Music Department

The Tim Olsen Big Band will open the fall 2024 concert series, A Place for Jazz, with a performance on Friday, Sept. 6, at 7:30 p.m. in the Carl B. Taylor Auditorium at of the Begley Building at SUNY Schenectady Community College.

Olsen, professor of music, conducts and plays piano with his band, which consists of 15 other players.

Friday’s concert celebrates the release of the band’s CD, “Obsidian.” This recording, on the Jazz/Latino label, features nine original jazz pieces and one arrangement spanning some five decades of work. The album was recorded in Emerson Auditorium in the Taylor Music Center in summer 2023.

The Union College Jazz Ensemble, which Olsen directs, will make a guest appearance in the performance of the Harry James classic, “Two O’Clock Jump,” at Friday’s concert.

General admission tickets are $25 and $10 with student ID. Tickets are available at the door.

Ryder Mollo ‘26, Ben Pistiner ‘27 and Leo Weisberger ‘26 were presented with the Hollander Convocation Music Prize by Jennifer Matsue, professor of music and chair of the department. The prize was established by the late Lawrence J. Hollander, dean of engineering emeritus. The students performed legendary jazz saxophonist John Coltrane’s rendition of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s “My Favorite Things.”

Rueter, a tenor, joined an international roster of vocalists alongside Albany Pro Musica, the Capital Region’s preeminent choral ensemble, in a performance of Carl Orff’s iconic Carmina Burana cantata. Read more here.

Fall 2024 Courses

AMU 100 Elements of Music Theory
AMU 134 Music and Culture of Africa
AMU 140 Music Tech 1: Transforming Sound, Making Music (two sections)
AMU 160 From Chant to Mozart
AMU 212 Bach, Handel and their predecessors
AMU 300 Music Theory 3

Winter 2025 Courses

AMU 101 Music Theory: Materials and Design 1
AMU 110 Class Piano 1
AMU 161 From Beethoven to Bernstein
AMU 320 Encounters with East Asian Music Cultures
AMU 202 Musical Thinking: World and Pop
AMU 240 Music Tech 2: Recording, Mixing and Synthesizing Sound

Spring 2025 Courses

AMU 132 History of Jazz
AMU 201 Music Theory: Materials and Design 2
AMU 232 Jazz Workshop
AMU 2XX Data Sonification
AMU 2XX Music and Trauma: Comfort Women, Holocaust, Hiroshima, Music, and Cultural Understanding during WWII

Ensembles

AMU 012 Japanese Drumming
AMU 014 Concert Choir
AMU 015 Jazz
AMU 016 Schola Cantorum
AMU 017 Union College and Community Orchestra
AMU 018 Early Music

Union College offers a wide variety of courses in music theory, music technology, composition, music history, world music, and jazz studies. The music faculty are incredibly Interdisciplinary, and offer courses that intersect with other departments and programs across campus. Students enjoy many opportunities to perform in our numerous ensembles and develop musicianship through private lessons. We offer a Major, ID, Minor and a Global and Popular Musics Minor.