The department s scholars have been chosen to cover a broad range of music and interpretive approaches, including Renaissance and baroque music, Italian opera, jazz, African music and ethnomusicology, recent American music, aesthetics, performance theory, feminist criticism, and gender studies. The department has a fine performance faculty of over thirty members, experienced musicians trained at such institutions as Eastman , Yale , Boston Conservatory , and the Manhattan School of Music . The director of jazz performance has toured and recorded with Quincy Jones, Mel Torme, Bruce Hornsby and others, and has released a commercial recording of original compositions. Usually there are about fifty music majors. Some continue professionally in music, but many have careers in other areas such as law or medicine.
Many students combine a major in music with a major or minor in another department.
Majors have extensive contact with faculty. Classes for the major are small, ranging from five to twenty-five students, and all are taught by faculty members. Consultation with the chair of the department or any other faculty member is readily available to all students. The largest in the commonwealth, the Music Library contains over 50,000 books and scores and 32,000 sound recordings. Students may borrow recordings and videos as well as books and scores.