Curriculum

Prepare for your career as a professional musician in a uniquely creative, inclusive environment. In Steinhardt’s unparalleled facilities, you’ll study with world-renowned artist faculty and explore diverse musical traditions, with a complement of courses in Music Technology, Music Business, Performing Arts Administration, and the Arts in Education. While taking full advantage of NYU’s acclaimed liberal arts core, you’ll work one-on-one with today’s musical innovators, developing your personal artistry while acquiring the skills to succeed after graduation.  

Ensembles offer extraordinary opportunities to interact and perform with your amazing peers. The NYU Wind Orchestra, NYU Symphony Orchestra, and NYU Broadway Orchestra present several concerts each year; student engage in a variety of mixed chamber ensembles as well as productions with the Programs in Jazz Studies, Music Composition, and Vocal Performance, ranging from screen scoring projects and recording sessions to operas and musicals produced by leading professionals. 

Core Course Sequence

Only Steinhardt’s innovative performance curriculum allows you to simultaneously explore the University’s renowned liberal arts core; original offerings in music history and music theory in addition to foundational courses; and complementary coursework in Music Business and Performing Arts Administration, Music Technology, and Arts Education. A flexible elective component allows for Study Abroad, interdisciplinary minors, and double majors.

Our cutting-edge curriculum in music theory and history introduces you to a broad range of musical repertoire, analytical approaches, and critical listening skills for engaging with music from various styles and genres. You’ll have the opportunity to explore not only common-practice “classical” and contemporary music but also popular genres, jazz, musical theatre, and non-Western traditions.  

Instrumental Performance prepares its graduates to act as musical innovators and teaching artists, changemakers, practitioner-scholars, and policy makers in communities, schools, and performing arts institutions worldwide. 

Specialization Sequence

Performance majors benefit from personalized instruction in private lessons with master artists, ensemble coachings, and dedicated mentorship from world-class faculty. Master classes, repertoire classes, and intensive specialization courses prepare students for successful careers as concertizing and recording artists. For those interested in acquiring skills in Music Technology, Music Business, Performing Arts Administration, and the Arts in Education, we offer access to coursework – including for-credit internships, minors, double majors, and opportunities to Study Away – which will enhance your knowledge of the performing arts in context. 

Sample Elective Courses 

Introduction to Performing Arts Administration

This course is an introduction to the concepts and techniques used to manage performing arts organizations. Subjects include organizational structure, trustee/staff relations, marketing, audience building, fund-raising, human resources, community engagement, performance measurement, leadership, strategic planning, and diversity, equity, and inclusion. Through readings, class discussion, case exercises, and engaging with professional arts managers, students will acquire an understanding of the challenges and opportunities facing performing arts managers.

Global Soundscapes: A Survey of Musical Traditions

This course introduces students to selected musical sounds and practices from cultural groups around the world. Through exposure to distinct musical cultures, from traditional to transnational, students learn to define and apply musical concepts such as rhythm, timbre, melody, and form. The socio-cultural context and relevance of musical practices are also examined, touching on issues such as race, gender, embodied participation, technologies of production and circulation, and relationship to religion, the state, and other social structures. 

Rights, Revenue & Relationships: What Music Creators Need To Know

Students pursuing careers in music creation — songwriters, composers, instrumentalists, vocalists, engineers, producers, and others — need to be well-versed in myriad ways to protect and maximize the rights, revenue streams, and professional relationships that flow from their work. As music marketplace opportunities and distribution channels widen and diversify, music creators have far greater choices than ever before. Students explore the essential elements required to build a career and a life in music, examining them from the creator’s perspective.

Global Electronic Music I

This studio course examines a mixtape selection of electronic music from NYC to Capetown to Tokyo using music theory and composition. Global electronic music necessitates diverse methodologies in critical discussion of the research of this music in a post/neo-colonial setting. The class will engage in critical discussion of the studio and the digital audio workstation as compositional tools on the continuum of improvisation, and the music itself as innovation, communication and historiography in global communities of the Information age.

Culminating Experience 

In degree recitals, Instrumental Performance majors demonstrate their mastery over their instrument, command of the repertoire, and personal performance aesthetic. Degree recitals are held in Steinhardt’s world-class performance venues and recorded to provide an archival document of professional quality.