Check out campus visit options on the College of Visual and Performing Arts website and write Dr. Haney or Dr. Guinivan to discuss setting up a visit with the composition department. We're happy to arrange for prospective students to visit composition seminar and other music classes and to meet current composition students. 

Please see this page for details about the formal declaration process for the composition concentration.

Note that while students may begin composition studies their first semester, the concentration is formally declared at the end of the student's first year of study.

Composition department recitals are held once or twice each semester, giving composers regular opportunities to have their solo and chamber ensemble works performed in the beautiful Forbes Center for the Performing Arts. In their final year of study, composition majors present a recital of their music in the Forbes Center Recital Hall.

The JMU Composition Department is proud to offer annual departmental competitions for both Wind Ensemble and Choir. Both competitions are open to students studying composition at JMU, and the award is a performance by the JMU Wind Symphony or Madison Singers. Several recent performances of winning works can be heard at the links above and at the JMU Composition Showcase.

Undergradute composition majors also complete a one-year course in Instrumentation and Orchestration which culminates in a recorded reading session of original works with the JMU Symphony Orchestra.

All composition majors attend a weekly seminar meeting where students and faculty listen to and discuss contemporary repertoire, complete and share composition exercises, and present finished works or works in progress with the studio.

JMU's annual Contemporary Music Festival is held each year in October and features three days of concerts featuring performances of contemporary music by faculty, students, and School of Music Ensembles. The festival typically brings a prominent guest composer to campus and often brings guest performers as well. The festival guest composer gives lectures and masterclasses to the composition studio. Recent guest composers have included Bright Sheng, Augusta Read Thomas, Libby Larsen, Roger Reynolds, and Stephen Hartke.

Composers that wish to work with dancers, poets, or filmmakers can pursue extracurricular collaborative projects with students and faculty of the School of Theatre and Dance, the Creative Writing Program, and the School of Media Arts and Design. Composition Seminar periodically includes interdisciplinary projects or exercises that composition majors participate in.

JMU also has an extra curricular composition club for both composition majors and interested non-majors. The club meets biweekly. The club's activities for the 2019-2020 academic year included a 24-hour composing challenge pairing composers with performers and culminating in a public concert.