Music and Multimedia Composition

Students in the Ph.D. program in Music and Multimedia Composition produce, analyze, and perform original works that may include the use of electronic music, acoustic composition and sound in combination with video, performance, installation and text. They conduct advanced inquiry into the cultural, theoretical, technical and aesthetic issues surrounding music and multimedia production in close collaboration with faculty researchers strongly invested in real-time, interactive sonic and visual media, sound art, instrument design and acoustic composition. The program welcomes students working from diverse influences and methods, expanding their creative practices and underlying technical knowledge to spur artistic innovation. In addition to faculty mentorship, students can collaborate with a broad array of professional performing ensembles and visiting artists presented on the Brown University campus.

The graduate program in Music and Multimedia Composition offers an array of resources unique to Brown. Students have access to the department's Multimedia and Electronic Music Experiments (MEME) studios, and the university's Granoff Center for the Creative Arts. These specialized research facilities house recording studios, electronics shops, project studios, exhibition and performance spaces. Regular opportunities exist to interface with the larger arts and digital media communities at Brown, at the nearby Rhode Island School of Design, in Providence and the New England region. Music and Multimedia Composition students also partake in the many scholarly offerings of the Musicology and Ethnomusicology PhD program, with faculty specialties in technoculture, sound studies, copyright, improvisation and organology. A Brown doctoral degree in Music and Multimedia Composition leads to a career in college and university teaching, or to a position in applied work outside higher education.