Jazz & Contemporary Music

The legacy of jazz is boundaryless innovation. Longy’s Jazz and Contemporary Music (JCM) program provides an open environment in which students experiment and create to find their artistic voice and gain the experience and versatility necessary for success in an everchanging professional world. Engaging in improvisation, composition, and performance practices, untethered to any one discipline or genre, students will build off the foundations of jazz and explore beyond—to modern contemporary, global folk traditions, bluegrass, Rock, Hip Hop, as well as other popular idioms—to define the music of the now and the future.

Course Highlights

Sound and Style: Rulebreakers

Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Jimi Hendrix, and J Dilla challenged the status quo. Take an in-depth look at how they changed the way their instruments were played, invented novel improvisational and compositional languages, and forever altered the course of modern music.

River of Blues: Flowing from the Margins to the Mainstream

From West Africa to the Mississippi Delta, the Blues has long been the foundation of Black musical culture. Follow the artists who developed this style and influenced American mainstream music forever.

Your Faculty

Eric Hofbauer, chair, guitar Sara Bielanski, voice Leo Blanco, piano, composition, ensembles Dave Bryant*, ensembles Peter Cassino, piano, improvisation, ensembles Peter Evans, composition Ana Guigui, voice Charlie Kohlhase*, ensembles John Lockwood, upright/electric bass, ensembles Nando Michelin*, ensembles Randall Pingrey, trombone Noah Preminger, saxophone Ben Schwendener, composition Neal Smith, drums Nikola Tomic ´, trumpet Sylvie Zakarian, percussion *No private studio

>> Consider adding a Graduate Performance

Diploma in JCM to your MM and take the music world by storm with your versatility.

Degrees & Diplomas

Graduate Performance Diploma Master of Music Degree

Members of the Latinx Student Union perform “La Llorona” (Chavela Vargas)

Faculty Profile Noah Preminger

Noah Preminger is a tenor saxophonist and a member of the saxophone faculty at Longy School of Music. He has recorded more than a dozen critically acclaimed studio albums and played alongside many of today’s most celebrated jazz musicians. It used to be that you’d have to work really hard to find the music you were interested in, digging through bins at the record store or borrowing from your family and friends’ collections. But today’s young musicians have all kinds of music readily available to them, which means they’re getting more of a global influence. Longy really encourages that inclusive approach to music, which I think is really exciting for the future of jazz in particular. Whether you’re interested in rhythms from Native American history, or bebop, or blues, there’s a place for you here — no matter where you come from or what you’re developing into. We have a beautiful sense of community and encourage students to focus on finding their own path. It’s a lifelong journey to create different music and choose pieces that help you develop as an artist. As a teacher, I encourage all my students to consider that, and they have a blast finding things they’re passionate about.