Inside the Department

Fall 2020 classes offer online performance opportunities

The Department of Music's fall class offerings are evolving! The following classes are examples of how our faculty is including opportunities for live performance using Zoom and other technologies. Click "find out more" for details.

Music 181: Jazz Combos

Fall 2020

Schedule TBA

1 Unit

Instructor: Jim Nadel 

This fall quarter, there will be three types of online jazz combos:

  1. Jazz Skills Group – This class will meet weekly via Zoom. No prior jazz experience is necessary, though students must know all 12 major scales and have a basic knowledge of a musical instrument, which normally requires at least 18 months of study. No audition recording is required.
  2. Multitrack Recording Jazz Combos – These combos will meet one evening a week via Zoom. The group will choose and arrange repertoire, discuss approaches to improvisation and ensemble playing, and coordinate and eventually produce multitrack combo recordings of the group. New students and returning students who are looking for a group will need to submit a recording to demonstrate their experience level.  

  3. Live Interactive Jazz Combos – These combos will play in real-time using JackTrip software via an Ethernet connection to the internet. New students and returning students who are looking for a group will need to submit a recording to demonstrate their experience level.

Find out more.

Music 184B: Topics on the Musical Stage

Fall 2020 / Winter 2021

Schedule TBA

1-3 Unit

Instructors: Marie-Louise Catsalis | Wendy Hillhouse


The Department of Music is presenting its traditional annual musical theater production in January 2021, this time as a Zoom performance. We will be presenting Mozart’s The Impresario mashed up with songs from Mel Brooks’s The Producers. We are looking for singers (both musical theater and classical style) and pit orchestra players.

Find out more.

Music 271: Chamber Music Discovery

Fall 2020
Friday, 2:30 pm

1 Unit

Instructors: St. Lawrence String Quartet (Geoff Nuttall, Owen Dalby, Lesley Robertson, Christopher Costanza)


This is a weekly remote class with live and recorded performances and live discussion with Stanford’s Ensemble-in-Residence, the St. Lawrence String Quartet (Geoff Nuttall, Owen Dalby, Lesley Robertson, Christopher Costanza). Students are expected to develop a final project in the form of a spoken presentation combined with a performance of a piece of music, specifically geared towards general, non-academic audiences, drawing on the performer's expertise as an interpreter.