About Us

The Graduate Student Ensemble gives music graduate students a new creative and social setting in which they can experiment with varied instrumentation and diverse repertoire. Currently, as music graduate students, we are able to perform with a limited number of large musical ensembles that focus on a limited selection of musics, mostly centered around the western classical tradition. As such, not all graduate students have a musical outlet with which they identify or in which they can fully express themselves. The Graduate Student Ensemble will give music graduate students a new creative and social setting in which they can experiment with varied instrumentation and diverse repertoire. The ensemble will create a space in which music graduate students can engage in and with music at various steps in its realization. This ensemble will allow our graduate composers and graduate performers to engage with their respective areas, but more importantly, the ensemble will allow the boundaries of composition and performance to overlap. This dynamic creates valuable learning opportunities, such as: composers gain experience working with performers at varying skill levels, performers gain insight into the compositional process, composers may develop and test out new formats in a safe environment, performers explore their own idiosyncratic musicality, and both may develop new kinds of creativity working within these contexts. Most importantly, each individual music graduate student will have the opportunity to participate creatively and professionally as musicians with their community.