The UMKC Conservatory of Music has earned national and international recognition through its music and dance performance, composition, teaching and scholarship. The most comprehensive music and dance educational center in the Midwest since 1906, the Conservatory boasts more than 80 faculty widely recognized as world-class scholars, artists, teachers and leaders in their fields.

The Conservatory attracts many of the finest students in the world with more than 600 musicians and dancers currently enrolled. The students are nearly equally divided between undergraduate and graduate degree programs. The Conservatory consists of six divisions including Composition, Music Theory and Musicology, Dance, Instrumental Studies, Keyboard Studies, Music Education/Music Therapy, and Vocal Studies.

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Recent Submissions

  • The Influence of Foreign-Born Oboists on English Musical Life, 1695-1737: Performers, Composers, and the Development of the Oboe Repertoire 

    Johnson, Timothy Blake (2023)
    After making its way from France in the late seventeenth century, the oboe played a large role in London’s musical life. As the oboe was at this time a fairly new instrument, performers and composers alike were still ...
  • Shattered Music 

    Walters, Martin (2023)
    Shattered Music (2023) is approximately a twenty-minute composition for woodwind quintet. This piece explores my feelings and reflections over the past ten years of composition studies at the collegiate level. I explore ...
  • The Brazilian Flute Topic 

    Ferreira, Rafael Ribeiro (2023)
    This dissertation studies the connection between the flute, in its materiality and function, and ideas on Brazilianness. A question permeates the narrative I propose: why has the flute become an instrument so representative ...
  • Starry Sky, a Concerto for Dizi and Orchestra 

    Liu, Yizhang (2022)
    Inspired by the sky and the universe, this composition is a concerto for the traditional Chinese instrument, the bamboo flute (Dizi in Chinese pronunciation), with the Western orchestra. As a United States-based Chinese ...
  • A Faint Light 

    Shi, Lan (2022)
    My orchestra piece, A Faint Light, has an introduction, five sections (Entering the mountain, The battle of ghosts I, Asking the God of the mountain, The battle of ghosts II, and The answer to the heart), and a coda. It ...
  • Fantasia Nirvana 

    Cao, Shengnan (2022)
    “To see a world in a wild flower, to see yourself like a bodhi in a leaf”, this philosophical reflection springs from writings within the Vimalakirti Sutra. It claims that all phenomena have no root or result, without its ...
  • A Representation of Musical Possibilities as Permutations in a Matrix 

    Savreux, Alexej (University of Missouri -- Kansas City, 2022)
    In this paper, we display the infinities of mathematics and music as being captured in a singular matrix, thus capturing all musical possibilities and representing them numerically utilizing permutations with exact ...
  • An Overview of Select Compositional Techniques in David Maslanka's Symphonies Nos. 4 and 9 

    Cole, Brooke Madison (2022)
    American composer David Maslanka (1943-2017) was a well-known wind band composer, who composed nine full-length symphonies, seven for wind band. Though well-known to many performers and conductors, little theoretical ...
  • Qualities of Impactful Mentors in Music Education: A Narrative Investigation of the Recollections of New Horizons Band Members 

    Unnerstall, Grant (2022)
    For this research, the author interviewed 10 volunteers who were members of the Roeland Park New Horizons Band in order to discover how they would describe the role of an impactful music educator in their lives, based on ...
  • Jacques Hotteterre's L'Art de Preluder, A Translation and Commentary 

    Boyer, Margareth Anne (University of Missouri -- Kansas City, 1979)
    Jacques Hotteterre (c.1680-1761) is probably best known today for his Principes de la Flute Traversiere, ou Flute d'Allemagne, De la Flute a Bec ou Flute Douce, et du Haut-bois (Paris, 1707), but he was also the author of ...
  • Calming The Waves Double Wind Orchestra 

    Yin, Hao (2022)
    This composition portrays through music the artistic conception found in the Chinese writer Su Shi’s (1037-1101) poem “Calming the Waves.” The poem speaks of the weather in nature as ordinary and indistinguishable, and ...
  • Follow Me! Anna Held, Lillian Russell and Alice Nielsen As New Women Of the Stage At The Turn Of the Twentieth Century 

    Gilmore, Erin (2022)
    At the turn of the twentieth century, singing actresses Anna Held (1872-1918), Lillian Russell (1861-1922), and Alice Nielsen (1873-1943) were conquering the stages of musical comedy and opera. Using their pre-existing ...
  • Persona Con Grata for Saxophone Duo 

    Shirley, Lucy (2022)
    Persona Con Grata for Saxophone Duo is a three-movement musico-theatrical exploration of the musician’s psyche. In focusing on the saxophone as an extension of the persona, corporality, and voice, and using extended ...
  • The Accelerationist International 

    Henry, Dillon Patrick (2022)
    The Accelerationist International is scored for wind ensemble, with the addition of a pop consort consisting of electric guitar, electric keyboard, electric bass, and drum kit, as well as a narrator and fixed media. The ...
  • Jesus Paid It All: Combining Rock and Hymns in Contemporary Worship Music 

    Seidel, Danielle Mary (2022)
    Much of Contemporary Worship Music (CWM) synthesizes elements of rock music and hymns. This thesis provides an analysis of four CWM songs, “Come Thou Fount,” “How Deep the Father’s Love for Us,” “Your Glory/Nothing but the ...
  • The Fairy Songs: A Theater Piece for Voice, Electronics, Lighting, and Theatrical Components 

    Ricucci-Hill, Aaron S. (2022)
    The Fairy Songs is a theatrical composition written for voice, fixed media, live electronics, and auxiliary percussion presented as a frame for collaboration with some form of visual or performative media. The text is ...
  • Memories of My Hometown 

    Liu, Yintong (2021)
    My orchestral piece, Memories of My Hometown, has two movements: I. Pine Trees Standing on the Snowy Mountain; II. Passionate Land. After studying abroad for many years, I yearned for my hometown in China and hoped to ...
  • La Generazione dell'Ottanta and the Italian Sound 

    Racanati, Alberto (2021)
    La Generazione dell’Ottanta (The Generation of the Eighties) is a generation of Italian composers born in the 1880s, all of whom reached their artistic maturity between the two World Wars and who made it a point to part ...
  • Poems and pictures: a perspective of musical journey in piano recital 

    Tanujaya, Regina Adelia (University of Missouri -- Kansas City, 2021)
    Piano recitals are often associated with listening to beautiful and virtuosic performances. While most of the piano repertoire are absolute music, there are a few programmatic piano pieces that have stories, poems, or other ...
  • The Tale of the Southern Tour 

    Li , Shaosheng (2021)
    The Tale of the Southern Tour for orchestra is commissioned by The Ministry of Culture and Tourism of Shaoguan City in Guangdong province in 2019. The piece received its world premiere in December 2019 at the Guangzhou ...

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