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Jamie
Begian can still recall times as a young adjunct professor in the
1990s when he and fellow faculty members were pleasantly surprised
to encounter an aspiring applicant auditioning for admission to the
WCSU music program who already possessed the technical skills to
perform at the college level. Today he expects to hear the best — a
reflection of Western’s emergence over the past two decades as one
of the region’s premier centers for music performance and education.
“There has been a noticeable change in the
students we see in auditions, the students we accept for the program
and the students who commit here,” said Begian, who last year
succeeded Dean of Visual and Performing Arts Dr. Dan Goble as chair
of the WCSU music and music education department. Thanks to the
sustained commitment of Goble and a strong music faculty who bring
diverse performance and educational skills to the program, he
observed, “we offer as much on the teaching level as any elite music
school to provide students with a quality music education. It’s
highly competitive to get the top students to come here, and I know
for a fact that we compare very well.”
That comes as no surprise to Professor of Music
Dr. Margaret Astrup, who for the past two decades has coordinated
the department’s vocal area of studies. Astrup has witnessed how
Western’s focus on undergraduate music education has challenged her
students to develop their skills in demanding operatic and classical
singing roles that they would not have had the chance to play at
larger music schools.
“Here we focus on the undergraduate experience,”
Astrup said. “Our students come out of Western with more performance
experience than what their peers would have gotten at an elite music
school with an intensive graduate program.” She has found the WCSU
Opera’s production of Gian-Carlo Menotti’s one-act “Amahl and the
Night Visitors,” an annual holiday tradition for 18 years, provides
an excellent introduction for students to singing roles of
increasing difficulty in later productions.
“I look at it as almost like a two-plus-two
degree,” Begian remarked, noting that Western requires students in
the music program to pass a rigorous proficiency test in their area
of performance at the end of their second year of studies. “Some
students are ‘plug and play,’ ready to perform when they arrive
here, but others need more instruction and that’s what we do, we
teach people,” he said. “After they pass the second-year exam,
they’re so much more confident, they feel free to create and
experiment. They’re really on fire!”
As Western’s reputation has grown for providing a strong
foundation in music performance and education, the diverse
experience and strengths of its music faculty also have allowed the
university to meet the wide-ranging career objectives that students
bring to the music program. The undergraduate program offers
curriculum paths to earn the Bachelor of Arts in music, the Bachelor
of Science in music education, or the Bachelor of Music degree in
voice performance, instrumental performance or jazz studies. The
university also offers graduate studies for the Master of Science in
music education, and state certification is pending for the targeted
launch in fall 2011 of a new Bachelor of Music degree program in
audio and music production.
The range of these degree offerings only begins to suggest the
considerable flexibility that Western students have to tailor their
course work to meet the many variations in their career objectives.
As the music department builds on its strengths, the possibilities
continue to grow:
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Western’s innovative jazz
studies program, which has established a solid
reputation for excellence in its field
under the guidance of Goble and
Begian, is poised for the next stage in its
development with the hiring of a new full-time
faculty member in jazz studies in fall 2012. Begian,
an accomplished jazz guitarist, composer and founder
of the critically acclaimed Jamie Begian Big Band,
welcomed the fresh perspectives on jazz theory,
composition and performance that his new colleague
will bring. “It’s really important to have a
diversity of views in any discipline, but jazz in
particular,” he said.
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The department also will hire a new full-time
faculty member in choral music education to start in
fall 2012. Begian views the hiring as an important
enhancement to the breadth of an already strong
music education program, which has established its
role under the guidance of music education
coordinator Dr. Wesley Ball as a leading program in
training music educators for Connecticut schools at
the elementary, middle and high school levels.
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The department has curriculum preparations in place
to launch the new bachelor’s degree program in audio
and music production as early as fall 2012, after it
receives final approval from state education
authorities and accreditation by the National
Association of Schools of Music. Assistant Professor
of Music Dr. Douglas O’Grady will coordinate the new
program, which will offer the first degree at a
Connecticut state university designed to meet the
growing need for music professionals to master the
rapidly advancing technological tools of the
recording industry. “This is the wave of the
future,” Begian observed. “Our program will be
tailored for people who want to create and promote
their own projects as musicians and entrepreneurs.
This will provide the solid skills in musicianship
that a Bachelor of Music degree requires, combined
with business-related courses that today’s aspiring
musician will need to survive.”
Western’s music program has provided the training ground for
promising young instrumental and vocal performers who have pursued
graduate studies at elite schools such as the New England
Conservatory, Manhattan School of Music and New York University, and
gone on to perform professionally in opera, classical music, jazz
and other genres. Yet Astrup emphasized that the music program
offers many opportunities for students who do not plan to pursue
professional careers in performance to develop important skills for
a wide range of career opportunities.
“The majority of undergraduate music students will not go on to
pursue professional careers in performance,” she observed. “They may
go on to graduate school to pursue academic careers; many will go
into practice as private music teachers. There are many other areas
of work that a music degree will prepare students for, such as arts
administration, music therapy, music business and music technology.”
Begian finds the quality of performance by Western’s music
students often exceeds the typical expectation of undergraduate
students — as in the original student compositions performed at a
recent jazz ensemble concert on campus — but he said the faculty
never lose sight of the fact that their students are still in need
of instruction and searching for direction in their careers.
“We give them both the vocational and creative artistic tools to
decide what they want to do with the music education they receive at
Western,” he said. “The world may not be screaming for another jazz
guitarist, but it surely needs more creative people. Our goal is to
educate creative people who are informed about music history and
well trained in musical skills. We seek to provide the foundation,
the history and the creativity, and then we say, ‘Go get ‘em!’”
The prospect of moving the music program into the new building
for the School of Visual and Performing Arts, now under construction
and targeted for completion in 2014, will give Western an additional
edge in attracting talented music students and offer
state-of-the-art facilities for instruction and performance. “I see
it as a place where there will always be activity, always something
going on,” Astrup said. “I don’t believe we will ever be in want for
new work to do!”
“My goal as department chair is to make sure that we go into the new
building with the momentum we have been building over the past 10
years,” Begian observed. “I don’t see the building as the source of
that momentum – I want us to go in there with a full head of steam,
and then continue to develop our program from there.”
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