Student Experience

Student Experience

At TCU, you’ll perform in numerous concerts and master classes of world-renowned artists and guest orchestras, and access a wide variety of top-quality ensembles from bands to orchestras and choirs.

Orchestra and Strings

The TCU School of Music offers a world-class education from a faculty that includes nationally and internationally recognized musicians in violin, viola, cello, bass, harp, and guitar.

Piano

With TCU’s long-standing reputation as a strong piano school, the School of Music offers a wide-ranging program to students of varying abilities.

University Bands

The TCU Bands have a long and distinguished tradition of excellence and accomplishment spanning over a century. Membership in the bands carries with it a significant responsibility to uphold and continue that tradition. It involves dedication, achievement, and hard work.

Voice and Choral

The TCU School of Music prepares students for success whether they choose to use their vocal talents on stage, in the classroom or elsewhere in life.

Expand your horizons by studying abroad in more than 50 countries, plus service-learning trips overseas and internships around the globe. In addition to TCU’s semester, summer, and short-term programs, music majors can study abroad in a faculty-led summer program. Students have explored music in Florence and Venice with Dr. Blaise Ferrandino and Sheri Neill, earning credit in MUSI 10043 — Music in Northern Italy.

Study abroad is an eye-opening and life-changing experience. While abroad, you’ll cultivate your cross-cultural communication, creative thinking and problem-solving skills, and become more adaptable, self-reliant and internationally aware. Our students return to TCU with new skillsets and perspectives — and better equipped to succeed in the global economy.

Learn more about TCU options.

You don’t have to be a music major to join the School of Music! Learn about our ensembles, courses, and events.

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TCU Music Ambassadors represent the School of Music at various recruitment and special events virtually or on campus, meet with prospective students and their families, provide tours of the music buildings, assist with Mondays at TCU and audition days, serve on panels, and represent the best and brightest within the School of Music. They also identify outreach opportunities to area schools to share information about the important role music plays in our society and what it’s like to major in music in college. Read more below about our current student ambassadors!

 

Apply to become a TCU Music Ambassador

 

Amber Bowen

Amber Bowen (she/her) is a senior music education major at TCU with an emphasis on vocal music education. She currently sings with the TCU Chorale and USingers ensembles and is a member of Mu Phi Epsilon, Pi Kappa Lambda, and the Texas Music Educators Association. When not at TCU, you may find Amber performing as a Choral Scholar or directing the Concord 5th-6th grade Choir at Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, TX. While this is her last semester on campus, she cannot wait to meet the future of the TCU School of Music. Riff Ram!

Apurva Mamidenna

Apurva is a sophomore Music Education Major (Orchestra) from Frisco, TX. She plays tenor trombone and violin, and is a part of the TCU Trombone Choir, Symphonic Band, and Mariachi Sangre Royal de TCU. Outside of being a Music Ambassador, she is the Treasurer of Tau Beta Sigma, Orchestra Representative of the TCU Music Educators Organization, Social Media manager for the TCU Trombone Society, and a member of Kappa Lambda Delta Sorority Inc. Go frogs!!

 

 

 

 

Emily Torkelson

Emily Torkelson is a senior cello performance major originally from southeastern Wisconsin. Over the course of her time at TCU, she has participated in numerous music festivals, been the dedicatee of a work for solo cello, performed in a thirty-person cello ensemble as part of a collaboration with Texas Cellos, worked with the TCU School of Classical and Contemporary Dance to perform a Bach cello suite with dancers, performed in the opening of the Van Cliburn Concert Hall at TCU, and performed in many different master classes with renowned soloists and pedagogues. She has been a music ambassador since her freshman year, and is also a member of the John V. Roach Honors College. In her last year at TCU, she is looking forward to performing with the TCU Symphony at TMEA in February, and welcoming the next class of amazing TCU students!

Jordan Riek

Jordan Riek (She/Her), mezzo-soprano, is a Junior music education major at Texas Christian University. She loves to teach and perform with TCU opera, Concert Chorale, and University Singers. Jordan recently made her European opera debut as Barbarina in Le Nozze di Figaro at Music Fest Perugia in Italy in 2023 and will be playing Little Red Riding Hood in Into the Woods with TCU opera this school year. Jordan is also Vice President of Mu Phi Epsilon, worked as a TCU all-state choir camp counselor this past summer, and acts as a UNLF peer guide, mentoring freshmen in the music community. She is overjoyed to be a music ambassador and help welcome prospective students to TCU!

 

 

Nikkie Galindo

Nikkie Galindo (she/her) is a senior music education major, originally from Midland, Texas, studying flute at Texas Christian University. She currently performs on flute and piccolo in the TCU Wind Symphony, Symphony Orchestra, and Flute Choir, as well as on clarinet in the Horned Frog Marching Band. In addition to being a music ambassador, Nikkie is president of the TCU Music Educators Organization and is a lesson teacher in White Settlement ISD, Fort Worth ISD, and the Creative Soul Music School. She looks forward to meeting prospective students once again this year as a Music Ambassador!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Joshua Santana

Biography coming soon!