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My son will be making a decision between Ithica College and Indiana University in the Fall. He will be majoring in Music Performance - Percussion. Any comments on how these 2 stack up against each other? Ithica has early decision, Indiana University does not. It is extremely competitive trying to get into these Music Schools. Also, any thoughts on other Universities that may be better?

By Vulcano (Vulcano) on Monday, June 28, 2004 - 03:02 pm: Edit

I would go with Indiana.

By Travisd (Travisd) on Monday, June 28, 2004 - 06:11 pm: Edit

I would say Indiana as well, just based on the people I know of who have gone to each for music.

By Jonw222 (Jonw222) on Monday, June 28, 2004 - 10:54 pm: Edit

Read a little bit about these two music schools (both of which are pretty good.) I'm assuming that you are looking for a good university with a music department as opposed to a straight conservatory (i.e. not Juilliard.) Definitely check out the faculty bios of the percussion department. I've listed Indiana's and Ithaca College's below. Your private teacher will be the school essentially for you.

Indiana University

http://www.music.indiana.edu/som/percussion/faculty.html

Ithaca College

http://www.ithaca.edu/music/faculty/f-percus.htm

I also recommend the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, Oberlin College, and Northwestern. If you would like more of a conservatory try the Eastman School of Music. Obviously a lot of this would depend on the kind of music your son would like to play.

Hope this helps.

JW

By Bookiemom (Bookiemom) on Tuesday, June 29, 2004 - 03:45 am: Edit

Indiana is much more than a "pretty good" music school. It's not just "a good university with a music dept." There are many of those. Indiana's reputation is that it is the best university for music performance--the top outside of a conservatory. It's far ahead of Ithaca, unless Ithaca has some kind of fantastic percussion performance major.

By Alexandre (Alexandre) on Tuesday, June 29, 2004 - 03:58 am: Edit

I went to Cornell University so I am familiar with Ithaca College. Ithaca is a good college, butits music school cannot match Indiana's. I would have to say Indiana over Ithaca.

As other people have mentioned, there are plenty of good universities with excellent music departments. Oberlin College, Northwestwern University, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, Yale University, University of Rochester etc... But Indiana is #1 among non-conservatory insitutions.

By Spiffybrownboy (Spiffybrownboy) on Tuesday, June 29, 2004 - 04:09 am: Edit

It's important to note that Oberlin DOES have a conservatory as well as a college (sort of like Rochester and Eastman, or JHU and Peabody) except the conservatory and college campus/housing are shared. Both are distinct and separate.

I knew Indiana was excellent for vocal performance, but I didn't know it was good for music performance in percussion, or other instruments. But hey, if it is, go for it. Ithaca is pretty good but I don't think it can compete with Indiana... I've also heard some bad things about Ithaca (can't remember exactly what, but I remember some people talking about it quite negatively).

Again, I don't know about percussion, but all the aforementioned schools seem good to me as far as general music performance.

By Jonw222 (Jonw222) on Tuesday, June 29, 2004 - 12:37 pm: Edit

Rather than debate overall prestige of departments, it's more important to investigate the faculty who teach in the school or department of music. Ithaca College or Indiana or Oberlin or Eastman might have a percussion teacher that you particularly like or is particularly good or comes highly recommended. In other words, think more of the percussion (or any other instrument for that matter) department rather than the overall prestige of a school. If you end up hating your major teacher you will end up hating the school. I do agree that Indiana University is an excellent school of music and quite prestigous (there have been books written about its school of music). But this should not be a reason to choose a school of music.

It always frustrates me on the boards when someone says something like "Indiana is #1 among non-conservatory institutions" as if this was the complete truth absolutely agreed upon and equally true for all instruments. It's much more complex than this and requires much more research and investigation than looking at rankings and applying to schools ranked 1,2, and 3 but not 4. Even rankings of percussion programs would be inaccurate depending on what kind of percussion (i.e. does someone want a marching band to play at football games?)

One *very* good question to ask when visiting these types of schools is how easy it is to take classes in the college of arts and sciences at these schools. I asked this question when I visited the Eastman School of Music and they told me that it is doable but extremely difficult, that most students at the Eastman School of Music take their liberal arts classes at the Eastman School of Music. On the other end of the spectrum, undergraduates must apply to Yale College at Yale University which is *significantly* different from the Yale School of Music. Yale College has one of the best departments of music but it does not offer performance degrees (i.e. Bachelor of Music), only a Bachelor of Arts in Music. The Yale School of Music only offers graduate degrees of music (although there is a B.A./M.M. program through Yale College and the Yale School of Music.)

Hope this helps.

JW

By Bonnie (Bonnie) on Tuesday, June 29, 2004 - 05:23 pm: Edit

Thanks to all for your comments. He will get a good look at Indiana next month when he attends a one week "audition workshop". I suspect that he will be very impressed. We have to probably audition at 5-7 colleges because of the competition to get in. I will definitely look at the others mentioned to add to our ongoing list of audition schools.

By Doctorjohn (Doctorjohn) on Saturday, July 17, 2004 - 06:18 pm: Edit

Bonnie:

I'm not an expert in this area, but my son is a graduate of Indiana (both BM and MM in bassoon performance), and out of curiosity, I asked him about the percussion department. He put me in touch with a recent graduate of IU's percussion program, and I asked him for recommendations. Here's what he wrote:

"It depends on where your focus is, but here are some good ones:

All around (great for a Bachelor's degree):
1. Northwestern (Great for a mix of marimba, orchestral, latin percussion, drumset)
2. New England Conservatory (Also a good mix)

Orchestral focus (good for Master's or Bachelor's if someone is really focused on being in an orchestra)
1. Manhattan (Manhattan also has a really good drumset professor in John Riley)
2. Temple (although the professor may be retiring in the next couple of years)
3. Cleveland Institute
4. Cleveland State (Percussion program is really good, but it is an island in an otherwise so-so department)
5. DePaul

A few other notes:
-I don't know a lot about Manhattan, but people are getting jobs after leaving there, so that's why I put them on the list.
-DePaul has a reputation for focusing too much on orchestral excerpts to the point that that's all the grads know how to play.
-North Texas is always a good bet for drumset, but the department is so huge, there are issues with getting playing time.

The neat thing about a place like Northwestern is that you have a Chicago Symphony member (Jim Ross) teaching alongside a marimba solosit (Michael Burritt), a drumset player (Paul Wertico), and Latin Percussionists (Ruben Alvarez), and students rotate between teachers. I know 4 percussionsts who have recently gone through Northwestern, and they all really got a lot out of it... If you're just looking for straight percussion, though, a place like CIM has the principal percussionist and principal timpanist from the Cleveland Orchestra, and Cleveland State has possibly the best all around orchestral percussionist (Tom Freer) currently playing."

Although he valued his education at IU, this alum was not quite as high on the percussion program at his alma mater as the other programs he mentions here.

All of which goes to support what JW wrote, that in the world of music, it's less about the reputation of the university or even the music school, it's about the teacher. I hope this gives you some additional places to look.

Best wishes on your search.