Learn Through Performing

Your training for the rigors of a professional music career begins the moment you step on campus. You will play and perform right away, all under the guidance of a caring faculty of working musicians who understand and share what it takes to make it.
(And many of those faculty also teach at private conservatories!)

With World-Class Musicians and Educators

Our location makes it possible for you to study with many of the most respected names in music today. Through private lessons and small group study sessions, you’ll benefit from personal attention and constructive critique. Our faculty will guide and mentor your career path. You’ll be challenged and pushed, but the rewards are preparation for any situation you’ll find as a musician.

Just North of NYC

And with such close proximity to New York City, a virtual pipeline connects Purchase to the wealth of talent and performance opportunities there. It flows both ways—students perform with faculty and each other in the city, and guest musicians readily visit campus for master classes and as guest lecturers.

You’ll leave Purchase as a resourceful, imaginative musician prepared for the challenges and rewards of a career in music.

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Classical

The classical program brings together an extraordinary resident faculty and exemplary facilities in an ideal setting for the training and nurturing of talented young classical musicians, enabling each to find their own unique musical voice. The curriculum of both the undergraduate and graduate program is based on a commitment to excellence that makes the classical program here one of the most exciting programs in the country.

The Instrumental Performance program is built upon substantial performance opportunities, including solo, chamber, and orchestral performance. In the Voice and Opera Performance program, our award-winning opera program stages two full productions each year. In the Classical Composition program, works by student composers are performed and recorded regularly, enabling individuals and groups to create significant portfolios of original repertoire.

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Jazz

Purchase is about playing. In the Jazz Studies program students perform in small and large ensembles while solidifying their education with intensive theory and history courses. Our expansive, real-world approach prepares graduates for the competitive and stimulating life of the professional jazz musician. Jazz Studies recently celebrated its 25th anniversary.

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Music and Technology

The Studio Composition  program engages talented and ambitious independent writers and artists in the craft of musical composition and its contemporary technologies and methods. The Studio Production  program provides focused, creative training in the recording arts for developing engineers and producers across a broad spectrum of musical and multimedia genres.

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