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Welcome
Students in the Music Department at UC Santa Cruz have extraordinary performance, composition, and professionalization opportunities. All instrument and voice faculty are celebrated professional musicians, who provide unparalleled guidance for students in performance and professional development. Ensemble courses culminate in an end-of-quarter performance, providing students with regular performance opportunities in a world-class recital hall.
News & Events
Americo Paredes Prize Recognizes Professor Russell Rodriguez
Please join the Music Department in congratulating Assistant Professor Russell Rodriguez as the 2024 Américo Paredes Prize! The Paredes Prize recognizes exemplary achievements that build upon his cross-disciplinary, socially engaged legacy which recognizes excellence in integrating scholarship and engagement with the people and communities one studies.
EmpowHer Sound: A seminar to help pave the way for women in music
A seminar to help pave the way for women in music. As part of Arts Dean Celine’s Parreñas Shimizu’s division wide effort to encourage diversity in the arts, UC Santa Cruz will be hosting EmpowHer Sound, a three hour exploration of a music production for women.
ASCAP Foundation Awards Dept. Chair and Professor Amy C. Beal
Please join the Music Department in congratulating Department Chair and Professor, Amy C. Beal who has been awarded an ASCAP Foundation Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award in the field of concert music for her monograph: Terrible Freedom: The Life and Work of Lucia Dlugoszewski, published by University of California Press.
Iolanthe: A satirical classic from Gilbert & Sullivan
Iolanthe may not be Gilbert & Sullivan’s best known work but according to music lecturer Sheila Willey “I actually think the music is more interesting and a little bit more sophisticated, but not less accessible,” than their other productions. The upcoming performance of the operetta at UC Santa Cruz marks the first time in five years the music department has put on a Gilbert & Sullivan show since they did Pirates of Penzance in 2019
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
The UCSC Music Department continues to work through a four stage DEI plan. Stage one involved a four year engagement among faculty to change music’s curriculum to be more globally inclusive and nationally representative. The proposed revisions were approved in the spring of 2020 and launched in the fall of 2020. Stage two, published on our website in the spring of 2020, involved an explicit statement of solidarity with BIPOC communities and a commitment to anti-racist practices, pedagogies and culture. Stage three involves implementing our revised curriculum and our expressed commitments in our departmental pledge. Stage four is to identify what more we need to do.
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