About the Music Department

The Spelman College Department of Music is an accredited institutional member of the National Association of Schools of Music, the accrediting body for music programs in higher education. The department has an active chapter of Pi Kappa Lambda National Music Honor Society.

Goal

The program of the Department of Music is designed primarily for the music major or minor who wishes to study music as one of the liberal arts and who seeks a solid foundation for further study leading to a professional career in performance, scholarship, music education, or related fields.

Fine Arts Building

The department of music is temporarily located in the Milligan Building and the Living and Learning Center II until permanently housed in the Center for Innovation & the Arts building. The buildings include choral/instrumental rehearsal rooms, teaching studios, practice rooms, an auditorium, a smart classroom, and a music technology lab. Performance venues include Sisters Chapel, The Camille Olivia Hanks Cosby, Ed.D. Academic Center Auditorium, and the Living and Learning Center II Auditorium.

Student Body

Our student body consists of approximately 30 students with concentrations ranging from performance to music technology. Our students are competition winners and scholarship recipients. Graduates of the department of music continue to prestigious graduate programs or become successful working musicians such as an educator, performer, director, song writer, and music therapist.

Faculty

Faculty members of the department of music have professional careers in performance and research outside of their teaching duties at Spelman College. Student-faculty ratio is 4:1.

Concentrations

Vocal performance, instrumental performance (piano, strings, winds, and percussion), composition, choral conducting, and music technology.

All-Steinway Status

Spelman College is only the third college in Georgia, and the first historically Black college or university, to join a prestigious group of institutions designated as All-Steinway Schools. All-Steinway Schools are institutions that have made an agreement with Steinway & Sons, the oldest piano company in America, that 90 percent or more of the school’s collection of pianos will be Steinways.

Silkroad Residency Program @Spelman

Spelman is partnering with the The Silkroad Project, INC. (“Silkroad”) to inaugurate a residency program from spring 2022. The Silkroad Residency is a long-term educational partnership designed to synthesize academic curriculum with Silkroad’s mission to engage difference, sparking radical cultural collaboration and passion-driven learning for a more hopeful and inclusive world. Designed and taught by acclaimed artists from Silkroad, this residency is tailored to the individual needs of our Spelman partner and focuses on artist intensives, community workshops, guest lectures, and performances that use the arts as a tool to inspire creativity, explore identity, and activate a generation of change makers.

This residency is inspired by Silkroad’s new artistic endeavor, “The American Railroad,” a multi-year multimedia concert, educational and commissioning series that will dive deeply into the untold history, cultures, and music of the Transcontinental Railroad and the silenced communities who helped to build it.

Support for this residency is provided by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, who Spelman College and Silkroad gratefully acknowledge for their generous support of activities that promote innovation, education and cross-cultural understanding through the arts.

Music Department Staff