HISTORY

 

The CENTER for ADVANCED MUSICAL STUDIES
at CHOSEN VALE
Edward Carroll, Director

Board of Advisors:
Bob Brookmeyer (composer)
Phyllis Bryn-Julson (Head of Vocal Studies, Peabody Conservatory)
Joe Lovano (Grammy Award winner)
Sir Simon Rattle (Music Director, Berlin Philharmonic)
David Rosenboom (composer, Dean, CalArts)
John Wallace (Principal, Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama)

 

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Most that are currently studying music are familiar with the large-scale cultural shifts, migration, and evolution of the musical marketplace taking place over the last decade, but simply don't know what to do about them nor how to respond. They are ready to jump into something bound with hope.


VIDEO: Edward Carroll on Being a Successful Musician

 

The Center for Advanced Musical Studies at Chosen Vale has been created at a time when rapid changes are sweeping the musical landscape. New and emerging musics, free, as well as traditional, improvisation, non-conventional ensembles, and new technologies/media are joining our concert stages at a dizzying rate. Many of our greatest artists are searching for new ways to re-interpret and present the acknowledged masterpieces of western music, as well as experiencing newfound stimulation by exploring various non-western, or "world" musics.

CAMS faculty member Gabriele Cassone in Luciano Berio's opera
Cronaca del Luogo (with trombonist Christian Lindberg)

Musical societies in the coming decades will require musicians to be increasingly flexible, original, and to have an ever broadening set of skills. Rather than simply fostering a steady accumulation of inert, skill-based knowledge, each and every musician today should be focusing on developing her or his original musical voice in order to become a total musician for the emerging world. Music education has to not only keep pace with change, it must foster change as well.

 

Bell Solaris at REDCAT, Los Angeles (April, 2005). Music by David Rosenboom,
theatrical expansion conceived and directed by Travis Preston

In addition to studying the fundamental principles of musical technique, intuitive musical awareness and self-analysis are critical to musical development. Students must be periodically asking the questions "What am I doing? What are the ideas connecting concepts in all my work? What are the larger concepts that can embrace all of my individual ideas? and How can I identify my own unique voice within musical languages?" Students without a clear sense of their own original voice will be dysfunctional in the future.

 

CAMS faculty member Mark Gould and pinkbabymonster
(Kyle Sanna, Mark Gould and Boiledjar)
Photo credit - James Keyser

 

Musicians, vocational and non, who attend one of the seminars at the Center for Advanced Musical Studies will experience total immersion in their own particular art, offered by an internationally renowned faculty within a highly creative and supportive environment. They will relax amongst their own kind while collaborating in an intense, but non-competitive, atmosphere which values innovation and evolution. Participants will have ample opportunities to perform over the course of each seminar, but no prescribed repertoire will be offered nor are there examinations of any sort. Each seminar demands only that each participant assume control of their own musical path.

 

CAMS faculty member Markus Stockhausen
Photo credit - Hugo Vielz

 

Credit, for those who qualify and wish to have it, can be obtained through the California Institute of the Arts (a member of NASM).