Student Work
Keith Kirchoff, a piano performance major, was a contestant his freshman year at the prestigious Sixth American National Chopin Piano Competition—a competition held every five years.
Paul Anthony decided not to wait until graduation to start his career in the recording industry. As a music composition major with a minor in business administration, Anthony founded his own music publishing business, Rumblefish. He produced music for multimedia and theater productions and nearly a dozen recordings—all while he was still in school.
Lara Wickes, an oboist, received a fellowship to the Kennedy Center/National Symphony Orchestra Summer Music Institute—the only student from the state of Oregon selected for the prestigious event.
Selected Faculty Work
At Oregon, you will discover faculty expertise in many specialized fields, among them jazz studies, piano pedagogy, advanced electronic composition, avant garde performance practices, world music, medieval music notation, Baroque music, and theories of perception and cognition in children. Many of our performing faculty members are active soloists, appearing with ensembles throughout the U.S. in major performance houses such as New York City’s Carnegie Hall, and in international concert venues.
In the high-tech area, Jeffrey Stolet was named Educator of the Month by Macromedia, the giant of the multimedia industry, for his electronic music interactive website, on view at <nmc.uoregon.edu/emi>.
Career Prospects
At Oregon, we prepare students for careers as band, orchestra, and choir directors, symphony players, jazz musicians, concert pianists, accompanists, teachers, composers, scholars, historians, and more. Job placement is very high for our graduates. For example, since 1991 our music education program has placed 100% of interested graduates in teaching positions.
Our students frequently go on to graduate school, either at Oregon or at other prestigious institutions, such as the Eastman and Juilliard music schools and the University of Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music.
A background in music can be useful to graduates in many ways. As the worlds of music, dance, film, theater, and technology converge and blend in new ways, our students have increasingly found well-paying jobs in marketing, web development, film, software, and other service industries that depend on creativity to bring their messages home.