From New York to Northridge, our annual list of the institutions preparing the next generation of composers across all media.

Published on November 22, 2024

A scoring stage at The Juilliard School, which offers a program for students to create music for short films from around the world.

Erin Baiano/Courtesy of Juilliard

For aspiring composers in film and TV, the watchword these days is “technology.” With even venerable conservatories like Juilliard, the San Francisco and New England Conservatories of Music and Yale boasting tech-oriented programs, it’s clear that teaching aspiring composers how to blend traditional composition with contemporary disciplines has become essential. “COVID put a whole new emphasis on what it means to be a desktop digital musician, to where you can sit down at the computer and literally be a one-person orchestra,” says Keith Mason, the coordinator of music technology for Belmont University. “All the students are gravitating toward that.” Veteran composer and orchestrator Conrad Pope, who has worked with many of the schools on THR‘s annual list of the world’s best music schools, adds that teaching students how to master cutting-edge tech can provide a valuable foundation for their talent: “[Music schools] can’t provide you with an original voice. You can’t teach creativity. But you can teach the craft.”

To achieve our school ranking this year, THR polled the members of Hollywood’s Society of Composers and Lyricists, the Composers Diversity Collective and Motion Picture Academy and Television Academy music branch members.

The Juilliard School

Juilliard’s vaunted reputation continues to be the gold standard for music schools as it returns to the top of this list. Edward Bilous is the founding director of the school’s Center for Creative Technology and teaches more than two dozen students in composing for visual media and scoring to picture, and he leads an independent study in emerging and collaborative arts. Also offered is Art of the Score, a program in which Juilliard composers create original music for short films and visual media from around the world. This year, the college celebrated the 25th year of its Music Technology Center (now called the Center for Creative Technology) with the inaugural Future Stages Festival, a four-day event that screened a number of international shorts featuring music by Juilliard students. The school is also expanding classes to include composing for immersive experiences and installations in reaction to the growth in theatrical multimedia attractions. Students will get increased instruction in music production and mixing to meet this need. In February, the school featured a live collaboration between its New York and Tianjin, China, campuses with musicians simultaneously performing Terry Riley’s minimalist piece In C at Juilliard’s Center for Innovation in the Arts.

TUITION $54,400

NOTABLE ALUMNI Andrea Datzman (Inside Out 2), Jongnic Bontemps (Transformers: Rise of the Beasts)

USC Thornton School of Music

USC Thornton blends the disciplines of a conservatory education with an unbeatably close working relationship with the motion picture, television and music industries in Hollywood. Jeanine Cowen is in her third year as chair of the Screen Scoring program at Thornton and stresses the opportunities students have working shoulder to shoulder with entertainment professionals at the school. “We really are this kind of petri dish for very talented, creative people who are starting to practice what they’re going to do out in the world,” Cowen says. “And I am still amazed at the L.A. ecosystem of creative people.” Composer Bear McCreary (The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power) attended USC and maintains that Thornton is a top school for prospective media composers: “For me, what USC was is proximity to filmmakers. If you don’t have film students in the dorm next door, you are wasting your time.”

TUITION $69,904

NOTABLE ALUMNI Benjamin Wallfisch (Twisters), Jason Graves (Gran Turismo)

Berklee College of Music

Berklee College of Music’s Sean McMahon

Courtesy

Berklee Screen Scoring program chair Sean McMahon consistently has been upping Berklee’s media scoring game, recruiting such visiting talent as composer Mychael Danna and Netflix vp music Amy Dunning to confer with students, and this year he will be adding several new elements to the program that already offers bachelor degrees in film and media scoring and game and interactive media scoring. Berklee has partnered with Red Bull to provide music for videos of highly caffeinated consumers flipping out over their energy drink. “They’re going to fly 10 of our composers to Austria, and we’re going to record at the Synchron stage with orchestral musicians from the symphony there,” McMahon says. Berklee Online will be launching something even more groundbreaking: the world’s first master degree in music supervision. Says music supervisor Dave Jordan: “Berklee has already given so much to our community, and having them teach and support the next generation of music supervisors is beyond exciting.”

TUITION $50,540

NOTABLE ALUMNI Jan Hammer (Miami Vice), Trey Parker (South Park)

Columbia College Chicago

Columbia’s two-year master of fine arts program in music composition for the screen, headed by Kubilay Uner, focuses on music for full-length film, television, video games and other visual media, culminating in a five-week semester in L.A. with internships, as well as thesis projects recorded by a 70-piece orchestra. “Another important part of our program continues to be our composers-in-residence — professional composers at the height of their careers who come to Columbia College Chicago to guide our students in rescoring one of their projects for seven weeks at a time,” Uner says. “Alliance for Women Film Composers co-president Heather McIntosh (The L-Word) just finished her residency, and Brandon Campbell (The Thinning) is going to close out this current semester.”

TUITION $32,316

NOTABLE ALUMNI Austin Deadman (Hamilton), Jonathan McReynolds (Grammy-nominated gospel musician)

The Oberlin Conservatory of Music

Oberlin’s liberal arts education and conservatory training afford double-major opportunities for students and include study in instrumental performance and composition, conducting, ethnomusicology, jazz composition, recording arts and production, voice and opera theater. This fall, the school debuted a recording arts and production major in a program overseen by associate professor Andrew Tripp, who doubles as Oberlin’s director of conservatory audio services.

TUITION $66,410

NOTABLE ALUMNI Mark Cohn (singer songwriter), John Kander (Chicago, Cabaret)

The San Francisco Conservatory of Music

SFCM’s technology and applied composition degree program boasts a film scoring track that starts students off working with digital audio workstations such as Pro-Tools, Logic and Ableton, along with sample libraries from EastWest and Vienna Symphonic Library (these sample vendors offer pre-existing pieces of music that students can build into their own compositions). Students use these tools to write and produce music for live instruments and ensembles of various sizes, from solo players to chamber groups.

TUITION $54,400

NOTABLE ALUMNI John Adams, Gordon Getty (concert composers)

UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music

UCLA Extension offers a certificate in film scoring suitable for composers looking to up their game and skill set and musicians eager to move from the concert hall or pop/rock world into the discipline. Students learn the ins and outs of scoring for film, television and video games; the business end of film music; and how to use essential technologies like MIDI (musical instrument digital interface).

TUITION $15,154

NOTABLE ALUMNI Randy Newman (Toy Story), James Horner (Titanic)

The New England Conservatory of Music

NEC, one of the oldest and most revered conservatories in the country, keeps students up to date with its music technology concentration and the Robert Ceely Electronic Music Studio. Conrad Pope attended the school and has returned to speak to students. “I tried to give them an overview of scoring for film,” he says. “They give students a very good music education.”

TUITION $58,910

NOTABLE ALUMNI Carl Davis (The French Lieutenant’s Woman), Stephanie Economou (About My Father)

Eastman School of Music

Image Credit: Courtesy

Eastman’s Beal Institute for Film Music and Contemporary Media offers a highly exclusive two-year master’s program limited to no more than six students a year. Mark Watters is in his seventh year as director of the program, which was established by composer Jeff Beal (House of Cards). This year, the school has added a recording and mixing class taught by Grammy-winning engineer Stephen Roessner. The school’s seventh Visual Music concert will be held Jan. 24 with an original score conducted live alongside a screening of Lon Chaney’s silent classic Laugh Clown Laugh, as well as the world premiere of Eastman alum Laurence Rosenthal’s Vienna, a 30-minute work for strings and harp, with 98-year-old Rosenthal in attendance. The school will also host its first film festival in October, with a number of scores conducted live to picture, including one for the 1998 drama The Red Violin, which will be conducted by its composer, John Corigliano.

TUITION $65,870

NOTABLE ALUMNI Yixin Huang (Johnny Keep Walking!), Garett Reynolds (House of the Dragon)

Indiana University Jacobs School of Music

Jacobs’ music scoring for visual media program offers a master’s degree, undergraduate and doctoral minors and two certificate degrees under the direction of professor Larry Groupé. “The scoring program now offers an immersive scoring for episodic television course in Los Angeles every spring, taught by TV veteran Rick Marvin,” Groupé adds. “In addition, we have been placing top assistantship positions with Mike Post (Law & Order) and Kevin Kiner (CSI: Miami) and high-level scoring engineers.”

TUITION $40,369

NOTABLE ALUMNI David Baker (jazz composer), Alexandra du Bois (concert composer)

Film Scoring Academy of Europe

FSAE offers a one-year master’s degree program or an eight-month online graduate degree with a three-and-a-half week summer program. Former Disney music executive Andy Hill runs the academy and attracts Hollywood veterans who contribute as visiting lecturers (Danny Elfman premiered his Cello Concerto in Sofia in 2023). “There’s no way for me really to argue that Sofia, Bulgaria, is a true international media center, so we’ll do our best to bring the industry to you,” Hill says. “You’re going to be able to put your music up in front of 84 musicians, and the memory of that experience and that sound will remain in your head forever.” Pope teaches orchestration at the Academy for two weeks out of the year. “What’s good about the Academy is that they have a composition assignment every week for different size ensembles,” he says. “And because Sofia is so isolated and Bulgarian is an impossible language to speak, the kids are closer because they have one workspace, where they all work all the time.”

TUITION 36,950 euros ($39,000)

NOTABLE ALUMNI Michael Drew (Dome House Six), Seiji Hotta (Rick and Morty: Samurai & Shogun)

New York University Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development

NYU undergrads can spend a semester abroad at one of 16 NYU international campuses, including London, Paris and Prague.

Courtesy

Steinhardt offers students the opportunity to earn bachelor of music and master of music degrees in its Music Theory and Composition: Screen Scoring programs, run by chair Ronald H. Sadoff. “We consider our screen-scoring majors as filmmaker/storytellers who collaborate from the music department,” says Sadoff. “Our collaborations with the NYU Tisch Film, TV, Video Game Center, as well as Columbia University film school, are key features of our training.”

TUITION $31,398

NOTABLE ALUMNI Ariel Marx (A Small Light), Herdís Stefánsdóttir (Knock at the Cabin)

University of North Carolina School of the Arts

After several years of offering its two-year master of fine arts in film music composition as part of UNCSA’s school of filmmaking, the program has been integrated into the college’s school of music, where it originated 26 years ago. “I felt like our master’s program hit a ceiling for growth — that if we grew any more, there just are not enough opportunities to go around in terms of how many films the school produces,” film music composition chair Chris Heckman says. Heckman is working on an undergraduate degree that should be available to students in the next two years. In the meantime, he wants to push the master’s programs toward creating graduate content and working with other schools, like the International Film School of Cologne, Germany, where UNCSA students have been scoring feature-length films.

TUITION $24,399

NOTABLE ALUMNI Terrence Mann (theater director, Cats singer), Atli Örvarsson (Pirates of the Caribbean)

Yale School of Music

Under the direction of dean José García-León, Yale continues to be one of the nation’s most prestigious traditional conservatories, with a stingy acceptance rate that winnows about 1,500 applications to 100 students from the U.S. and around the world. YSM does not have a media scoring program, but the school’s media production department and recording studios give students the chance to study electronic music, technology and recording along with audio/video recording, editing, livestreaming and content creation.

TUITION $39,500, but full-tuition scholarships are available to all students

NOTABLE ALUMNI Roger Sessions, David Snow (classical composers)

Belmont University

A student performance at Belmont University, which makes its debut on this list.

Sam Simpkins

Making its debut on this list is Belmont University and its College of Music and Performing Arts, in the heart of Nashville’s Music Row. Belmont offers master of music degrees in composition and commercial music and a master of science degree in audio engineering. Keith Mason is the coordinator of music technology for Belmont University’s College of Music and Performing Arts, and he stresses that media scoring is central to the music school’s efforts, even if it doesn’t offer a degree in the discipline by name. “COVID put a whole new emphasis on what it means to be a desktop digital musician, to where you can sit down at the computer and literally be a one-person orchestra,” Mason says. “All the students are gravitating toward that, so we want them to have multiple skill sets and not just focus on one medium.”

TUITION $42,540

NOTABLE ALUMNI Country artists Trisha Yearwood, Pam Tillis

Columbia University in the City of New York

Columbia CNY’s visual arts program in the school of the arts collaborates with its Computer Music Center in the Department of Music to create a two-year sound art MFA program offered to about four students a year for an in-depth exploration of the integration of sound with other media. Students explore new media, performance and concepts and can work in sculpture, video and ceramics with Columbia’s diverse community of artists and musicians (as long as they can afford it — Columbia CNY is not cheap).

TUITION $74,846

NOTABLE ALUMNI Jason Everman (guitarist, Nirvana), Art Garfunkel

Musicians Institute, Los Angeles

The Musicians Institute’s Composition for Visual Media program offers courses in arranging, scoring, orchestration, music theory, ear training and music history, either in-person or online. Master and bachelor of music degrees, along with associate of arts and associate of science degrees, ground students in the basics, with master’s degrees costing anywhere from a yearly tuition in the $25,000 range (music), to the hefty price tag of $90,000 for a visual media masters degree.

TUITION $32,400 (bachelor’s)

NOTABLE ALUMNI Justin Derrico (Pink touring band member), Frank Gambale (Grammy-winning songwriter)

Cal State Northridge

Its Mike Curb College of Arts, Media and Communication music department offers master’s degrees in composition and conducting. Students also can pursue a master’s in music industry administration. Its bachelor of music program is divided into composition and commercial and media writing concentrations: Composition emphasizes contemporary art music styles and techniques for the writing of chamber, symphonic or electronic music, while commercial and media writing is a scoring degree in which students learn songwriting and vocal arranging, instrumental composition and orchestration.

TUITION $7,458

NOTABLE ALUMNI Troy Glass (rapper), Serj Tankian (System of a Down)

Los Angeles College of Music

LACM is just on the other side of the Hollywood Hills and offers a master’s degree in composing for visual media run by chair James Sale. Sale has added some specific classes most media scoring programs don’t tackle. “I’ve seen that a lot of programs don’t have specific classes, like composing for action, composing for horror, composing music for trailers and libraries,” Sales says. “I’m adding a class about theme and melody writing, and I’m also adding a class called working with temp music, which is a crucial part of our profession.”

TUITION $27,000

NOTABLE ALUMNI Mark Wayne Salling (Glee), Drew Louis (RuPaul’s Drag Race)

Pacific Northwest Film Scoring Program

The Seattle Film Institute’s Pacific Northwest Scoring Program, overseen by veteran composer Hummie Mann and program director Sammy Applegate, offers students a chance to earn a professional certificate in film and media scoring in less than a year. Students work on 10 scoring projects with student directors, conduct live studio recording sessions and produce electronic and synth scores, earning a master’s degree in 40 weeks. “This fall, we relaunched our original evening program as a new two-year online evening film scoring program, which gives people the chance to learn about film scoring, theory, orchestration and how to write a film cue with one-on-one mentorship,” Applegate says. “[This] will be recorded by professional musicians with a minimal time commitment of two hours a week over the course of two years from the comfort of their homes.”

TUITION $35,000

NOTABLE ALUMNI Antonio Di Iorio (Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire), Michael Paraskevas (Agatha All Along)

This story appeared in the Nov. 20 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.

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