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• 1 2022-01-06T15:34:12-08:00 Young Artist Project 20 Featured Student Projects plain 2022-01-27T09:27:02-08:00
  At USC's Thornton School of Music, we’ve created a new model of classical music education for undergraduates by rethinking what it means to be a virtuoso in the 21st century. The classical music profession has changed. We’re changing with it.
  
  In our continuing commitment to a virtuosic education for musicians, USC Thornton unveiled a radical new educational model, launched in Fall 2019 for undergraduates in the Classical Performance & Composition Division. We call it the New Classical. “USC Thornton’s new curriculum was designed with the 21st-century musician in mind, and musical excellence remains the core,” said Robert Cutietta, Dean of USC Thornton. “We want students to rethink virtuosity. It’s all about making students better, and lifelong, musicians.”
  
  At the heart of the new program is the Young Artist Project, which students begin working on in their junior year, providing an opportunity to specialize, collaborate, and shape work that reflects a distinct musical voice.
  Students might visualize a composition, develop a hybrid performance, conduct research, or even explore new creative technologies – the Young Artist Project is about developing a unique voice to make their art powerful and relevant today.
  
  From our Faculty of Record, Kenneth Foster:
  A central part of the Thornton School’s redesign of the undergraduate classical music curriculum is The Young Artist Project; a two-semester capstone project that taps into their personal passions and draws on their training in their chosen instrument to create a relevant and important intervention in the world of classical music. In the class, students imagine, design, and execute an innovative project; one that integrates their personal values and artistic aspirations with the external world that they will soon be entering. Key to the projects is for the students to combine their love for and expertise in classical music with the major issues of the day – climate change, emerging technologies and the drive for social justice being chief among them. It is meant to be a real-world opportunity for students to think about how they can make a significant contribution to the world of classical music in the context of a rapidly changing contemporary environment.  
  
  Students work in cohorts (pods) of 6-7 to provide peer mentoring as they work through the challenges of their projects. Each pod is led by a faculty mentor whose role is to guide and support, as students find their own way to their final project presentation which are showcased at the end of the Fall semester. 
  
  
  Our first cohort of Young Artists presented their projects in December of 2021.  Here are a few of those projects. 
  
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