Welcome to the Music Department at Hunter College! It is my pleasure to invite you to explore our outstanding faculty and program offerings. We have something for all Hunter students, from the music-loving aficionado to those who want to pursue music professionally. With our historically strong academic areas in music theory and history, ethnomusicology, and composition, our topnotch graduate program in music education, as well as our newly invigorated programs in classical or jazz performance, you will find endless opportunities in our department.
Hunter was founded as a women’s college in the nineteenth century and I feel this history in our halls. As I get on the crowded elevators on my way to the music department, I am reminded of our past. We are the only college in the country with two female Nobel laureates in medicine, we have attracted revolutionary thinkers such as Audre Lourde, who studied at Hunter in the 1950s, and Hunter was one of the first colleges to establish a center for Puerto Rican Studies, all of which attest to Hunter’s commitment to progressive thought. Becoming a music major at Hunter means serious music study in one of the great musical centers of the world within an intellectual center that is both open and rigorous. This special combination is why I love teaching here—I invite you to join us!
— Dr. Suzanne Farrin, The Frayda B. Lindemann Professor of Music