Music

Lewis & Clark’s Department of Music provides a high-quality program with a variety of opportunities for students interested in music. Our faculty of active performers, composers, and musicologists offer their expertise to prepare professionally oriented students for careers in music. They also have the breadth of perspective to help majors and nonmajors integrate music studies into a liberal arts education. With courses and activities designed to enhance understanding and appreciation of music, Lewis & Clark’s music faculty strive to establish music as a perpetually enriching element in the lives of their students.

Students interested in performance can take private lessons in any band or orchestral instrument, as well as in voice, piano, organ, and harpsichord and in instruments from India, Japan, and Java. Lessons are offered to beginning and advanced students by a performance faculty of national repute. Faculty-directed ensembles, allowing students to perform in a group, include a symphonic wind ensemble, two choral groups, orchestra, jazz ensemble, musical theatre, and chamber music groups.

The College owns one of the dozen or so Javanese gamelans in the United States. This Indonesian percussion orchestra, a popular activity on campus, is open to anyone interested. Concerts are held regularly on campus and throughout the Northwest. One can also work in a West African ensemble with a Ghanaian master drummer.

Our students also take advantage off campus of Portland’s rich and varied musical tradition.

Music courses meet the needs of aspiring professionals as well as students inquiring for the first time into aspects of music. Introductory offerings include Sound and Sense: Understanding Music, Music Fundamentals, Jazz Appreciation, Beginning Composition, and Introduction to World Music. Upper-level courses are open to any interested student with the appropriate background. Course sizes range from five students (at the upper level) to 50 students (at the introductory level).

Majors study musicianship, literature, and theory, and take weekly lessons in their performance area. Ensemble participation further develops skills in group music-making and allows students to broaden their knowledge of repertoire and performance styles. Unique to Lewis & Clark is the requirement that majors also study conducting, instrumentation, and world music.

Students find unusual opportunities to integrate musical studies with activities on the College’s overseas or off-campus study programs. The music department leads a spring-semester program to London every other year.

Selecting an area of specialization, each major works closely with a faculty adviser on a senior project. For many students this work culminates in a recital or thesis. For others it involves student teaching as part of a carefully designed music education program leading to teacher licensure.

As an example of a senior project, Phil Lowery did his senior research on the music of Stephen Sondheim. Using Lewis & Clark research funds to travel to New York, Lowery met the Broadway/film composer and reviewed several of Sondheim’s manuscripts. Now an authority on Sondheim, Lowery has been invited to lecture to theatre audiences. He recently started his own opera company in Berkeley, California.

Our music program helps students develop their skills and build confidence in their abilities, enabling them to step into a variety of positions when they leave Lewis & Clark. Many have entered master’s and doctoral programs at leading universities. Composer Sophia Serghi ’94 won a Mellon Fellowship to Columbia University. Composers Jason Kaneshiro ’94 and Duncan Neilson ’92 entered prestigious graduate programs at New York University and University of Michigan, respectively. A number of Lewis & Clark students have also attended the Aspen summer school in piano and composition. Others are teaching in elementary or secondary schools or have joined the professional music community. Musicians today find that an ability to perform many styles of music, popular and classical, enhances their job opportunities.

Another career field, arts management, is one of the fastest-growing areas in music. Students who pursue the music major at Lewis & Clark can select courses in business and may obtain internships leading to positions in arts management with music organizations.

Facilities

Musical life at Lewis & Clark centers in Evans Music Center, which houses rehearsal rooms, 22 practice rooms, faculty offices and teaching studios, classrooms, and music offices. The 400-seat Evans Auditorium is well known in Portland for its superior acoustics.

Agnes Flanagan Chapel is also used for major concerts. Fir Acres Theatre provides excellent facilities for production of opera, musicals, and other types of theatre. The Department of Music makes use of an extensive collection of more than 4,000 recordings, tapes, and cassettes—plus a fully equipped listening center—housed in Aubrey R. Watzek Library.

Within Evans Music Center, students have access to a fully equipped electronic music studio that provides facilities for experimenting with the latest trends in the field and enables students to produce their own compact discs. The building houses 43 pianos—including a fine 9-foot Steinway concert grand, four 7-foot grands, and sixteen 6-foot grands—two harpsichords, and a baroque organ. An 85-rank Casavant organ housed in the College chapel is appropriate for performance of all styles and periods and is one of the finest organs on the West Coast. Two other pipe organs are also available on campus.

Examples of student research and independent projects

• “Computer-Assisted Instruction in Music Theory.”
• A concert of music for orchestra, band, and chamber ensembles.
• A concert of avant-garde music for trombone with internationally known guest artist Stuart Dempster.

Examples of positions obtained by music graduates

• Director, Oregon Arts Commission.
• Ph.D. in musicology, University of Illinois.
• Violinist, Oregon Symphony.
• Assistant manager, Oakland Symphony.
• Graduate fellowship in piano and accompanying, Southern Methodist University.
• Arranging and composing for television and motion pictures in Los Angeles.
• President, Polygram Classics and Jazz, New York.
• High school band director.

Recent guest artists and performers

• James Galway, flute performer and instructor.
• Al-Andalus, Moroccan music group.
• Ravi Shankar, sitarist.
• John Perry, Paul Roberts, pianists.
• Richard Stoltzman, clarinetist.
• William Albright, George Tsontakis, composers.
• William Vachianno, principal trumpet player, New York Philharmonic.
• Anonymous 4, medieval vocal quartet.
• Joshua Redman, jazz saxophonist.
• Eroica Trio, chamber ensemble.
• Cyrus Chestnut, jazz pianist.
• John Scofield, jazz guitarist.