Category Archives: Home & Family

We are still moving photos off of the camera. Here are our best pictures from
visiting the Carnegie Mellon and Oberlin music conservatories last week.

Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) has its Music, Art, and
Architecture schools in one Fine Arts building. This grand building was built in
1916 and has an odd but elegant mix of international classical images and styles.
The technology in the walls, however, is very up to date indeed.

CMU Arts Door:

Lion Carving:

Lady Carving:

Lady Carving 2:

CMU Arts Entry Hall:

Ceiling:

Stairs:

CMU Arts Sign:

Zebra Cafe:

Carnegie Quote:

Oberlin College (Oberlin, Ohio) has its music conservatory school in a
rambling building which looks modern on the outside and like
an intimate and comfortable high school on the inside.

Conservatory Building:

Conservatory Pond:

Conservatory Stairs:

Hallway:

Student Lockers:

Message Board:

Email Station:

Ohio Driving from CMU to Oberlin and around Ohio, we saw some lovely
autumn scenes, some funny signs, and several cabooses being used as outbuildings.

Autumn Trees:

Ohio Sky:

Ohio Sky 2:

Ohio Sky 3:

Nation’s Enemies Sign:

Caboose Building:

Images by Katy Dickinson (Copyright 2006)

Since my daughter has decided to apply to music conservatories as well as
to colleges for school next year, we are reviewing the options to be sure
that we have looked at all institutions of interest. She wants a conservatory
with a very strong vocal performance program (not just theory, or just
instrumental, or just composition) and prefers the Mid-West and East in the U.S.
As a second generation native Californian, she feels she would benefit from living
in another part of America during her college years.

Although there are at least a dozen large annually-updated guides to colleges
(Fiske Guide to Colleges, Insider’s Guide to the Colleges, The Best 361 Colleges,
etc.), we have not yet found one just for music conservatories. There are
several like Creative Colleges: A Guide for Student Actors, Artists, Dancers,
Musicians, and Writers by Elaina Loveland, which cover a variety of related
programs but do not provide in-depth, comparative, current information like Fiske.
Fiske lists conservatories but does not profile them. The list in

U.S. News & World Report just refers to the Elaina Loveland book for more
information. There is a Wikipedia entry on

Music schools in the United States but it just lists web links for the schools.

My daughter is also checking in with her High School college counsellor, her voice
teacher, and her choir director and we hope we will know what ground to cover by
checking all of those sources.

Besides being very impressed with the music conservatories at
both Carnegie Mellon and Oberlin, probably the biggest understanding
to come out of this college visit in Pennsylvania and Ohio
is that my daughter Jessi wants to study music more than anything
else. On the 5 hour drive from Kenyon College (Gambier,
Ohio) back here to the airport hotel (in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania),
she and I discussed priorities and options. That is, which of the
colleges Jessi has researched offer a world-class vocal conservatory
education as well as providing an excellent computer science and
humanities education.

Some of the best conservatories offer substandard training in
everything but music. Jessi is now reconsidering the list of colleges
to which she will apply before the end of December. The original
list contained several schools with good but not great music programs:
those are being dropped. The feeling of certainty, of belonging, that
Jessi described when touring the two music conservatories is what
really made the decision. She finds many academic subjects
interesting and her grades are uniformly high but only music gives
her that rush of joy.

I have no idea whether Jessi will be offered a place in one of the
several vocal conservatories to which she will apply, or even what
she will do with a background in opera and a singing knowledge of
English, Spanish, German, Italian, Latin, and French. It will be
fascinating to watch developments.

My daughter Jessi and I are visiting Kenyon College here in Gambier,
Ohio, today. We arrived last night in time to see a free showing of
the movie “A Scanner Darkly” hosted by the campus film club at the
huge bright new “KAC” (Kenyon Athletic Facility). This film
combines live action and anime styles and features an impressive
cast including Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, Robert Downey Jr.,
and Woody Harrelson. The small KAC film theater was packed and
the movie, while disturbing in content, was fascinating.

It was
very cold walking back to our hotel and frost was forming on the
ground. There was no cell phone service for Cingular on campus
but the wireless net works fine. We are getting ready for Jessi’s
interview with the admissions department now…

Yesterday, my daughter Jessi and I toured Oberlin College here
in Ohio. She had a formal interview with a Senior Intern at the Oberlin
Admissions office (but never got to talk with any regular staff
member), attended an introduction by a Oberlin Conservatory admissions
officer and a Sophomore, and had a Conservatory tour by that student.

Despite much web site searching, Jessi had not been able to contact
anyone by email to get permission to sit in on a Conservatory class
or to arrange for permission to visit a voice lesson.
It turns out that Friday is a poor day to visit Oberlin Conservatory
because very little is happening in the vocal department. It was
frustrating to find this out after we travelled here and despite all of
Jessi’s advance work.

At the recommendation of our tour guide, we hung around the hallway
outside the offices of two members of the voice faculty on the chance
that one of them would have time to
talk. After checking back several times, we finally ran into Alan
Montgomery (who teaches opera theater). He was kind enough to talk with
us and we got many of our questions answered. Mr. Montgomery also
generously phoned Duane Mahy (a voice faculty member) to introduce her
to Jessi and ask for some time.

We walked to Ms. Mahy’s office and were delighted to have her spend
half an hour answering questions and then giving Jessi a short voice
lesson. Jessi sang two of the “Italian 24” song collection and got some
very helpful tips on how to hold herself and manage her breath better.
Mr. Montgomery and Ms. Mahy were both very generous with their time and
were impressive teachers (as well as a pleasure to talk with).

The CMU and Oberlin music conservatories seemed satisfied with Jessi’s
vocal training and interested that she will graduate High School
with four years of Latin and three years of Spanish. Both schools
require undergraduate language classes only in Italian, German, and
French but expressed interest in Jessi’s training in Russian and Spanish
opera and art songs as well as her extensive American and English folk
song repertoire.

CMU and Oberlin conservatories take only about 15 vocal students a year so
they fall into the “very difficult” category of potential schools. 80% of
the admissions decision for both conservatories is based on a vocal audition.
Both are offering regional auditions in San Francisco in January 2007, so
we will not have to travel to the MidWest again just to try out. One of
the Oberlin Conservatory vocal students we talked with informally
said that half of her class had gotten in through a regional audition. She
also said that for other conservatories, potential students really needed
to go there to try out even if they do offer regional auditions.

CMU and Oberlin conservatories each offer the chance to take non-music
classes seriously. At CMU, music students can minor in another subject and
most Oberlin Conservatory students are double majors. So, Jessi’s strong
interests in Computer Science and English could be served too. Oberlin
even offers a formal technology and music program called TIMRA (Technology
in Music and Related Arts).

In general, Oberlin very much reminded us of
Peninsula School, the hippie
developmental school which Jessi attended from age three through 8th
grade. There is even a weaving shop in town called the

Loom Shed. Jessi became a good weaver while at Peninsula
School and has missed weaving while at
Harker High School. She and the shop owner, Charles Lermond, had a
great talk about weaving, looms, and designing patterns on a computer.
He uses Fiberworks PCW
(which I suspect we will be buying soon).

My daughter Jessi and I wandered around the Carnegie Mellon campus
in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania yesterday between official tours and
interviews. We were invited to join the Music department’s weekly noon
Convocation in the Kresge Recital Hall and were lucky enough to be
there the day famed jazz horn player Warren Vache played.

The hall was very full in the back 2/3. The front few rows were empty during
the opening set until Mr. Vache pointed out that he and the other
two players had bathed and had their shots and would someone please come
sit nearer. He told a few funny stories and answered some questions
but mostly expressed himself delightfully through his music.

CMU is a very impressive place. The integration of art, music, and
computer science is particularly attractive to we from the Silicon Valley.
The recital halls are fully linked into professional recording studios and
there is also a professional sound mixing studio which is part of the art
department on the top floor. The architecture school is in the same
building as music and art. The Fine Arts Building floor at entry level
is inlaid with marble diagrams of famous buildings – Athens’ Parthenon,
St. Peter’s of Rome, and Notre Dame in Paris among them.

Jessi had fun staying over in the CMU dorms with her friends and visited with
her cousin Joel who is attending U Pitt next door. She found CMU to be
very much a 24×7 campus and was impressed by the size of the killer
chocolate cookies with ice cream on top.

We were lucky enough to be able to sit in on a delightful music lesson by
Douglas Ahlstedt (an associate professor of voice at CMU with a specialty
in vocal health). CMU’s music
department only takes 35 to 40 students a year, only 15 of them in voice.
So, Jessi’s application may not be accepted (but what an amazing place to
be trained if she did get in). Even I with no music training could tell
that the facilities and teachers are world class. The staff were very helpful
and answered questions both in email in advance and while we were there.
Jessi points out that artists who email you back are a rare breed.

My daughter has narrowed down the list of colleges to which she is
applying to ten. All of the applications are due at the end of this
year. She and I flew to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania today to visit three
of the colleges on her list: Carnegie Mellon, Oberlin, and Kenyon. We
will tour CMU tomorrow, then drive to Ohio to visit the other two. Jessi
already visited over a dozen colleges on an earlier tour with her school.
All of those were located between New Jersey and Boston (Princeton, Yale,
Harvard, MIT, etc.).

Last week, her list still included about 15 schools. We finally used a Pugh
Matrix to prioritize the final choices and reduce the list to 10. Jessi’s
primary categories of interest were Music (Vocal Performance, not Theory),
Computer Science, International Relations, and English. We added a General category to cover everything else (including whether they had a wrestling
team which welcomes women wrestlers). Every potential school was rated
in each category with High (5 points), Medium (3 points), or Low (1 point).
The scores ranged from a perfect 25 (Princeton) to five which rated a 15.
Once the list was reduced, it easily sorted into the 3 categories required
by Jessi’s college counsellor: likely, possible, and very difficult.

We walked up Forbes Avenue through U Pitt (the University of Pittsburgh)
to CMU tonight. We visited a book shop and had an Indian dinner. I am
staying at a hotel near campus while Jessi spends the night in the
dorm room of a friend who started at CMU this year. Tomorrow, we go on
several campus tours, visit some classes, plus Jessi has an interview with
the CMU Admissions Department.