Today’s Petrie School of Music: Alive with Energy and a Bright Future
The 1500-seat Twichell Auditorium houses a 57-rank Casavant Freres organ with 2,600+ pipes. Twichell is home to Petrie School concerts and operas and also to performances of community groups such as the Spartanburg Philharmonic Orchestra and Ballet Spartanburg. Converse’s music library, located in Mickel Library, houses one of the largest music collections in the Southeast.
Master Classes and More
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oday, the Petrie School of Music is the nation’s only comprehensive professional school of music within a liberal arts college for women. Our faculty is comprised of gifted performers, conductors, composers and scholars—extraordinary musicians with national and international reputations. The 7:1 student-faculty ratio guarantees individual attention for students, who are treated as aspiring professionals from the moment they arrive on campus. The Petrie School’s performance facilities are among the finest in the nation. And performance opportunities are prolific beginning in the freshman year.
Each year, Converse brings world-famous artists to perform and conduct master classes. Students meet and learn from musicians such as the Emerson String Quartet, the King’s Singers, the American Chamber Players, and many more. The annual concert season includes more than 150 events ranging from Converse Opera Theatre productions to performances by ensembles such as the Converse Symphony Orchestra and Wind Ensemble, and from faculty and student solo recitals to the Carlos Moseley Chamber Music Series. The Lawson Academy of Arts, directed by Paula Sigler Morgan ’73, enrolls nearly 1,000 students from preschool age to adults, offering Petrie students experience as private music teachers or as instructors in the academy’s summer Fine Arts Day Camp.
Graduates who Grace the World’s Stages…and Classrooms Converse has been making a name in the world of music for more than 100 years. From some of the grandest opera houses and major orchestras around the globe, to starring roles on Broadway, to private and school music teachers who are influencing the next generation of young artists, there are scores of Converse success stories. In the words of recent graduate and Sri Lanka native Tharanga Goonetilleke ’05, who earned her Master of Music at the Juilliard School and makes her debut with the New York City Opera Company this year, “Converse prepared me for greater endeavors, helping me to better my skills, nurture my gifts and grow into a person of knowledge, strength, courage and sensitivity. Most of all, Converse taught me to be myself. Converse is my home away from home.”
First-Class Facilities Blackman Music Building features new smart classrooms, teaching studios, a piano lab, music media lab, electronic music lab and 30 individual practice rooms. Our instrument collections include 70 Steinway pianos, 2 practice organs, a fully-equipped percussion studio, and string, wind and brass instruments for student use. Blackman also houses the 340-seat Daniel Recital Hall, which was cited in Chamber Music America as an “exemplary performance facility.”
A Journey of A Thousand Miles The extraordinary life of Alia Ross Lawson, edited by Dr. Jeffrey R. Willis
Order your hardback copy today - $20 plus $3 shipping All proceeds benefit the Lawson Academy of the Arts Make checks payable to Converse College and send to: Dr. Jeffrey R. Willis, Converse College, 580 East Main Street, Spartanburg SC 29302 For more info: jeff.willis@converse.edu or 864.596.9216
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100 Years