Music Alumni

A liberal arts degree in music opens many doors. Like any liberal arts degree, it teaches critical thinking and writing skills as well as the techniques of the discipline. Many students double major, and go on to pursue the other major as a profession while still remaining intelligently interested and engaged in music,   A Bowdoin degree in music can also lead to graduate study in music and further work in the field.  Indeed, our graduates have gone on to such prestigious graduate schools as Yale, Indiana, Michigan, Eastman, and Juilliard, studying performance, conducting, music theory and musicology. They have received Fulbright grants and Watson fellowships, and have studied in places from Indiana to Amsterdam.

Professors of music, symphony and opera administrators, an electronic studio designer, radio station administrators, church music directors, teachers, record producers, a piano technician and instrument builders have all used their Bowdoin training in their musical careers. Other graduates have gone on to law and medical school, and to success in the financial world.

Recent graduates who have gone on in music include:

Nate Michel '97 is pursuing a PhD in composition at Princeton while making a splash with his electronic rock albums;

Noel Verzosa '99 is doing a Ph.D. in musicology at the University of California, Berkeley and won one of five 2006 Alvin H. Johnson dissertation awards from the American Musicological Society;

Meredith Crosby '00, double major in music and neuroscience, has completed a PhD in the Departments of Environmental Health Sciences and Cancer Biology at Case Western Reserve University and Cleveland Clinic Foundation's Lerner Research Institute, respectively. She began a post-doctoral fellowship at the Yale Cancer Center in January 2006;

Allison Robbins '02 is pursuing a doctorate in musicology at the University of Virginia on a prestigious Thomas Jefferson Fellowship;

Anne Cavanaugh '03, music and psychology double major, is about to go to grad school at the University of Maryland in psychology;

Pat Dwiggins '03 is using his musical training in an urban ministry program in Camden NJ;

Steven Kemper '03, is doing a doctorate in composition at the University of Virginia;

Trevor Peterson '03, music minor, is working for an environmental research firm while continuing to play the violin in orchestras and contradance bands;

Adam Cohen-Leadholm '07 is working on a master’s degree in composition at Butler University; and,

Tim Kantor '07 is pursuing a master’s degree in violin performance at the Cleveland Institute of Music.