Hampshire College

Hampshire’s Music Program is unique in its approach to music performance, scholarship, composition, theory, and improvisation. Students are encouraged to engage in an interdisciplinary process to understand music as a creative expression and its role in culture.

Hampshire’s music offerings include topics in ethnomusicology, jazz, and electronic and computer music. Courses in improvisation, composition, and theory prepare students to move beyond the conventional frames of perceiving and performing music. Through the Five College consortium, students study traditional Western classical music as well as a wide range of theory and performance courses.

Sample First-Year Course
Jazz Ensemble Seminar I
In this performance-based introductory class, students will begin to develop the skills and techniques of jazz performance, including ensemble playing and improvisation. Students will study the forms and concepts of jazz composition and theory and apply them in the composition and performance of repertoire. They will learn to compose elements of jazz pieces and will present their original work in a spring concert performance. There will be assigned readings and a short, final paper. This course is open to all instrumentalists and vocalists who want to acquire proficiency in the basic elements of jazz. Students are expected to have a basic music theory background (Musical Beginnings or equivalent) and reasonable proficiency on their instrument, including basic scales and rudimentary reading ability.

Facilities and Resources
The Music and Dance Building in the Longsworth Arts Village contains classrooms, practice rooms, a recital hall, an aural training lab, a computer music studio, and an eight-track recording studio. Other campus resources include the Harold F. Johnson Library’s collection of books, scores, periodicals, films, videos, and recordings. Extensive music collections of the Five College libraries are also available to Hampshire students.

Ensembles include the Hampshire College Chorus, which presents a major program every semester, several jazz groups, old time music and contradance bands, and a steel band ensemble. Student-organized bands and music groups in jazz, folk, pop, rock, punk, and a capella, to name just a few, are integral to the music program. The music program supports these endeavors through providing rehearsal space, performance venues, and coaching. Several instrumental groups at the other colleges are open to Hampshire students by audition, including the Five College Early Music Program, the University Orchestra, and the Amherst College Jazz Ensemble.

The larger Five College music community is a rich one, with hundreds of musical performances a year sponsored by the colleges and opportunities to hear or play music in numerous local clubs. Private lessons are also available as part of the Five College consortium. The Alan Garely Scholarship fund helps offset the cost of private lessons for Division II and III music concentrators; other funding sources are also available.

Through the Early Music Program, a faculty of distinguished performers and scholars at the Five Colleges, together with the program director, make it possible for students to participate in a wide variety of experiences in the study and performance of music of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the Baroque Era.