UHS Students among the best in the world
University High School is located on the campus of California State University, Fresno. It has existed for 25 years, having been established in the year 2000 as a college preparatory high school with an emphasis on liberal arts and music, as a project of the College of Arts and Humanities. As one of the five original founding faculty members, founding music director, current Performing Arts Department Chair, and architect of the comprehensive music curriculum at UHS, I take great pride in the success University High School has achieved since its founding, and I fervently believe this success is due in large measure to the full integration of music as a vital, intrinsic, and required part of the curriculum for all students. This success runs counter to all the naysayers and pundits who predicted a rapid demise of any public school where Music Theory, Musicology and Latin were an essential and required part of the curriculum for all students: Music (academic and performance) over all four years, and Latin for the first two years. The Musicianship curriculum is unlike any other in the breadth and depth of its core content. The courses are unique in that music theory, audiation skills and musicology are fully integrated into a sequential, incremental and cumulative program of theoretical application through historical time bands. Unlike other curricula that presumably would develop in a more traditional way, from basic concepts to gradually more complex levels, Musicianship I students (freshmen) are expected to master Species Counterpoint beginning in their first semester, and apply higher order musical thinking in composition and analysis projects from day 1. In fact, I often say that musicianship is something of a misnomer for these courses, a better designation being "Critical thinking and creative problem-solving through musical applications." By semester II, first years are deconstructing and analyzing the motets of Josquin, and the masses of Palestrina. It is no wonder our students excel at critical thinking and problem solving, or that after 25 years, despite the skeptics, in the words of contemporary Welsh song writer Dafydd Iwan: "Ry' ni yma o hyd, er gwaethaf pawb a phopeth, ry' ni yma o hyd." (“We’re still here, in spite of everyone and everything, we’re still here.”)
(Updated August 8, 2024)
