a performance by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The prize is awarded to contemporary classical composers, "who have significantly influenced the field of composition." The award was established in 2003.
Victor Yampolsky is a Russian-born conductor and the son of pianist Vladimir Yampolsky. He was most recently director of orchestras at Northwestern University's Bienen School of Music, a position he had held from 1984 to 2022. He is the music director emeritus of the Omaha Symphony Orchestra, where he was music director from 1995 to 2004. He also is the music director of the Peninsula Music Festival and the honorary director of the Scotia Festival of Music in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Before his appointment to the Omaha Symphony Orchestra, Yampolsky served as the principal conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra of South Africa and as the resident conductor of the Chicago Civic Orchestra, the training ground for younger musicians under the auspices of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
The Southern Illinois University Carbondale School of Music is the music school of Southern Illinois University Carbondale. It is housed in Altgeld Hall, the Old Baptist Foundation Building, and Shryock Auditorium.
Natalia Khoma is a Ukrainian-born cellist. She is the first and only Ukrainian cellist to become a laureate of the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, Russia.