The BFA in Jazz and Contemporary Music is a uniquely challenging and flexible program that includes intensive courses in technical, conceptual, aesthetic, and historical aspects of jazz and contemporary music. Choosing either the Instrumental or the Vocal concentration, you learn to collaborate, compose, and improvise as you prepare for a wide variety of careers in music.
The College of Performing Arts also offers master's degrees that draw on the strengths of all three schools — Mannes, Jazz, and Drama — to serve students whose work defies traditional boundaries and transforms society.
Explore new facets of your artistry. With ensembles recast each semester, one semester you'll be playing in the Electric Miles Davis directed by a musician like Adam Holzman, who played with Miles in the 1980s. The next, you'll play in Studio Orchestra, collaborating with Mannes performers in our largest ensemble, directed by a legendary musician like Ingrid and Christine Jensen. In addition to our eighty ensembles, you can create your own-choose the type of music you want to make, the musicians you want to play with, and the directors you want as your mentors.
Don't just live in one of the most thriving music scenes in the world-play in it. With partnerships around the city, you can easily take part in jam sessions at some of the greatest jazz clubs in NYC, like Smalls and Zinc Bar, or find yourself onstage at cultural hotspots like The Morgan Library and the Highline. Play in venues across the city as all of New York becomes your stage, bandstand, studio, and cultural playground.
Travel the world as an artist. Our international partnerships will develop you into the kind of musician you want to be. Play gigs at the Bern International Jazz Festival in Switzerland as one of six selected quartets, or represent the school with your performing talents at conferences and festivals around the globe. Share your unique voice with the world as we add new partnership opportunities every year.
The New School admits students of any race, color, national and ethnic origin to all the rights, privileges, programs, and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the school. It does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national and ethnic origin in administration of its educational policies, admissions policies, scholarship and loan programs, and athletic and other school-administered programs.
