About Us
Faculty & Staff
Facilities
Alumni
Mission & Values
The mission of the CSU Bakersfield Music Program is to develop knowledgeable, skilled musicians and audiences through high-quality musical experiences, deep exploration of musical topics, and musical service to the community.
We value:
- Artistry, the disciplined commitment to humanly-shaped sound as an expressive, beautiful, and necessary part of life, in whose patterns we find and share meaning.
- Critical thinking, the ability to make sense of music technically, expressively, and contextually. We hone tools for interpreting music's structural and expressive features, and we learn to connect style and performance with issues of broader significance. We appreciate both the diversity and continuity of human experiences.
- Communication, the ability to speak and write intelligently about an art form that resists easy verbalization. This includes wielding musical concepts and terminology as well as finding resonant metaphors that help us share the many images, emotional shades, and meanings that music brings to life.
- Collaboration, the art of working closely with others in ways that are considerate, productive, and exciting. We learn that our devotion to an art form is bound up with a commitment to other people.
- Community, which follows from the conviction that music is the social art form par excellence, one that is at its best when shared for the enrichment of all. Music offers the possibility of a meaningful whole greater than the sum of its parts.
The CSUB Music Program is accredited by the National Association of Schools of Music (NASM).
"If Not for Music," by Ron Kean
"If Not for Music" was commissioned by Dr. Angel Vázquez-Ramos and the CSUB Singers during the 2020-2021 academic year. This collaboration of over 100 choral musicians from CSUB and Kern County attests to the art form's enduring power to connect us to our deeper selves and those around us, even amid the most difficult circumstances.
Music Student Honors
Outstanding Undergraduate Student, School of Arts & Humanities
- 2021 – Madelynne Heiss (Music Education)
- 2018 – Quoc Trieu (Music Education)
- 2016 – Sharyn Absher (Music Education)
Outstanding Performing Arts Project, School of Arts & Humanities
- 2021 – Jimmie Taliaferro, Senior Percussion Recital
- 2019 – Frederick Townsend, Senior Piano Recital
- 2018 – Enrique Garcia, Senior Guitar Recital
- 2017 – Jack Redstone, Senior Piano Recital
- 2014 – Ashten Smith, Senior Voice Recital
- 2013 – Ryan Ramming, Senior Piano Recital
Outstanding Undergraduate Paper, School of Arts & Humanities
- 2016 – Zachary Clark, “Debussy's Cello Sonata as Artistic Warfare”
CSU Student Research Competition, Creative Arts & Design Category, Second Place
- 2019 – David Madrid, “Symbolism in Debussy: Tracing Debussy's Depiction of Symbolist Poetry”
Contact Us
Department of Music and Theatre
Music Building 102
Phone: (661) 654-3093
FAX: (661) 654-6901
Kristina Saldaña, Administrative Support Coordinator
Dr. Joel Haney, Chair of Music & Theatre
The CSU Bakersfield Music Program is part of the Department of Music and Theatre, which is housed in the School of Arts and Humanities. For information on the CSU Bakersfield Theatre Program, please visit the Theatre website.