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New England Conservatory of Music
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The New England Conservatory of Music (NEC) in Boston, Massachusetts, is the oldest independent conservatory in the United States.
The conservatory is home each year to 750 students pursuing undergraduate and graduate studies along with 1400 more in its Preparatory School as well as the School of Continuing Education. At the collegiate level, NEC offers the Bachelor of Music, Master of Music, and Doctor of Musical Arts, as well as the Undergraduate Diploma, Graduate Diploma, and Artist's Diploma.
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Encyclopedia
The New England Conservatory of Music (NEC) in Boston, Massachusetts, is the oldest independent conservatory in the United States.
The conservatory is home each year to 750 students pursuing undergraduate and graduate studies along with 1400 more in its Preparatory School as well as the School of Continuing Education. At the collegiate level, NEC offers the Bachelor of Music, Master of Music, and Doctor of Musical Arts, as well as the Undergraduate Diploma, Graduate Diploma, and Artist's Diploma. Also offered are 5-year joint double degree programs with Harvard University and Tufts University.
NEC is the only music school in the United States designated as a National Historic Landmark. Its primary concert hall, Jordan Hall, plays an important role in the cultural scene of the entire New England region, hosting over 600 concerts each year and receiving frequent praise for its acoustical qualities.
History
NEC was founded in 1867 by Eben Tourjee, who modelled it after the European conservatories of that time. Initially, it was located in the Boston Music Hall just off Tremont Street in downtown Boston. In 1870 it moved to the former St. James Hotel in Franklin Square in the South End. It moved to its present location in the Symphony/Prudential Neighborhood on Huntington Avenue in 1903. In 1881, when Henry Lee Higginson established the Boston Symphony Orchestra, he drew heavily on school's faculty to serve as section leaders. Today, the school and the orchestra continue to share a close association - nearly half of the BSO is composed of conservatory faculty and alumni. When Boston established its first full-scale opera company in 1908, the manager, conductors, soloists, orchestra, chorus, library, and rehearsal rooms were all provided by the conservatory. After that company's demise, Boris Goldovsky's Opera Theater gave local audiences their first fully staged performances in more than a decade. In 1958, Goldovsky's protégé Sarah Caldwell founded the Opera Company of Boston, which gained international acclaim for its innovative programming.
Jordan Hall
Jordan Hall is NEC's central performing space, and seats 1019. Opened in 1903, Jordan Hall was the gift of New England Conservatory trustee Eben D. Jordan the 2nd, a member of the family that founded the Jordan Marsh retail stores and himself an amateur musician. In 1901, Jordan donated land for NEC's Main Building, while also offering to fund a concert hall with a gift of $120,000.
Working with the square plot of land, the hall's main architect Edmund Wheelwright modeled the building after the palaces of the Italian renaissance, in which courtyards often served as performance spaces. Wheelwright's design is what gives Jordan Hall its unique horseshoe shape, in which 1,019 seats are arranged to have clear sightlines to the stage. The floor is steeply graduated for maximum view, and the balcony has no obstructing supports. The shape and arrangement of seats give the hall its fine acoustical properties. Other distinctive features include the golden oak-colored finish of the interior and the great organ, also in oak with a gilt finish, and modeled on another Renaissance design: that of the organ in the Santa Maria Scala in Siena.
The dedication concert of Jordan Hall, performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, took place on October 20, 1903, and created quite a stir. Effusive newspaper accounts deemed the hall "unequaled the world over," and the Boston Globe reported that it was "a place of entertainment that European musicians who were present that evening say excels in beauty anything of the kind they ever saw."
A major renovation project was undergone in 1995, and since then Jordan Hall has won numerous awards including the 1996 Massachusetts Historical Commission Preservation Award, the Victorian Society in America's Preservation Commendation, the 1996 Boston Preservation Alliance Award, the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America Award of Merit, and the Illuminating Engineering Society 1996 Lumen Award.
The hall is home to some 600+ student performances each academic year, and is also frequently used by third parties including outside organizations, touring artists, and guests. Both the Boston Modern Orchestra Project and the Boston Philharmonic hold residencies at Jordan Hall. Some 125,00 guests attend concerts at the hall per year. It is the only conservatory building to be designated a National Historic Landmark, and its acoustics rank with with world's top concert halls for classical music..
Campus
The NEC campus consists of three buildings occupying the block on Gainsborough Street between St. Botolph Street and Huntington Avenue, one block from the corner of Huntington and Massachusetts Avenue where the world-renowned Symphony Hall is situated. The Jordan Hall Building, whose main entrance is at 30 Gainsborough Street, is NEC's main building, home to Jordan Hall, Williams Hall, Brown Hall, the Keller Room, the Isabelle Firestone Audio Library, the Performance Library, professor studios/offices, and practice rooms. The second building, at 33 Gainsborough, is the Residence Hall, a coed dormitory which also houses the Harriet M. Spaulding Library and the "Bistro 33" dining center. The third building, entitled the "St. Botolph Building", at 241 St. Botolph street, contains the St. Botolph Hall, a computer laboratory, the electronic music studio, and the majority of the school's classrooms and administrative offices.
Majors of study
Admission to NEC is based primarily on a live audition. In 2005, 292 students were admitted out of a total of 968 applicants, for an acceptance rate of 30%. NEC is renowned for its strings, jazz and chamber music departments. The Conservatory's piano department has recently risen to international significance.
Preparatory School
New England Conservatory's Preparatory School is an open enrollment institution for pre-college students that offers music classes and private instruction for young musicians, and fosters over 20 small and large ensembles. Students enrolled in New England Conservatory's Preparatory School may participate in the Certificate Program, allowing students to achieve their optimum performance skills, competence in music theory, and a knowledge of the literature that includes choral, orchestral, and chamber music, as well as solo repertoire. NEC Prep is home to one of the world's leading youth orchestras, the highly selective Youth Philharmonic Orchestra (YPO), headed by Benjamin Zander. In June 2007, the orchestra embarked on a highly publicized three-week tour of China. The Preparatory School also houses the Massachusetts Youth Wind Ensemble (MYWE), a highly selective touring wind ensemble open to advanced high school woodwind, brass, and percussion players directed by Michael Mucci. The Preparatory School routinely sends students to the finest conservatories and universities in the world.
School of Continuing Education
New England Conservatory's School of Continuing Education allows members of the surrounding community to experience the benefits of New England Conservatory's world class instruction, offering classes, lessons, and ensemble opportunities to musicians of any background. At NEC's School of Continuing Education members can participate in chamber, jazz, and vocal ensembles, an opera studio, an adult chorale, a Klezmer Band, and a Community Gospel Choir. In addition, NEC's School of Continuing Education offers classes in several fields including music history, music theory, and Alexander technique, many of which are instructed by members of the New England Conservatory college faculty.
Also of note
NEC is co-founder and educational partner of From the Top, a weekly radio program that celebrates outstanding young classical musicians from the entire country. With its broadcast home in Jordan Hall, the show is now carried by National Public Radio and is heard on 250 stations throughout the United States.
The conservatory offers 5 year joint double degree programs with Harvard University and Tufts University; year-long exchange programs with London's Royal College of Music and Royal Academy of Music; and cross-registration with Tufts, Northeastern University, and Simmons College.
NEC is the founding institution of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia Fraternity.
Notable alumni
- VenetianPrincess, soprano
- Ted Atkatz, percussionist
- Yitzhak Yedid, composer & Pianist
- Herbert Blomstedt, Conductor Laureate, San Francisco Symphony
- Neal E. Boyd, opera singer (America's Got Talent winner)
- Percy Jewett Burrell, dramatist and playwright
- Don Byron, jazz clarinetist and composer
- Sarah Caldwell, conductor
- Sean Callery, composer (24, La Femme Nikita, Medium)
- Colin Carr, cellist
- Regina Carter, violinist
- Chou Wen-chung, composer
- John Clark, jazz horn player and composer
- Marilyn Crispell, jazz pianist
- Tan Crone, pianist
- Phyllis Curtin, soprano
- Roberto Diaz, violist, Curtis Institute president
- Marty Ehrlich, jazz saxophonist
- Halim El-Dabh, composer
- Melissa Ferlaak, soprano, the former singer of the symphonic metal band Visions of Atlantis
- Satoko Fujii, avant garde jazz pianist
- Anthony Glise, classical guitarist, composer, author
- Judith Gordon, pianist
- Fred Hersch, jazz pianist
- Dave Holland, jazz bassist
- Christopher O'Riley, pianist (From the Top host)
- Dave Douglas, jazz trumpet
- Everett "Vic" Firth, percussionist
- Michael Gandolfi, composer
- Denyce Graves, mezzo-soprano, Metropolitan Opera's "Carmen of Choice"
- Bud Herseth, trumpet, Chicago Symphony
- Louis Krasner, violinist
- Thomas Oboe Lee, composer
- Andy McGhee, jazz saxophonist, educator
- John Medeski, jazz pianist
- John Moriarty, conductor, stage director, pianist
- Janice Tucker Rhoda, violinist, author ABCs of Strings
- Pete Robbins, jazz saxophonist
- Marcus Rojas, tubist
- Eleanor Steber, soprano
- Coretta Scott King, voice (civil rights leader)
- Luciana Souza, Jazz vocals
- Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, Kennedy Family matriarch
- Lara St. John, violinist
- Cecil Taylor, jazz pianist
- Nestor Torres, Latin jazz flutist, Grammy Award winner
- Tom Varner, jazz French hornist, composer
- Raymond Wilding-White, composer
- Bernie Worrell, pianist/rock musician
- Rachel Z, jazz performer
Notable present and former faculty
External links
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