Music

The UMF Music Department offers a highly progressive experience that keeps pace with the exciting, fast-changing field of music. With a strong emphasis on interdisciplinary collaboration within the liberal arts community, we provide individualized studies, tailor-fitting the program to reflect student need. Students can combine their interest in varied fields such as writing, psychology, philosophy, visual arts, digital media and business with their music courses to create individualized majors. Graduating with strong backgrounds in their combined areas of study, our alumni have gone on to diverse range of post-graduate directions as academics, internship at a record company, teaching in the public schools, graduate studies and law school.

In addition to the excellent offerings in the traditional performing arts, music theory and musicology, students can choose from a diversity classes such as Electro-acoustic music, Reading Radiohead, Song Writing, Nietzsche and Wagner, World Rhythms, Alternative Tunings, History of Jazz and Writing about Music. The program's focus on contemporary music is built on the idea that the deepest learning comes with an engagement of a multiple styles and genres. So, in one semester, a student might study Tool, Stravinsky, Animal Collective, Miles Davis, M.I.A, and the Beatles, considering how their sounds inform, and are informed by their historical and cultural contexts. Most of our classes are seminar style in an environment that encourages open discussions and extensive faculty feedback. We also offer a myriad of learning opportunities beyond the classroom such as travel courses (recent destinations were Italy and New York City), trips to concerts, galleries and music conferences (recent trips to Quebec, Montreal and Boston), internships in the arts, writing about the arts for local and statewide media and experiences in undergraduate research.

For further information about the music department at UMF, please contact:

Phil Carlsen - carlsen@maine.edu
Steve Pane - pane@maine.edu
Y. Lily Funahashi - lily.funahashi@maine.edu