ckk+@andrew.cmu.edu (Chris Koenigsberg) (05/08/91)
I'm looking for some possibly helpful last-minute advice, and I thought the subject might be interesting to the comp.music readership (more so than the latest question about MIDI on someone's PC :-). I have been accepted by two grad school programs, and I am trying to decide which to enroll in. It's either the Master's degree program at Mills College in Oakland CA (MFA in Electronic Music and the Recording Media), or at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill (MA in Composition, specializing in computer music). I have to reach a decision pretty soon and I'm sort of going nuts in the process :-) since I'm working a professional more-than-40-hours-per-week job, without much time for making phone calls, visiting the library, etc. that is necessary to figure these things out. Any information, opinions, anecdotes, etc. on either place would be greatly appreciated. Please respond via email, to ckk+@andrew.cmu.edu. I can summarize for the net if there are any interesting replies. Chris Brown is currently the acting director of Mills College's CCM, Center for Contemporary Music (I guess David Rosenboom is gone for good, to CalArts), and Alvin Curran will be a visiting professor there this year. At Northwestern, Amnon Wolman, assistant professor of composition, is now directing the computer music center, and Gary Kendall (former director of the CMC) has returned to teach some classes. Examples of the kind of considerations I have to sort through: Mills's electronic music program is very small and non-traditional, while Northwestern U. has a whole School of Music, a Composition Dept. within that, and a separate Computer Music Center in a different academic building, which has just been incorporated into the composition dept. Mills has had its facilities for a long time, even including an old Buchla Model 100, the first portable modular analog synthesizer, and lots of custom-built stuff, including their own software language HMSL. Northwestern has new facilities - they've had a Pyramid for a year or two and they just got some NeXT stations. Presumably at Northwestern, being a Composition student officially, I'd get some traditional composition background in addition to working with computers, psychoacoustics, signal processing, synthesis, etc. - there's some kind of diagnostic exam for incoming composition students, and they recommend remedial classes to make up areas where one lacks background. And Northwestern has a Doctoral program in composition, which I could continue on to after getting the Master's if I still am interested by then :-) At Mills, though, I would guess that any time left after electronic/computer work would be spent on very way-out experimental things. (I know, you're probably just going to ask me "which would you prefer, traditional theory or experimental things?") And Mills does not offer any doctoral degrees. (but I could go somewhere else for a doctorate if I wanted to, with a Mills MFA under my belt) I also play the contrabass; Mills has no bass players, no bass teacher (but I can sign a contract with one from the outside to teach me at the school, apparently), no school orchestra, and very few string players, while Northwestern has Jeff Bradetich, executive director of the International Society of Bassists, on their faculty, in the Instrumental/String Dept. Mills has lots of inter-disciplinary projects going on; their facilities are open to the community on a limited basis, and I have heard of collaborations between video artists and musicians, for example. Famous musical personalities stop by and hang out there to do some projects. But I have NOT heard about any such things at Northwestern - are there interesting multi-media happenings going on at Northwestern, that no one there has mentioned to me? Of course, Mills is also in the Bay Area, while Northwestern is in the Chicago area. Finally, Mills is offering me a departmental assistantship to cover tuition, in return for 12-15 hrs. per week staffing their electronic studio facility. Northwestern is offering me a fellowship in exchange for 10 hrs. per week of as-yet-unspecified work, that still leaves an additional $4,000 tuition which I will have to cover myself (Northwestern's aid offer is actually a little higher than Mills', but their total tuition is almost double Mills' too). Overall, I get the impression that at Mills, I will be plugged into a vital community where art is happening, but where people don't pay much attention to more traditional things like orchestras :-) while at Northwestern, I'll be isolated in an academic environment, where there will be resources to pick up a lot of background material and do a lot of studying and experimenting on my own, but there will not be much of an exciting community happening. Can anyone corroborate these impressions before I make the wrong decision ? :-) Many thanks, Chris Koenigsberg ckk+@andrew.cmu.edu
davisonj@en.ecn.purdue.edu (John M Davison) (05/08/91)
In article <kc9j_oK00VQfE0r8Jm@andrew.cmu.edu> ckk+@andrew.cmu.edu (Chris Koenigsberg) writes: >vital community where art is happening, but where people don't pay much >attention to more traditional things like orchestras :-) while at >Northwestern, I'll be isolated in an academic environment, where there >will be resources to pick up a lot of background material and do a lot >of studying and experimenting on my own, but there will not be much of >an exciting community happening. Well, you'll be practically in Chicago (about 5 minutes away), and whether or not you would consider that an "exciting" community is up to you. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is there. The School of the Art Institute of Chicago is there too, but don't expect a whole lot of creativity to flow from that institution: Over the last ten years, the quality of education there has been severely degraded. Recently I went to a display of Master's theses in one of their galleries, and 60% of what I saw there was just plain crap, stuff that high school freshman art students can easily outdo, both conceptually and in terms of the quality of execution. Part of the Art Institute's problem is money. No one wants to give money to a school that supports controversial artists (e.g. the guy who painted Mayor Washington wearing women's underwear, and the guy whose exhibit encouraged attendees to step on a U.S. flag). Wergo has a CD out which has a work of Amnon Wolman on it; I don't know if that would help you or not. Iannis Xenakis taught at Mills for a while. I don't know of any big names showing up at Northwestern to teach, but last fall there was a John Pierce 80th birthday celebration which pulled in Max Mathews, Jean-Claude Risset, Richard Boulanger, Richard Ashley, and other famous people. So Wolman evidently has some ties. That's all I know; I hope it helps. John Davison davisonj@ecn.purdue.edu