Composition at NEC focuses on practice and performance, providing numerous opportunities for young composers to interact and collaborate with the world’s best young musicians. Master techniques and theory, exchange ideas with faculty and renowned guest artists, and compose more and more.
Root yourself amidst exceptional mentors and peers. Become the musician you want to be.
Learn more about applying to NEC, including audition and repertoire information.
Apply to NEC
NEC students perform their fellow classmate David Lien's original composition Icthys during Tuesday Night New Music.
Chris McCarthy, piano and Alexander Hersh, cello perform student Jonas Tarm's Postlude.
[Students] are excited and want to collaborate...they have genuine interest in your project.
Students Kyle Bejnerowicz, baritone and Yeeray Low, piano perform Low's original composition Two Psalms: The Heavens Declare the Glory of God.
Students Isabella Costanza, violin, Ariel Chapman, viola, Nitzan Gal, cello and Alfonso Peduto, electronics & piano, perform Peduto's original composition Oceano Mare.
What’s in your professional toolkit?
At NEC, you’ll strengthen your music with skills outside of music. In Community Performances & Partnerships, you’ll pitch programming and perform for diverse audiences. In Entrepreneurial Musicianship you’ll make new ventures happen, start to finish. And in Liberal Arts you’ll sharpen the intellectual and communications skills artists need to go further.
More about Entrepreneurial Musicianship >
More about Community Performances & Partnerships >
Come to a concert. Connect with faculty. Take a tour led by a current student. Visit us!
Plan your visit.Questions? We’d be happy to get in touch with more information.
Tell us about yourselfJazzy year for NEC Grammy noms, with additional nods in contemporary instrumental & classical.
Borromeo String Quartet records first violinist Nicholas Kitchen's arrangement of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, Book One.
Musicians at Play, with the Door Open
September 23, all day and into the night during NEC Open Studios, new Student Life & Performance Center is alive with music, activities for all ages.
At 150 Years, a New Door Opens at NEC
New England Conservatory celebrates 150th anniversary with opening of new Student Life and Performance Center, a state-of-the-art multipurpose facility.
Composer Katherine Balch's year so far: Virginia Woolf–inspired commission, selection as Young Concert Artists composer-in-residence.
