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California Institute of the Arts

BFA: Performer-Composer

The Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts

A man sits at a black, baby grand piano on a modernistic stage while another man stands at a microphone playing a flute.

Joshua Hill plays early romantic music on flute.

Practice and performance

CalArts’ distinctive BFA Performer-Composer program is designed to inspire you as a musician to build a practice in which you both create and perform your own work at the highest levels. Reflecting the increasing demand for flexible musicians who are not only skilled performers, but are equally adept at integrating composition into their practice, you’ll draw upon practical and theoretical skills from music of the past and speculate about music of the future. As you build skills, explore, and experiment, you’ll make new art, and find the process of its creation is inseparable from its expression in the world.

A small group of seated musicians plays on a shadowy, dramatically lit, modernistic stage.

Rogilio Resendiz’s mid-residency recital You Know What They Say at the Wild Beast.

Explore the possibilities

BFA Performer-Composer

The Performer-Composer program provides a structured yet highly individualized course of study. As a BFA student, you’ll participate in comprehensive training regimens in composition and performance practice that are custom-tailored to your individual creative interests, with an emphasis on both performing and composing as you progress through a curriculum geared toward preparing you for a career as a working musician. 

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Where the wild things play

A lone performer plays a saxophone, standing in the middle of an empty stage in a futuristic bandshell with a lawn in front and trees and sky in the background.

The composer Morton Feldman used the term “Wild Beast” as a metaphor for the ineffable generative force in art—making it the ideal name for CalArts’ iconic variable-use, indoor-outdoor music pavilion.

At CalArts, you’ll join a community of artists—students and faculty alike—and benefit from the School of Music’s unique location within the country’s only accredited college that gathers the performing, visual, and literary arts under one roof. Working with your faculty mentor, other members of our acclaimed faculty, and a robust roster of visiting artists, you’ll participate in private lessons in both composition and performance.  and collaborate continuously with others throughout the School. The pre-professional BFA track also provides ample opportunities for collaboration, emphasizing rigorous practice and sustained performance, and serves as a catalyst for further musical exploration.

Throughout your residency, you’ll give recitals and other performances centered on original music as you develop a professional portfolio to highlight your creative accomplishments. In addition to solo performances, you may organize or join ensembles, sometimes alongside faculty, dedicated to exploring emerging musical languages. In keeping with CalArts’ commitment to experimentation and interdisciplinary art, the program encourages you to explore—and link your work with—disciplines beyond music.

All undergraduate programs in The Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts offer a broad and rigorous general musical education alongside highly individualized lesson instruction and mentoring. As a BFA student, you’ll engage in intensive shared training in musical techniques and concepts spanning classical, jazz, popular, electronic, and experimental styles, and both Western and non-Western musical cultures. You will graduate with experience in creating original work, ensemble performance, music notation and theory, professional development, and artistic métiers outside of music.

BFA Performer-Composers are required to fulfill all academic requirements, as well as pass a graduation composition portfolio review and a graduation jury and recital in order to graduate and earn the degree.

Interested in this program?

View our step-by-step application guide to learn more.  

Start your application

Admission requirements

To be considered for the BFA Performer-Composer program, you must complete an application and all program-specific requirements, including a portfolio representative of your work, an artist statement, a brief video introduction, letters of recommendation, and an audition. Before applying, please familiarize yourself with the detailed application requirements and resources available to assist you in this important process. 

View application requirements

Degree requirements

Each CalArts music student designs their course of study in collaboration with a faculty mentor, with the first two BFA years focused on building a strong foundation in music theory, performance, and diverse musical cultures, and the final two years dedicated to personalized exploration through specialized concentrations, creative projects, and individualized mentorship.

View BFA Performer-Composer academic requirements

In addition to work in your specific program, all undergraduate students must complete requirements in general education, which we call Critical Studies. This liberal arts curriculum is designed to enable students to consider aesthetic questions within larger socio-cultural, ethical, and political contexts.  

View Critical Studies requirements

Minors and interdisciplinary opportunities

CalArts offers students the chance to pursue additional interests alongside your chosen discipline, such as a minor in Music Theory, Digital Arts, or Arts Education.

Learn more about minors and interdisciplinary opportunities 

Courses you might take

What courses would you take as a BFA Instrumental Arts student? Browse the courses offered in the School of Music, including opportunities to study jazz, world music, experimental pop, film scoring, improvisation, electronic music, composition, vocal performance, African and Balinese ensembles, and much more.

Explore our course catalog

Performer-Composer concentrations

As a BFA Performer-Composer student, you may choose to dive deeper into one of our BFA concentrations. Though this is not required, if you fulfill the necessary coursework you may have one of the following concentrations noted on your transcript:    

  • Avant-Garde Rock and Noise aims to develop necessary technical and professional skills to cultivate awareness of the socio-historical context for such music, and to create an environment that will promote radical collaboration and stylistic innovation.
  • Electronic Music fosters a strong technical foundation in studio and live electronic music-making, with instruction in advanced techniques for today’s computer musician.
  • Experimental Music addresses the current frontiers of radical exploration in music and sound art from creative, technical, historical, and philosophical perspectives.
  • Composition for Film and Video affords a technical and aesthetic foundation for students who wish to collaborate with film and video artists.
  • Instrumental Concert Music Composition offers a technical foundation for contemporary chamber and orchestral composition and provides a broad survey of the diverse stylistic, methodological, and aesthetic possibilities available to contemporary concert music composers.

Other examples of study concentrations include mastering original systems of improvisation, special methods for notation, nontraditional performance techniques, innovative approaches to interpretation of musical literature, incorporating new music and interactive media technologies, applied inter-cultural experimentation in music, interdisciplinary performance design, and more.

Meet the faculty

At CalArts, faculty and students are collaborators, teaching, learning, and working together as members of our community of artists. 

Ensembles

Student Performance

From world music and contemporary jazz to experimental sound art and interdisciplinary collaborations, a dynamic range of ensembles provides students with unparalleled opportunities to explore diverse genres, push creative boundaries, and perform innovative works with renowned artists and peers.

A group of four musicians stand facing each other in a circle on a red-lit stage, playing a marimba, cymbals, and other percussion instruments

Improv Percussion Ensemble

Gallery

Some of our alumni

More School of Music alumni

The Futures of Music

Volker Straebel, dean of The Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts, asks students and colleagues to reimagine how musicians make music and build connections with listeners.

Musicians and artists are always two steps ahead of the rest of the world, according to Straebel, making them key players as we continue to image the art—and the society—we desire to have. CalArts has always sought students who want to help author that future. “We don’t pigeonhole artists by the kind of music they create, the kind of program they’re in, or the instrument they come in playing,” adds faculty member Michael Pisaro-Liu. “We’re much more interested in guiding them as they imagine a kind of music that doesn’t exist yet.”

School of Music dean Volker Straebel sits at a soundboard.

School of Music Events

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Want to learn more?

We got you. Our Admissions team is all about providing the information you need to decide if CalArts is right for you. We’re excited to connect with you for a tour of our legendary campus, a virtual info session, or at one of our admissions events across the country or around the world. Take the next step—we’re here to help.