Columbia College Music offers a unique, innovative performance degree, a Bachelor of Music in Contemporary, Jazz, and Popular Music. This professional degree in music is enhanced by Columbia’s downtown Chicago campus, where students are mentored by a faculty of professional musicians and renowned resident artists with established connections in the national and international music business. This degree is intended for instrumentalists of all types, singers, songwriters, and producers who are interested in performing and in creating original music in popular idioms, including various forms of Rock, Pop, Latin, Jazz, and Jazz hybrids, as well as contemporary and classic R&B styles. The program includes specialized courses in Music Technology and Music Business in addition to dedicated courses in Music History, Theory and Arranging. For their capstone projects, students focus heavily on collaborative projects for the purpose of developing, recording, and performing original music suitable for professional presentation. In addition, students undertake their Senior Recital project in preparing their own singular vision for entering the professional space.

As a result of successfully completing program requirements, students should be able to:

• read, notate, hear, perform, and analyze music at an advanced level of musicianship;
• perform and improvise on their primary instrument or voice at a professional level;
• describe and engage with the characteristics, performance practices, and historical context of a diverse range of contemporary musical styles and genres and apply and contextualize this knowledge to their understanding of their own unique place in the artist continuum;
• critically assess detailed elements of music performances, recordings, and production;
• apply and further acquire related skills in songwriting, arranging, composition, improvisation, and digital music production to create and produce original music in both individual and collaborative contexts;
• prepare a portfolio of original music suitable for the professional market, including professionally recorded and documented media projects;
• produce and present a live performance suitable for industry showcase; and
• prepare a viable business plan for a career in music performance, songwriting, and production.