Collaborative Piano Graduate Degree Program

Overview

The Boston Conservatory’s NEW MM in collaborative piano offers a number of unique features for aspiring collaborative pianists.  The program is purposefully small—accepting two graduate students in the first year (2010) and an additional two graduate students in the second year (2011).

Curriculum

Students of the collaborative piano program will receive separate applied lessons in both collaborative and solo piano literature (working with different faculty from each area), allowing students to continue to develop as solo pianists while mastering skills essential to musical collaboration. 

For the applied lessons in collaborative piano, each student will be paired with instrumental and/or vocal partners; these lessons will be arranged by the relevant department chairs in conference with the faculty.  Collaborative piano students will also have the opportunity to play for song rep classes.

Students in the collaborative piano program will also take a weekly two-hour seminar course.  The seminar fulfills many diverse functions: performance master classes, sight-reading, investigation of topics such as interpretation of poetry, translation resources and techniques, lesser-known song literature coaching techniques, important concert repertoire, operatic arias and style and more.

Each collaborative piano student must complete two recitals consisting of vocal and/or instrumental repertoire.  These recitals are juried, pass/fail, by the collaborative piano faculty.  A student who fails a recital must repeat the recital before graduating.

View full curriculum here

Collaborative Piano Faculty

• Karl Paulnack

Application & Audition Requirements

Candidates for the collaborative piano masters program must have a bachelor’s degree, language proficiency in Italian, German or French,  and must be prepared to perform the following for their audition:

• Piece(s) for solo piano (or section of a larger work) totaling about 10 minutes in length. 
• Sonata in A major for violin and piano of Cesar Frank, movements one and two, to be performed with a violinist provided by the Conservatory
• The following songs, to be performed (in the original key) with a singer provided by the Conservatory:
• Debussy: Extase from Ariettes Oubliees
• Schubert: Ganymede
• Strauss: Allerseelen
• Sight reading

Outcome Proficiencies

A student graduating from the collaborative piano program should be able to do the following things successfully.

• Partner a vocalist or instrumentalist in recital, or in advanced study situations, such as a high-profile master class
• Prepare an operatic score sufficiently to partner a conductor in staging, musical or coaching rehearsal
• Play a piano rehearsal for a soloist and conductor of a symphony orchestra
• Command language proficiency sufficient to permit an informed rubato and accurate ensemble, and continue to grow towards fluency or near-fluency in the major art song languages

Apply Now

Apply to The Boston Conservatory's collaboratove piano masters degree program here.