Studying music teaches discipline, develops analytical and creative habits of the mind, and leads to understanding the performing arts’ place in culture—both past and present. Being a music major requires energy, determination, and a willingness to think creatively and critically. Studying music also cultivates confidence, tenacity, collaborative skills, and an ability to grow through criticism. Music career paths range from performance to management, teaching, and publishing.
Housed in the state-of-the-art Fine Arts Instructional Center, Eastern’s Music program provides theoretical and hands-on opportunities that emphasize the history, theory, performance, and criticism of music and musicians from Western and non-Western traditions. Three concentrations are available — Performance; Musicology: History, Composition and Criticism; and Music Industry and Leadership. Students benefit from many ensembles, personal instruction on a variety of instruments and voice types, and a variety of facilities: a 400-seat concert hall, a proscenium theater, a studio theater, two performance labs, a piano lab, and several graphic design classrooms. A Music minor is also available.
The Music Performance concentration in the Music major teaches students to reach the highest level of their potential through participation in private lessons, large and small ensembles, valuable performance experiences, and related coursework in conducting, literature and chamber music.
Music majors with a concentration in Musicology: History, Composition and Criticism will have the ability to investigate music in a critical way; grow as thinkers, creators and researchers through interactions with repertoires not included in the music major core; and analyze the style and structure of past and present music.
Students taking the concentration in Music Industry and Leadership within the Music major will be able to:
$49,130
Median salary, Music Directors/Composers
$21-107K
Salary range
Music students receive advanced training from faculty in many different areas, including voice, piano, guitar, strings, woodwinds, brass and percussion.
Music students take advantage of opportunities to perform on and off campus. On-campus concerts take place in the new Fine Arts Concert Hall, while off-campus performances have included two concerts with renowned vocalist Josh Groban.
Performance destinations have included tours to Boston; Washington, DC; Carnegie Hall in New York City; San Juan, Puerto Rico; and the Bösendorfer Music Festival in Vienna, Austria.
Students who pursue undergraduate degrees in Music can have rewarding and successful careers in a variety of professional fields, including:
Recent graduates from Eastern’s Music program perform with internationally acclaimed ensembles; have become music teachers and private instructors; are pursuing graduate study in music and other performance disciplines; and are successful composers and arrangers.
Students from the Department of Music at Eastern Connecticut State University explored the history of classical music in Vienna, Austria, this May. The 10-day trip was conducted by music Professor Emily Riggs and Lecturer David Ballena as a part of Riggs’ “City of Song” global field course.
Three Eastern faculty members were recognized at the conclusion of the 2023-24 academic year as part of the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities (CSCU) annual Board of Regents Faculty Awards. Assistant Professor of Education Kwangwon Lee won the statewide faculty research award; David Ballena, lecturer in the Music Department, was honored with the statewide teaching award for adjunct faculty; and Manuel Otero, assistant professor of English, received the Eastern campus-based teaching award.
Josh Thomas, lecturer of music at Eastern Connecticut State University, recently performed a recital of world premieres for each voice of the saxophone. Alongside University Accompanist David Ballena, Thomas performed these solos March 2 in the Fine Arts Instructional Center Concert Hall.
