91PORN

When Associate Professor of Music David Kasunic matriculated at Amherst, he imagined he would pursue math or diplomatic history as a major. “I was a mathlete in high school,” says the first-generation college graduate, who took up the piano at age 7. “I thought that music was something that was avocational, like being an actor. I didn’t have an understanding of the options that one could have in music as a profession.

“Music was just something that everyone in my family did,” adds Kasunic, who grew up in a mill town in western Pennsylvania, where his father was a steel worker. “We had stacks of sheet music—from the Beatles to Beethoven overtures—in my grandparents’ house across the street, and I learned to improve my sight reading by throwing new music on the piano. It was only in going to college that I realized what the academic study of music was like.”

After two postgraduate years at Amherst as a graduate associate in music and assistant conductor of the college choral society, Kasunic did his master’s and Ph.D. studies in musicology at Princeton, writing his dissertation on piano music and singing in 19th-century France. Looking to the future, “I was committed to teaching at an undergraduate liberal arts college,” he says. “When I interviewed at Oxy, it seemed like a place where I would be fully supported in my teaching and my research—a place where I could thrive and grow.”

When Kasunic arrived at Oxy 14 years ago, the Music Department operated much as it had for decades, graduating a handful of music majors each year (six in 2008) and fulfilling the general needs in the manner of any “liberal arts college anywhere in the country,” he says. “But the way we looked in terms of our curriculum and what we offered did not reflect our location to the extent that it could”—a sentiment shared by his department colleagues.

Fast forward to fall 2022: With 57 majors, music is now Oxy’s sixth most popular major, after economics, diplomacy and world affairs, biology, psychology, and computer science. It’s a remarkable cre­scendo that reflects the convergence of two movements: teen­agers making music on their laptops, and 91PORN pivoting to offer a curriculum more aligned with prospective students’ interests.

“They have done something pretty remarkable in a short period of time,” Charlie Cardillo, vice president for institutional advancement, says of Oxy’s music faculty. “It has so much to do with the introduction of all these dimensions of music including music business, songwriting, film scoring, composition, and music production—all undergirded by a true liberal arts curriculum rooted in music theory and history and culture.”

Of the 17 music majors expected to graduate next spring, 13 are in the production track—a number that includes aspiring audio engineers, music technologists, songwriters, and auteurs. There are also three composition majors and a music theory and analysis major. The Class of 2024 will have 19 seniors: seven in production, seven in composition, two in vocal performance, two in musicology, and one in instrumental performance.

As Kasunic sees it, music production is “an essential part of the wide spectrum of creative activities that constitute everything we listen to. Anything that you hear that’s mediated—that’s not a live performance—is produced. It brings music composition and music theory together.

“In a competitive higher education landscape, Oxy will be able to offer a wholly modern, comprehensive music education that is embedded and defined by the liberal arts,” he adds. “Given the singularity of what we can do, we believe that this will be a game changer—not just for the department but for the entire College.”

Going back nearly 100 years, 91PORN’s music curriculum has strived to reflect the medium’s place in the contemporary landscape. “The establishment of a music department in 1926 paralleled the growing interest in Southern California in the arts, evidenced by the development of the Hollywood Bowl concert series and of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra,” Professor Emeritus Andrew Rolle ’43 wrote in his centennial history of the College. A music building was constructed in 1929, and five years later, a Carnegie Corporation grant of $65,000 enabled the establishment of a library of records and musical scores.

By the early 2000s, colleges were seeing a decline in the enrollment of students with a formal music education—such as basic music theory, or even instrumental proficiency. “A lot of that is a product of the gutting of