Spring 2026 Course Search

Viewed from the outside, the French-speaking world offers enticing images of beauty, pleasure, and freedom. From the inside, however, it is a complicated, often contradictory world where implicit codes and values shape the most basic aspects of daily life. This course will give you an insiderʹs perspective on a cultural and communicative system whose ideas, customs, and belief systems are surprisingly different from your own.

In this course, films are used as textbooks to learn the French language and explore the French-speaking world. In order to hone their language skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing), students will listen to selected film dialogues to improve their listening comprehension, read and analyze excerpts from scenarios and reviews to strengthen their understanding of syntax and widen their vocabulary, mimic the pronunciation of actors and write on film to improve their spoken and written French.

Modern Guitar is a one on one private lesson.  Occasionally if two students are about the same level the class will accommodate two students at a time.

It is expected that a firm grasp of all the concepts taught in Beginning and Intermediate Guitar are fully understood.

If you haven’t taken these classes you would have to audition to receive the instructors permission to demonstrate skills.

Instrumental Study on Guitar.  Continued studies from Beginning Guitar. Advanced study in fret-board harmony and theory.

The course is for intermediate to advanced students.
Students are expected to practice daily (minimum of 45 minutes). End-of-semester performance is required.

For the experienced (3+years of playing) violinist/violist. Lessons in traditional styles of fiddling – Quebecois, New England, Southern Appalachian, Scandinavian, Cajun, Irish, and Scottish. This course is designed to heighten awareness of the variety of ways the violin is played regionally and socially in North America (and indeed around the world) and to give practical music skills for furthering personal music making. Students will be expected to perform at Music Workshop, or as part of a concert, in ensemble and/or solo.

Instrumental Study on Guitar. Continued studies from Beginning Guitar. Advanced study in fret-board harmony and theory, play in different tunings, increase chord vocabulary and repertoire.

This course will examine movement–travel, migration, and transition–in the French-speaking world. We’ll examine the travel tale as philosophical form (Candide), the sonnet, Orientalism, the graphic novels of Marjane Satrapi, films of Josephine Baker, queer movement in the work of Abdellah Taïa, the North Atlantic Triangle (Maboula Soumahoro), and the gender transition of Océan. Students will write a variety of critical and creative texts, make individual and group presentations, and develop their reading skills. Conducted in French. Intermediate-high level.

This course will examine the comic in French theatre, literature, politics, and film in order to answer a deceptively simple question: What makes us laugh? In theoretical readings we will consider whether laughter is a universal, cross-cultural function. Additionally, we will look at special, sub-genres of the comic, such as satire and parody, in order to question the relationship between comic genres and the real world. Does comedy seek to change the world or does it merely want to point to its foibles? Is it a progressive or conservative mode?

Advanced studies in theory relating to performance.

Students must be enrolled in Bass with Bisio (MIN4417) simultaneously, no exceptions. This class is only for advanced students and by permission of instructor.

Beginning to advanced lessons in bass technique and appropriate theory.

Lessons on Tuesdays – Schedule TBA.

Individual 25-30 min. long lessons for students with prior experience who want to continue learning fundamental violin technique.
Daily practice (about 15-20 min.) is expected. End-of-semester performance is required.

Studio instruction in cello. There will be an emphasis on creating and working towards an end-of-term project for each student.

This course is for students who have prior experience with the instrument. Students are expected to practice daily for a minimum of 30 minutes per day. End of semester performance required.

Individual private lessons for advanced students, with focus on the classical repertoire. Students will meet with the instructor weekly on scheduled class days, at times to be arranged with the instructor. Two excused absences permitted, with every effort made for make-up lessons. Daily practice is expected, and participation in Tuesday evening music workshop and performance at the end-of-term recital are required.

Self-taught guitar playing often begins with the recognition of simple patterns, evolving into complexity. These patterns, while helping us gain familiarity, can eventually become a constrictive box, requiring new material to refresh the old.  How do we make a song more effective through focusing on guitar, how can we make a song find its destination? This course develops each student’s guitar practice in tandem with songwriting, while challenging players to hear all notes, chords, rhythms, and breaks as viable.

This course is intended for students with some playing and reading experience.

Students will expand upon a repertoire of scales and chords.

They will study and learn to play selected compositions.

Individual piano lessons for more advanced students.

A weekly 45 minute lessons time is arranged with the instructor.