Bachelor of Music - Jazz Studies

Program Description

The Bachelor of Music in Jazz Studies degree prepares students for careers as jazz professionals. Drawing upon the resources of the Chicago jazz scene, faculty members are highly celebrated performers, teachers, composers, and arrangers. The program is comprised of applied jazz lessons, jazz ensembles and combos, jazz improvisation, jazz theory and history, arranging and composition, and pedagogy.​​​​​​

Learning Outcomes

Core Outcomes

Students will be able to:

• Perform with an acceptable tone quality, pitch and rhythmic accuracy, dynamic control, articulation, and expressiveness.
• Participate in a musical ensemble, with appropriate technique and musicality.
• Identify and analyze the elements of music in a given piece, including an understanding of its compositional processes, aesthetic properties, and artistic, social, and historical context.
• Identify significant composers and works in the Western music tradition, and trace the evolution of musical styles through the Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and Contemporary periods, as well as in jazz and select world music cultures.
• Hear, notate, analyze, and perform music through aural skills, sight-singing, and keyboard skills.
• Demonstrate basic conducting knowledge and skills for both instrumental and vocal settings.
• Develop an expanded global awareness and cultural understanding through musical study
• Describe basic information about health and safety within the contexts of practice, performing, teaching, and listening; topics will include hearing, vocal, and musculoskeletal health and injury prevention.

Students will be able to:

• Demonstrate a growing competence in technical aspects of performance, such as tone quality, pitch consistency, dynamic control, technical agility, accurate rhythmic concepts, and other skills particular to the area of specialization.
• Identify and analyze the elements of music in a given piece, including an understanding of its compositional processes, aesthetic properties, and artistic, social, and historical contexts for works in the Western music tradition, Contemporary periods, Jazz, and World Music Cultures.
• Demonstrate an appropriate level of aural, keyboard, and conducting skills.
• Develop an understanding of the pedagogical processes and theories that are foundational to performance practices and instruction on one’s primary instrument.
• Demonstrate a growing maturity in musical concepts using tools of performance to create artistic products.
• Demonstrate increasing knowledge of repertoire and growing musical competence through participation in solo, chamber and large ensemble performances.