Support Music
The Music Department at UC Santa Cruz
A musically-attuned and socially-engaged curriculum reflecting the abundant cultures and traditions of our students and our global world.
Our curriculum is distinctive in developing musicians who integrate scholarship with performance. It offers both depth and breadth, exploring music and expressive traditions from diverse perspectives and from a diversity of areas, genres, and historical eras, with particular focus on:
- African and Global African traditions, including West African drumming, jazz, blues, and hip hop;
- Mexican, Latinx and Chicanx expressive traditions, such as mariachi, Mexican folklorico dance, son Cubano and son jarocho;
- East Asian, South Asian, Southeast Asian and Central Asian expressive traditions;
- Western art music, including our annual spring opera production, which is unique in its casting of undergraduate music majors in all lead, supporting, and choral roles;
- Stylistically diverse approaches to composition, improvised music, and experimental music, with a state-of-the-art electronic music studio.
How You Can Help
We invite you to join the Music Department in our efforts as we:
Invest in our students!
Undergraduate scholarships and graduate fellowships give students the ability to participate fully in the rigorous training and performances required by the discipline. We also seek to eliminate lesson fees for students, thus increasing greater accessibility for students from diverse educational backgrounds and varied pre-college musical experiences.
Support our awesome and diverse ensembles!
We currently offer twenty-four different ensembles that allow undergraduate and graduate students to gain performance experience in a wide array of musical styles and traditions (listed below). In addition, student composers engage with ensembles to gain opportunities to have their work performed, critical for their academic and career growth while performers engage in deep musical practice.
Balinese Gamelan/Big Band Jazz/Central Asian Ensemble/Jazz Combos/Rhythms of North India/South African Music Ensemble/Chamber Music/West Javanese (Sundanese) Gamelan/Chamber Singers/Hip-Hop Workshop/Classical Guitar Ensemble/West African (Ghanaian) Drumming/Concert Choir/Early Music Ensemble/Experimental Music Ensemble/Songwriting Craft and Practice/Mariachi Ensemble/Laptop Music/North Indian Music Workshop/Opera Workshop/Orchestra/Electroacoustic Ensemble/Wind Ensemble/Percussion Ensemble
Ensure student access to world-class musicians!
Help us solidify and diversify the applied faculty and guest instructors and performers with the expertise and experience to guide students, push boundaries, and create new musical genres.
Learn more:
Arts Development
artsdev@ucsc.edu