Welcome to the Department of Music.
The Department of Music is home to a distinguished faculty that teaches in areas of performance, music history, ethnomusicology, music theory, jazz studies, composition and music technology. Faculty who teach voice, band and orchestral instruments are professional musicians in the Richmond area, including principals of the Richmond Symphony Orchestra and accomplished jazz performers.
Within the University of Richmond's School of Arts & Sciences, the Department of Music reflects the University's outstanding liberal arts tradition. Carefully nurtured faculty-student relationships are afforded throughout the curriculum. One example is the team-taught chamber music program, in which each participating ensemble receives coaching from four different chamber faculty members as well as eighth blackbird, Richmond's ensemble-in-residence. In addition, students who enroll in the department's capstone course, in which they produce an Honors thesis or project, work individually with faculty mentors on projects in their areas of specialty.
Discover upcoming courses
Music Lessons, Juries, & Recitals
Private lessons in voice, keyboard, band/orchestral instruments, sitar, guitar, electric and upright bass, and drum set are offered every semester for academic credit (0.5 unit, no fee). Approved students receive 13 fifty-minute lessons per semester and a letter grade; a minimum of one hour practice per day is expected and a performance jury at the end of the semester is encouraged. There are a limited number of private lesson spaces available each semester, so lesson approval is not guaranteed for students who are not music majors/minors.
All students enrolled in for-credit private music lessons (MSAP courses) – music majors and minors, as well as non-majors – are required to perform a jury at the end of each semester of study. Students are excused from jurying at the end of a semester in which they performed a recital. Students desiring to perform a recital must be registered for lessons in that instrument or voice the semester of the recital.
Neumann Lecture Series
Making more sense of our sonic environments
More people have more access to more musical sounds than ever before in the history of humankind. Factors like travel, recording, amplification, and the internet have transformed our sonic landscapes over the past 100 years or so. However, not all musical expressions are created, performed, promoted, transmitted, valued, and paid for equally and equitably.
This lecture explores how forces continue to shape our sonic environment. How each of these forces can be benign or obstructive, and how the cultural ecosystems framework can help understand specific music practices, whether they are globally connected, more localized, or even isolated.
Huib Schippers has a broad musical, professional and intellectual background. He has developed careers in Indian classical music performance (sitar), music journalism, the record trade, music education, festival direction, research policy, and leadership. Most recently he curated and directed the iconic record label Smithsonian Folkways and was UCLA Regents’ Professor in ethnomusicology.
