Curriculum

The Curtis curriculum is designed to meet students where they are in their musical journeys and to offer instruction, guidance, and inspiration as they pursue their goals.

Students are given the opportunity to study technique and artistic expression in order to deepen their musicality and nurture their unique voices. The musical studies curriculum allows students to inform and enhance their musical interpretations with attention to counterpoint, harmony, score analysis, ear training, keyboard studies, and music history, all geared toward performance. Opportunities to study art, literature, creative writing, ethics, philosophy, languages, history, sociology, and environmental studies, in the liberal arts curriculum, provide students with the historical and contemporary contexts needed to ask themselves how art contributes to society. Career studies courses, whether in entrepreneurship, social practice, digital recording and media studies, pedagogy, or arts leadership, provide students with the skills, theoretical grounding, and hands-on experience needed to forge their own careers in the twenty-first century dynamic world of the arts.

Performance Courses

Performance courses are the heart of a Curtis education, including lessons, coachings, and instrumental repertoire and vocal studies.

Musical Studies Courses

Musical studies courses are designed to give students practical, working knowledge of the artistic techniques of Western music.

Liberal Arts Courses

Liberal arts courses educate musicians as broadly and deeply as possible so that they may be greatly literate and widely informed.

Career Studies Courses

Career studies courses provide students with the essential skills that working musicians need in the 21st century.

Artist Citizen Curriculum

Artist Citizen curriculum offers students opportunities to deploy their artistry in service of community engagement and transformation.

The All School Project

The All School Project is an annual, interdepartmental examination of a musical theme across all curricula.