Jacobs Composition Academy Summer Intensive

Jacobs Composition Academy Summer Intensive

Dates: June 22 - July 25, 2026

Registration now open for Summer 2026!

The Jacobs Composition Academy Summer Intensive is a transformative 5-week online composition program from June 22 - July 25, 2026, providing aspiring composers of all ages and levels with an education on the level of the nation's top conservatories from the comfort of their homes. Offering private composition lessons, masterclasses with Jacobs composition professors, distinguished guest lectures, and a recording of student works by IU performance majors, this program is perfect for students preparing a composition portfolio for college auditions or an adult musician who wants to explore the craft of composing.  This unique online program gives composers of all ages the opportunity to learn from award-winning mentors, lecturers, and performers from anywhere in the world, develop their musical craft, and meet/interact with some influential figures in the business.

Academy faculty

Corey Chang, described as “a major composer…of his generation” by The Millbrook Independent, is an award-winning American composer, pianist and educator currently based in Bloomington, Indiana. As the recipient of a Charles Ives Scholarship Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Morton Gould Young Composer Award from ASCAP, and the New Music Ensemble Commission Award from Indiana University, among other accolades, Chang’s music has been performed by many top musicians and ensembles, both nationally and internationally.

His music has received performances in highly acclaimed spaces such as Carnegie Hall, National Sawdust, Sprague Hall, Vienna’s Ehrbar Hall, the Cité de la Musique, Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, Arts On Site, The Center at West Park, the Avaloch Farm Music Institute in New Hampshire, and multiple other locations throughout NYC and Canada.

Chang has a passion for music of all genres and is influenced by jazz, rock, pop, musical theatre and Chinese culture, among many other things. He believes in the transformative and unifying power in music; his multiple grant-winning initiative, East-West Collaboration, broke boundaries by producing works fusing together eastern traditional instruments and western instruments in a contemporary music setting. He worked with director of the IU Chinese Gateway Steven Yin, pipa virtuoso Wu Man, Zhejiang Conservatory’s director of international affairs Jimmy Wu, and faculty from Indiana University’s East Asian Languages and Cultures department and the Jacobs School of Music Office of Entrepreneurship and Career Development to commission four composers to write for mixed Chinese-Western instrumental quartets which were performed in May, 2024, with all the composers present in Hangzhou.

Chang holds dual degrees in Composition and Mathematics from Bard College and a Master’s Degree in Composition from The Juilliard School, where he was a Morse Teaching Fellow and was awarded the Joseph W. Polisi “Artist as Citizen” prize. Chang is currently a doctoral student and Associate Instructor of Composition at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music

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Alexey Logunov is a composer and pianist with a primary focus on contemporary and experimental music. His music explores textural density, timbral complexity, and fusion of acoustic and electronic sound worlds. He is inspired by a broad range of styles, from the emotional depth of late romanticism to dynamic energy of progressive rock and heavy metal.

Alexey was born in Leningrad, Russia. He graduated in 2014 from Saint-Petersburg State Conservatory of Rimsky-Korsakov, where he studied composition with Vladimir Tsitovich and Gennady Banshchikov and was later assistant to Sergei Slonimsky. Logunov studied piano performance at Saint-Petersburg Conservatory, mentored by Ekaterina Murina from 2016 to 2018. In 2020, he earned a Master of Music degree in Composition from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where he studied with P. Q. Phan, Eugene O’Brien, and Tansy Davies. Logunov is now a doctoral student and recipient of a fellowship from the Composition Department at the Jacobs School of Music.

Logunov’s compositions have been performed at numerous festivals in Russia and internationally, including Synesthesia Lab 2024, Bang on a Can LOUD Weekend, From Avantgarde to Present Days, Children’s Earth, Sound Ways, reMusik.org, Musica Futura (Minsk, Republic of Belarus), New music-new reality (Ekaterinburg), Composer 2.0 (Yaroslavl) and the Midwest Composers Symposium 2019 (Indiana University, USA), Performing Media Festival 2024 (South Bend, Indiana), SEAMUS@40 (Louisiana State University, USA).

Alexey Logunov is a laureate of the IV International competition of performing musicians and composers “Romanticism: sources and horizons” Franz Schubert’s in memoriam (2013, Moscow), VI and VII young composer’s competitions at the International festival “Three centuries of classical romance” (2016, 2018, Saint-Petersburg), II young composers competition “Siberia symphony” (2017, Krasnoyarsk), diplomant of XVI Open composers competition named after Andrey Petrov (2022, Saint-Petersburg). He is a winner of 2023 Georgina Joshi Composition Commission Award at Jacobs School of Music and a nominee for a 2024 American Academy of Arts and Letters music award.

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Jamey Guzman (M.M. Composition and M.M. Music Scoring for Visual Media, in progress, Indiana University) is a composer and storyteller who tells necessary underrepresented stories with experimental and innovative techniques. Jamey has received major commissions from The Center for the Performing Arts in Carmel, Indiana; Really Spicy Opera, Opera Arlington, Strange Trace Opera, ENAEnsemble, Paradox Opera, and SONIT.

Laura Pacheco Nieto is a Colombian composer and singer whose work blends Latin American traditions and ornithological inspiration. Winner of multiple composition prizes, her music has been performed by the Bogotá Philharmonic, the Colombian National Symphony, and the Orchestre de Chambre de Paris. She is pursuing a master’s in composition at Indiana University, studying with David Dzubay and Aaron Travers.

Wesley Thompson is a composer, writer, and multi-instrumentalist from the coastal town of Fairhope, Alabama. Drawing from eclectic influences such as 20th century classical music, rock/heavy metal, jazz, and video game soundtracks, Thompson explores the blurring of boundaries between the categorical tools we call “genres.” A love of improvisation, born from his piano studies, is also integral to his compositional style.

As an educator, Thompson looks beyond the barriers between musical traditions in order to understand the connection between influence and the compositional process. To this end, he is especially interested in the various “progressive” and “crossover” musical movements that have arisen throughout music history, particularly within the rock and heavy metal traditions. Similarly, Thompson believes in the connection between narrative and musical form, often writing poetry to represent his pieces in written form or for use as lyrics.

Thompson’s music has been featured at events such as the Charlotte and Brevard Music Festivals, and he has worked with numerous new music artists such as the Beo String Quartet, Transient Canvas, Lindsay Garritson, and Aaron Petit. He holds a bachelor’s degree in music theory and composition from the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music and a master’s degree in composition from the Manhattan School of Music. He is currently a doctoral student and associate instructor of composition at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music.

Jacob Wilkinson is an American composer who holds a master’s degree from the Peabody Institute, where he was awarded the P. Bruce Blair award in composition. Equally passionate about practical and theoretical approaches to music, he enjoys integrating a variety of styles and methods into his teaching. He is currently pursuing a double DM/PhD degree in composition and theory at Indiana University.

Additional 2026 faculty TBA.

For program information, please contact Corey Chang at changco@iu.edu. For registration questions, please contact musicsp@iu.edu.

Distinguished Guests

JCA has gathered a roster of some of the world's most respected and celebrated composers and contemporary music specialists, to share their stories, experiences, and insights in composition and approaches to the contemporary music world. From Grammy and Guggenheim Foundation award winners to leading artists of the rising generation, these 70-minute lectures promise an unparalleled opportunity for learning on the highest level. In addition, students will have the privilege of engaging in conversation with these individuals through Q&A sessions.

Lera Auerbach’s journey into the world of art began as a poet, with several published works before she turned 18. Born in 1973 in Chelyabinsk, in the Ural Mountains, she was a virtuoso pianist from early childhood and composed her first opera at the age of twelve. In 1991, during a concert tour in the United States, she made the spontaneous decision at just 17 years old to remain in New York—without a safety net and without speaking English—while the Soviet Union was on the brink of collapse. She seized her freedom and started a new life in the U.S., where she was later granted American citizenship in recognition of her extraordinary talent. In 2021, the Austrian government also awarded her citizenship for her significant contributions to music and the arts, underscoring her international influence. She studied piano and composition at the Juilliard School and comparative literature at Columbia University. In 2002, she completed her concert diploma at the Hochschule für Musik in Hanover. That same year, she debuted at Carnegie Hall with her Suite for Violin, Piano, and Orchestra, performed by Gidon Kremer and the Kremerata Baltica. Her extensive catalog now encompasses nearly every musical genre, from chamber music and orchestral works to opera and ballet, performed worldwide by leading soloists, orchestras, and theaters.

Today, conducting is at the center of her artistic focus. It defines her current artistic expression: “Standing on the podium, creating vast musical landscapes, sharing a vision of expression with the orchestra, drawing from my experience in various art forms, and integrating these currents into the ocean of the orchestra and the stage—that is my greatest joy.” This role enriches her artistic voice and expands her legacy as she brings her unique vision to symphonic stages worldwide.

As a poet of both words and music, her literary work includes poetry and prose collections, novellas, and numerous contributions to newspapers and magazines. Auerbach was named Poet of the Year by the International Pushkin Society, and her first English-language book, Excess of Being, explores the art of aphorisms. In 2022, her children’s book A is for Oboe (Random House) won the AudioFile Best Audiobook Award, and she received the Robert Creeley Memorial Award, leading to the publication of her poetry manuscript Forever Music. She remains active as a visual artist, with her works being collected and exhibited. A career that would suffice for multiple lifetimes—yet she continues her journey: “There is no reason to keep something locked in its cage and not connect it,” says Lera Auerbach. “For me, art must feel larger than life. Whether it is music, visual art, or literature, art is what remains of our time.”

Praised as "One of the most sought after young composers in the country" (Texas Monthly) and “a composer who clearly understands the orchestra and knows how to take advantage of its many varied colors” (Tallahassee Democrat), composer and conductor Quinn Mason (b. 1996) has distinguished himself as an artist of national and international renown. Winner of the 2025 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer award and one of the most performed composers of his generation, his orchestral music has been commissioned and performed by over 220 orchestras in the US and Europe, including by the San Francisco, Seattle, Detroit, Cincinnati, Dallas, Utah, Phoenix, and Kansas City symphonies, Minnesota Orchestra, Rochester Philharmonic and National Youth Orchestra of the United States (NYO-USA), Ensemble Obiora (Canada) and in Europe by the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI, Sheffield Philharmonic Orchestra, West of Scotland Schools Symphony Orchestra plus many more.

Equally renowned as an international conductor, Quinn was selected by musicians of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra as the winner of the Emerging Maestros Conducting Competition in 2025, and made successful debuts with the Orchestra Filarmonica di Firenze (Italy). West Bohemian Symphony Orchestra (Czech Republic) and Siamo Orkest (The Netherlands) later that year. Quinn made his German debut conducting the Berliner Symphoniker in December 2025.

He has studied with Jorma Panula, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Marin Alsop, Robert Spano, Gerard Schwarz, Arturo Tamayo, György Györiványi Ráth, Tomáš Koutník, Michael Palmer, Scott Seaton and Carl Topilow and has guest conducted over 40 orchestras around the world, including the National Symphony Orchestra, Houston Ballet Orchestra, Hartford Symphony Orchestra, Denver Philharmonic Orchestra and West Virginia Symphony Orchestra. Quinn has studied closely with renowned composers David Maslanka, Jake Heggie, Christopher Theofanidis, Jimmy Lopez Bellido, Libby Larsen, David Dzubay and Robert X. Rodriguez.

Thomas Piercy, based in NYC and Tokyo, is a critically acclaimed musician appearances throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. He has been described by The New York Times as “Brilliant...playing with refinement and flair…evoking a panache in the contemporary works.”

A versatile artist defying categorization – clarinetist on the Emmy Award-winning Juno Baby; playing hichiriki on the Emmy Award-winning Netflix series "Blue Eye Samurai"; working with Leonard Bernstein; appearing in a KRS-ONE rap music video; recording with members of Maroon 5 and other pop groups; premiering many works composed for him. Piercy's repertoire ranges from music from the Classical period to premieres of compositions written for him by some of the most outstanding composers of today, including Ned Rorem, Jennifer Higdon, Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, Fernando Otero, and Shoichi Yabuta. A frequent performer of new music, Mr. Piercy has premiered over 300 compositions composed for him. The composers have ranged from emerging composers to composers that have won such prominent awards as the Grammy Award, the Latin Grammy Award, the Takemitsu Prize, the Geneva Prize, and the Pulitzer Prize.

Studied at Juilliard School and Mannes School of Music. Clarinet studies with Gervase De Peyer, Dr. Stephen Johnston, Leon Russianoff, and Kalmen Opperman; hichiriki studies with Hitomi Nakamura. Recordings for Albany, Capstone, DGI, Changing Tones, NJST, Tonada Records and more. More information at thomaspiercy.com

Composer Melinda Wagner, of Philadelphia, achieved widespread attention when her Concerto for Flute, Strings and Percussion was awarded the 1999 Pulitzer Prize in Music. Since then, major compositions have included Concerto for Trombone and Orchestra, for Joseph Alessi and the New York Philharmonic, and a piano concerto, Extremity of Sky, commissioned by the Chicago Symphony for Emanuel Ax, who has performed it with the National Symphony Orchestra, the Toronto Symphony, the Staatskapelle Berlin, and the Kansas City Symphony. In all, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra has commissioned three works by Wagner: Falling Angels, Extremity of Sky, and a forthcoming work.

Other recent commissions include Little Moonhead, for the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Scamp, for the U.S. Marine Band, and Pan Journal, for Elizabeth Hainen and the Juilliard String Quartet. Wagner’s chamber works have been performed by many leading ensembles including the American Brass Quintet, the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, the New York New Music Ensemble, and the Empyrean Ensemble. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, three ASCAP Young Composer Awards, an honorary degree from Hamilton College, and a Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Pennsylvania. Project support has come from the Barlow Endowment, the Fromm and Koussevitzky Foundations, and the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust.

A passionate and inspiring teacher, Wagner has held faculty positions at Brandeis University, Smith College, and Syracuse University. She has presented master classes at many institutions including Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Juilliard, and Eastman, and recently served as Master Artist at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. Wagner has been a mentor composer at the Wellesley Composers Conference (2010, 2012, 2013) and the American Composers Orchestra Underwood Readings. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2017. Other residencies include the Yellow Barn, Monadnock, and Vail Valley Music Festivals, and in 2015, the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts Festival (UC Davis).

Drawing from inspirations as diverse as Medieval chant to contemporary pop, the music of composer and conductor Evan Williams (b. 1988) explores the thin lines between beauty and disquieting, joy and sorrow, and simple and complex, while often tackling important social and political issues. Williams’ catalogue contains a broad range of work, from vocal and operatic offerings to instrumental works, along with electronic music.

He has been commissioned by notable performers and ensembles including the Cincinnati and Toledo Symphony Orchestras, Urban Playground Chamber Orchestra, Quince Ensemble, the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, and more, with further performances by members of the Detroit, Seattle, and National Symphonies, the International Contemporary Ensemble, the American Brass Quintet, The U.S. Army Band “Pershing’s Own,” New Music Detroit, Fifth House Ensemble, Splinter Reeds, the Verb Ballets, and the Pacific Northwest Ballet. His work has also been featured at festivals such as MATA, RED NOTE, Strange Beautiful Music, SEAMUS, the New Music Gathering, the Electroacoustic Barn Dance, the New York City Electronic Music Festival, and the New Music Festival at Bowling Green State University. Williams’ work can be heard on multiple commercial releases, including soprano Katherine Jolly’s critically acclaimed debut album Preach Sister, Preach. Gramophone Magazine described his song cycle Emily’s House as “wistful” and praised his settings of Emily Dickinson’s poetry as “rather beautifu[l].”

Williams has received awards and recognition from the American Prize, the National Federation of Music Clubs, ASCAP, Fellowships from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and in 2018, was chosen as the Detroit Symphony’s inaugural African-American Classical Roots Composer-in-Residence. He currently serves as the Steven R. Gerber Composer-in-Residence for the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia.

Williams completed his Doctorate of Musical Arts in Composition with a cognate in Orchestral Conducting at the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati. There, he studied with Michael Fiday, Mara Helmuth, and Douglas Knehans, and served as a teaching assistant in electronic music. He holds a Masters degree from Bowling Green State University (Bowling Green, OH), and a Bachelors from the Conservatory of Music at Lawrence University (Appleton, WI). His other primary teachers have been Asha Srinivasan, Joanne Metcalf, Christopher Dietz, Mikel Kuehn, and Marilyn Shrude. He has also received instruction in festivals, masterclasses, and lessons from composers Julia Wolfe, Caroline Shaw, Nico Muhly, Bryce Dessner, David Maslanka, Libby Larson, Evan Chambers, Stacy Garrop, Dan Visconti, and others. He has also trained at the Bard Conductors Institute and the Band Conducting and Pedagogy Clinic at the University of Michigan.

Originally from the Chicagoland area, Williams currently resides in Boston, MA, and serves as Assistant Professor of Composition at the Berklee College of Music, where he teaches composition, conducting, music technology, harmony, and counterpoint. He previously held teaching positions at Rhodes College, Lawrence University, Bennington College, and at The Walden School’s Young Musicians Program.

Masterclass faculty

Each member of the masterclass faculty is a professor in the Composition Department at Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music.

Don Freund is an internationally recognized composer with works ranging from solo, chamber, and orchestral music to pieces involving live performances with electronics, music for dance, and large theatre works. Freund is Professor of Composition at IU’s Jacobs School of Music.

Gabriel Jenks is associate professor of music in composition at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music.

Hailed by The New York Times as “striking and resourceful … handsomely brooding,” the music of Jenks (formerly known as Han Lash) has been performed at Carnegie Hall, Walt Disney Concert Hall in LA, Lincoln Center, Times Center in Manhattan, Chicago Art Institute, Tanglewood Music Center, Harvard University, Aspen Music Festival and School, Chelsea Art Museum, and on the American Opera Project’s stage in New York City. Commissions include The Fromm Foundation, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Carnegie Hall, Chamber Music Northwest, the McKim Fund in the Library of Congress, Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, American Composers Orchestra, Columbia University’s Miller Theatre, The Naumburg Foundation, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, the Arditti Quartet, the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, the Colorado Music Festival, and the Aspen Music Festival and School, among many others.

Jenks began studying music and dance at an early age and was a serious performer and composer by his early teens. He was accepted to the prestigious Eastman School of Music at the age of 15 and enrolled in the bachelor's program at age 16. After studies in harp and composition at Eastman, Jenks received an Artist Diploma in harp from the Cleveland Institute of Music, a Ph.D. in composition from Harvard University, and an Artist Diploma in composition from Yale University.

Jenks has received numerous honors and prizes, including the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, a Charles Ives Scholarship (2011) and Fellowship (2016) from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Fromm Foundation Commission, a Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Grant, a fellowship from Yaddo Artist Colony, the Naumburg Prize in Composition, the Barnard Rogers Prize in Composition, the Bernard and Rose Sernoffsky Prize in Composition, and numerous academic awards. Jenks’s orchestral work Furthermore was selected by the American Composers Orchestra for the 2010 Underwood New Music Readings. Jenks’s chamber opera, Blood Rose, was presented by New York City Opera’s VOX in the spring of 2011.

The New York Times music critic Steve Smith praised Jenks’s work for the JACK Quartet, Frayed: “Jenks’s compact sequence of pale brush strokes, ghostly keening and punchy outbursts was striking and resourceful; you hoped to hear it again …” Esteemed music critic Bruce Hodges lauded Jenks’s piece Stalk for solo harp as being “appealing…florid, and introspective.”

In addition to performances in the U.S., Jenks’s music is also well known internationally. In April of 2008, Jenks’s string quartet Four Still was performed in Kyiv in Ukraine’s largest international new music festival, “Premieres of the Season,” curated by Carson Cooman. In the summer of 2010, Jenks’s piece Unclose was premiered by members of Eighth Blackbird at the MusicX festival in Blonay, Switzerland. In 2016, the chamber orchestra work This Ease saw its German premiere and was selected as “audience favorite” in performances by the Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Mainz, conducted by Hermann Bäumer.

Notable premieres include the multi-movement orchestral work The Voynich Symphony by the New Haven Symphony, Form and Postlude for Chamber Music Northwest, a new Requiem for the Yale Choral Artists, How to Remember Seeds and two additional string quartets for The Calidore String Quartet, Three Shades Without Angles, for flute, viola and harp, by the Boston Symphony Chamber Players, Two Movements for violin and piano, commissioned by the Library of Congress for Ensemble Intercontemporain, and a chamber opera, Beowulf, for Guerilla Opera, as well as several new orchestral works: Chaconnes, for the New York Philharmonic's Biennial, Eating Flowers, for the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, Nymphs, for the Alabama Symphony Orchestra, and This Ease, for the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, as well as two concerti for harp premiered by the American Composers Orchestra (Concerto No. 1 for Harp and Chamber Orchestra) and the Colorado Music Festival (Concerto No. 2 for Harp and Orchestra), both with Jenks as soloist.

Other premieres include God Music Bug Music (2011) with the Minnesota Orchestra, the monodrama Stoned Prince (2013) by loadbang, Subtilior Lamento (2012) with the Da Capo Chamber Players at Carnegie Hall, and Glockenliebe (2012), for three glockenspiels, with Talujon Percussion. Jenks’s 2011 orchestral work, Hush, was featured on the Los Angeles Philharmonic's 2013 Brooklyn Festival. In 2016, Jenks was honored with a Composer Portrait Concert at Columbia University’s Miller Theatre, which included newly commissioned works for pianist Lisa Moore (Six Etudes and a Dream) and loadbang (Music for Eight Lungs). Jenks’s Piano Concerto No. 1 “In Pursuit of Flying” was premiered by Jeremy Denk and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra; the Atlantic Classical Orchestra debuted Facets of Motion for orchestra, and Music for Nine, Ringing was performed at the Music Academy of the West School and Festival. Paul Appleby and Natalia Katyukova premiered Songs of Imagined Love, a song cycle commissioned by Carnegie Hall, in 2018, and in 2019, Jenks's chamber opera, Desire, premiered at Miller Theatre to great acclaim. Jenks's Double Concerto for piano and harp was premiered by the Naples Philharmonic, and the first movement of Forestallings, a musical response to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2 in D Major, was premiered by the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra in January 2020, followed by a premiere of the second movement at the Colorado Music Festival the following year. The Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra premiered the third movement of Forestallings in February 2022 and the Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Mainz, under the baton of Hermann Bäumer, premiered the fourth movement and complete version of Forestallings in April 2023 as part of a portrait festival featuring Jenks’s music. His double harp concerto, The Peril of Dreams was premiered by the Seattle Symphony in November 2021, with the composer as one of the featured soloists. In May 2025, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), led by Gil Rose, premiered Gabriel Jenks’s concerto for orchestra, Zero Turning Radius, at Jordan Hall.

Jenks’s music is published exclusively by Schott Music Corporation, New York.

Optional Add-Ons

Increase lesson times from 30 minutes to 45 minutes

Cost: $150

Increase reading session by 15 minutes from 20 minutes to 35 minutes

WHY? A longer reading session gives you more time for feedback and allows for a fuller, more accurate representation of your work. With 15 extra minutes (a 75% increase in time), you’ll:

  • Hear your composition performed more completely
  • Gain deeper, more detailed feedback
  • Identify specific areas to refine before your final performance

Cost: $50

Increase masterclass by 10 minutes from 20 minutes to 30 minutes

WHY? Our composition professors at the Jacobs School of Music are not just masters of their craft — they are influential figures in the contemporary music world and the very panel that decides who earns a spot in the full-time Jacobs School of Music college program. That extra 10 minutes (a 50% increase in time) can make a big difference and gives you more space to:

  • Dive deeper into your favorite professor’s creative process
  • Receive richer feedback on your own work
  • Build a stronger personal connection with faculty who shape the future of the School

Cost: $50

Lessons like you've never had them before! Prior to your reading session, you will receive five speed-round 12-minute lessons back-to-back with five JCA faculty members. Get your pen and notepad ready!


WHY? Private lessons are valuable, but Lightning Lessons are designed to maximize your growth in record time. In this rapid-fire format, you’ll:

  • Rotate through five - yes, FIVE - different JCA faculty members, each offering a unique perspective
  • Stay energized and focused, since every new session brings a fresh set of ears
  • Recognize key insights faster — when multiple faculty echo the same advice, it clicks
This dynamic structure ensures no wasted time, just a flood of actionable feedback that you can immediately bring into your next rehearsal or reading session.

Cost: $100

*Please note, Tracks 1-3
  1. These programs are entirely virtual via Zoom
  2. Tuition reflects a 5-week semester
  3. Lessons will be scheduled according to the availability of the student and instructor

All tracks are subject to a $100 non-refundable enrollment deposit due at registration (credited towards tuition)

2026 Resident Ensemble Information

JCA’s resident ensembles contain some of the best student performers at Indiana University. For the summer intensive, we will have two ensembles (instrumentation TBA). Pieces deadlines and final edit deadlines TBA.

Schedule

Summer 2026 Semester
DateEvent
May 15Registration Closes and Payment Due
June 22Classes start
July 25Classes conclude

All times listed below refer to Eastern Time
● Track 1 lectures will take place every Tuesday and Thursday from 5:30-6:30 PM
    - Exceptions are on week 4 (only one lecture on Thursday).
● Distinguished Guest lectures will be every Wednesday from 7 - 8:10 PM 
● Masterclasses will occur on 7/5, 7/10, 7/15, 7/17, and 7/19, exact time to be determined. Two to four students will participate in each masterclass.
    - Any 2026 JCA Summer Intensive student may join to watch masterclasses, regardless of track, though talking/commenting is not permitted from those not directly involved.

Video recordings will be provided for anyone who is not able to make it to a lecture, either by a faculty or guest. These videos will be password-protected and may not be shared publicly on any platform or with friends, colleagues, or anyone who has not purchased a package from the 2025 JCA Summer Intensive

How to Apply

  1. Eligibility: Track 1 is for both adults and students age 15 and above. Tracks 2 and 3 are for any age, though for children under 9 years old, one parental figure must be present at all times for private lessons and/or distinguished guest lectures.
  2. Registration: Complete the online registration form and pay the Non-Refundable Registration Fee ($100) and tuition.
    • If you do not wish to pay tuition in full at the time of initial registration, please do not select the tuition option prior to completing registration, and select only the registration fee. Please be aware that tuition must be paid in full by the payment deadline of May 15 in order to participate in the program.
    • Save your login information so you can easily go back to edit your registration/tuition payment.
  3. Lesson scheduling: Participants will be contacted by the administrative assistant on teacher assignments. Once that is done, future scheduling can be communicated between the student and the assigned instructor.

Once you have completed the previous steps, please submit the Participant Agreement Form

Cancellation Policy: Click here for our most up to date cancellation policy.

Register for Summer 2026