Music is a significant part of campus life at Bates. Every year hundreds of students take music courses, study vocal and instrumental performance privately for academic credit, and participate in our choirs, orchestra, jazz band, jazz combos, chamber ensembles, steel pan orchestra, and Indonesian gamelan. On balance, musical life at Bates is richer than at almost any other liberal arts college in the East.
The beautiful Olin Arts Center is home to the department, and offers sunny classrooms, an ample number of good practice and rehearsal rooms – several with Steinway grand pianos – a computer music studio, and a fine concert hall.
We study music from all over the world in our courses, at introductory and advanced levels. All of our courses and performance ensembles are open to general liberal arts students and music majors alike. A secondary concentration (minor) in music is available, and many of our majors pursue interdisciplinary interests or double majors. Concentrations in performance, composition, musicology, and ethnomusicology are available. We are small enough to be able to give all our students a lot of individual attention as they pursue their particular interests, and our departmental philosophy is that we are interested in all the global varieties of human musical expression.
Computer Music Studio and Composition
The Bates Music Department facilities include excellent studios for editing and composing music digitally. At present we have four workstations equipped with Macintosh G5 computers, synthesizers, and software for creating and editing with digital sound and MIDI. Also available are various music notation programs. Our courses in composition cover acoustic and digital composition, popular songwriting, and composition for film, video, dance, and performance art.
Recent thesis compositions by music majors have included film scores, a piano concerto, a jazz suite for big band, a string quartet, and a software suite for processing percussion sounds in real time. For further information, contact William Matthews (wmatthew@bates.edu) or Hiroya Miura (hmiura@bates.edu).
World Musics
Students interested in studying music in a global perspective may take courses in world music cultures, in music of Southeast Asia, and in the discipline of ethnomusicology. They may study the sitar or the fiddle, learn to perform in our steel pan orchestra, which plays music from calypso to classical, or in our Indonesian gamelan orchestra, which gives concerts as well as taking part in performances of dance dramas and shadow puppet dramas. Our World Music Weekend during the Winter Semester includes student lectures, ensembles, and guest performances. For further information, contact Gina Fatone (gfatone@bates.edu).
Western Classical Music
We offer lessons in all the major classical instruments and voice, along with the opportunity to perform in our choir, orchestra, and chamber groups—groups in which students sing the solos and occupy the principal chairs. Students learn to analyze classical masterpieces in our four-semester music theory sequence, and they study the music in historical and cultural contexts in courses on the classical tradition, opera and Broadway, music and religion, and the discipline of musicology. For further information, contact James Parakilas (jparakil@bates.edu) or John Corrie (jcorrie@bates.edu).
Jazz and Popular Music
Our courses in popular music, offered in conjunction with the program in African-American Studies, range from introductory courses in jazz and blues, African-American popular music, and electronic dance music to an advanced seminar in Miles Davis. We also offer performance courses in jazz improvisation and jazz guitar, lessons in all the major jazz instruments, and a jazz band program that provides both big band and combo opportunities. For more information, contact Dale Chapman (dchapman@bates.edu) or Tom Snow (tsnow@bates.edu).
The Music Department, the College Concerts Committee, and the Office of Student Activities bring an endless stream of performers, from the popular to the experimental, to campus throughout the academic year. The largest part of the musical life of the college, however, comes from the members of the college community. Students perform not just in Music Department ensembles, but in five student-run a cappella groups and in many rock, jazz, and fusion groups. They play folk music in our fiddle ensemble and at contradances. They sing and play in Theatre Department productions, accompany productions of our Dance program, and give solo performances at the campus coffeehouse.
Further information about the Music Department can be found on our web pages.
If you have questions about the department or if you are coming to campus for a visit and would like to speak to a member of the department, please contact Anne Odom, the area coordinator for music. Her email address is aodom@bates.edu and her phone number is (207) 786-8212. We look forward to having you join us at Bates.
