Top U.S. double bass schools – reader survey results

— Visit the Double Bassist’s Guide to Colleges – U.S. Edition —

A couple of weeks ago, I put out a survey for blog readers asking them to rank what they feel are the best universities and conservatories for double bass study in the United States. This survey got quite a response, and I’ve got the final results tabulated. While I certainly wouldn’t base where I decided to go to school based purely on this survey (!), I think it’s interesting to poll the community like this and see what people’s perceptions are regarding the top places to study double bass. Also, remember that, much as I’d like to think that my readership is completely unbiased, I imagine that there are certain schools with a lot of students reading this blog, and others with significantly fewer, and I’d imagine that people would root for their school, so these results may also be slanted toward school with a high doublebassblog.org readership… or maybe not.

I’ve written many articles about this topic in the past, so you can go spelunking through the blog article archives if you’d like a more in-depth look at this topic, but I think that this list should prove to be, if nothing else, food for thought:

Top 20 Ranked U.S. Schools for Double Bass Study – 2009
doublebassblog.org reader poll

  1. The Curtis Institute
  2. Rice University
  3. Indiana University
  4. University of Washington
  5. Boston University
  6. The Juilliard School
  7. Cincinnati College-Conservatory
  8. The Colburn School
  9. Michigan State University
  10. Peabody Conservatory
  11. New England Conservatory
  12. Carnegie Mellon University
  13. Manhattan School of Music
  14. Boston Conservatory
  15. Eastman School of Music
  16. University of Iowa
  17. Arizona State University
  18. University of Southern California
  19. The New School
  20. University of North Texas

Download this list:
top ranked double bass schools 2009.pdf

I’ll expand this survey with more schools and do it again in 2010, so stay tuned!

Any thoughts on great schools not on this list? Feel free to leave a comment below.

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8 Comments

  1. Mike
    Mike on December 3, 2009 at 5:50 pm

    Interesting that the U of Washington is above most of the well-known conservatories. I haven’t heard of any student from there having any sort of professional success winning auditions.

    Maybe it’s just the influence of all the talk about Barry Lieberman on this blog that put it in the top 4? How is it that most voters thought that the U of Washington was a better bass school than Julliard or BU among others?

  2. Eric Alleshouse
    Eric Alleshouse on December 6, 2009 at 5:59 pm

    How about Cleveland Conservatory too? It just shows who is responding to the survey.

  3. Mike
    Mike on December 8, 2009 at 6:42 pm

    I agree. It isn’t a surprise to see Rice, Curtis, and IU up there, but U of W? Also a surprise to see that Peabody, NEC, and USC aren’t further up on the list.

  4. adam
    adam on December 8, 2009 at 7:22 pm

    Carnegie Mellon is an up and coming school. In my opinion it should sit no lower than sixth on this list – Jeff Turner is one of the greatest teachers of our generation.

  5. Dan
    Dan on December 11, 2009 at 12:04 am

    OBERLIN!!!!

  6. Bren
    Bren on December 12, 2009 at 2:45 pm

    Hey y’all why don’t you chill out on the dissfest. Some of the reasons the UW is so good aside from having an amazing bass teacher and the way he runs it is the environment. It is in a majorly cool urban area, Seattle. The local symphony has some amazing players in it and they interact with the UW bass studio all the time. Barry knows tons of folks who come through town and give master classes, like Gary Karr, Christopher Brown, etcetera. The bass studio is one of the best things that the UW has to offer in the music department. Sure, the surrounding academic environment is underfunded and swallowed up by the vast scientific and medical research university that surrounds it, but compare the environment of Oberlin, or Rice or even Colburn to the access UW students have to the urban center and the great arts organizations that Seattle houses. NEC, Juillard, and Curtis kick our butts in this way but what is Juilliard’s success rate at audition winning? Not that much better and if you actually do look, players from the UW are everywhere.

  7. Zola
    Zola on December 18, 2009 at 2:34 am

    I’ve never heard of any music program at Michigan State University. Although the University of Michigan is supposed to have a thriving bass program with Diana Gannett heading the department.

  8. CP
    CP on December 27, 2009 at 3:16 pm

    Michigan State University has a pretty good music program. Jack Budrow teaches there.