Best music schools in California: find options near you

An amazing concert and experience. I highly recommend. Buy your tickets soon before its too late

This was a beautiful theater , great acoustics , and a very nice courtyard alongside for socializing at intermission , and before the concerts.

Beautiful venue, beautifully orchestrated music, string quartet played with mastery and beauty. Such a wonderful evening! I highly recommend!!

We thoroughly enjoyed the evening. The candlelight brought an atmosphere of calm. The music was well arrangement and the musician were excellent ! We will be back!

Such a beautiful and moving concert in a gorgeous setting with an exquisite string quartet. Highly recommend.

What a phenomenal show! The music was extraordinary, the candles added so much to the ambiance of this beautiful venue, and the musicians were incredibly talented and personable. Such a wonderful experience!

We’ve been to 2 performances and we’ll definitely go again next winter when in Santa Barbara. The caliber of the music was superb and the artist’s are personable. Without a doubt we’d go again, maybe three times next 3 months we’re in SB. The ticket price is reasonable and the venue is acoustically perfect. The staff and ushers are terrific and helpful. During the last song you can take photos and videos of the quartet playing on the sage, wall to wall with candles. It’s magical.

We had the pleasure to meet with Eddie from the administration office. Great tour, a prime location, and offers all you can possibly dream of as a musician/student. No parking but there’s plenty of other types of transportation. There’s a $100 application fee for applying to the school.

07 graduate here make sure the professors don’t steal your final projects film footage. Also, it was laughably unorganized in the staff was very subpar the only professionals where the security guards.

«looks like a third world country school. Extremely disorganized. Unqualified office staff, rude over the phone. Overpriced for the quality.»

lots of famous rock musicians including John Frusciante and Chad Smith went to this school. I wish I could have been one of them!

I am so disappointed I wasted my GI bill at this school. The registration staff is rude and unprofessional, the instructors don’t seem to want to be there. There’s a lack of accountability from the staff and instructors. Think twice if this is where you want to spend your money. The value isn’t there. It’s a shame because they have lots of potential. The musicians that work there are truly amazing; They just don’t seem to have the support they need, and your success as a student is not in their interest. The school just wants your money and it’s very noticeable. Very disappointing.

Patience, patience, patience. I went here in 2017 for the independent artist program. This is when I first started getting into producing my own music. Yes, I thought I would come here and would immediately get my songs on movies and TV. This was not the case. However, this school will give you what you put into it! I learned very much from here, spent almost 10 years grinding, not getting any traction. But finally, within the last two years, I finally am getting placements on major streaming services (my goal going into the school). My advice is STAY in LA, after you graduate! They aren’t nessisarly gonna «hand out» contracts and all that. But if you DON’T GIVE UP you got thisss!!!!

I’ve been a student at M.I. since October and I’m having the time of my life. I just hope they reopen the Hollywood Blvd entrance soon so I’ll stop getting harassed by the Scientologists whenever I walk past the Church of Scientology on my way to my car.

Have attended many free concerts at SFCM. The students are beyond professionals levels. You need to regularly check their schedule and get over there for an amazing experience

Pre-College Program: Paid for Chats, Not Lessons : My child was with Instructor Monika Gruber from SFCM Pre-College program , and our experience was deeply unprofessional. We dedicated significant effort, including a long drive, for expected high-quality instruction. Instead, the instrument never left its case. Lesson time was consumed by the teacher with all smiles asking friendly questions about my child’s vacations, high school friends, and daily activities and hobbies—nothing related to music !! Even after I directly proposed, «Could you check his progress or assign him something for next time?» she deferred with another smiling, «Next time.» This was not a one-time occurrence ! This conduct is unacceptable for a program with SFCM’s reputation. I am posting this to make other parents aware: ask specific questions about your instructor’s focus before you enroll. Do not let them slip away in your paid lessons. Perhaps you can excuse the first initial lesson, but if you are happy and willing to pay for a chat for multiple times, enjoy. But do not let children carry this «sloppiness» as a standard for their musical development.

Bay Area Rainbow Symphony (B.A.R.S.) regularly performs its quarterly concerts in the main concert hall at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. It’s an excellent venue for this orchestra. The main auditorium has a contemporary feel, designed with clean lines in a modern architectural style. All seats have good views and the acoustics are superb.

The concert was beautiful. The venue is awesome.

The students are great! They play lots of concerts and recitals which are mostly all free and open to the public. The building was built in 2006 and so the practice rooms have windows and are clean. Its a great place to go to school.

Comfortable seating for a conservatory. The main performance room is cozy and intimate. The students that run the box offices are very friendly. Big bonus, they have enough bathrooms do there’s not a huge line at intermission on the ladies room.

I want to give this place 0 stars if I would. The coordinator of early childhood education Kendalyn is extremely racist,she should never be in charge of this position. This year was our second year applying for the program. My daughter loves music and is to much advanced of 3 of her friends who got admitted, the reason:they Asian and my daughter not. Was shocked for me when one of my friends mothers who got admitted told me she doesn’t want her daughter continue in this horrible environment. 100%Asians,no other race(no whites, no Latino, no black or multiracial). This school is causing a horrible impact in the community because support and embrace hate and segregation. I did not recommend this school for noone avoid tge waste of time. If you not Asian and rich, you not welcome. They should move to other city,San francisco is not a place for them

Excellent Artistic Music Program that Supports Cultura 🎼 . Also attended a Pow Wow My Familia.

Such a beautiful college

Alexander Hahn’s profile picture on the website matches his real life social skills. They will wait until after live auditions are over to tell you that you didn’t make it pass the pre-screen round. I can’t speak as to the level of quality of their in person instruction, but they display no level of decorum or knowledge in their regular communications.

Great parking, accessible, parking structure is a bit further away, but there is a lot that’s close, paid parking

Hard to find if you’ve never been there before

I learn all my scales here

Very nice campus!

Nice space. Very intimate. Simple refreshments for sale would be nice.

Excellent accredited college, great community music school, great concerts and the cafe is unusually good. So lucky to have this place in our town. Support them!

It’s a very nice jazz school and a good performance space as well! Some amazing artists do workshops here too which is a treat!

Review as listener: sometimes a hit, sometimes not so great, but a nice place to listen to some jazz for not a lot of money.

Great place to learn and perform jazz with skilled instructors.

One of the gems of the Bay Area music scene.

Great music performances!

We visited for a special event for Free Guitars 4 Kids. LACM hosted and paid for free guitars for 200 kids! The event was super cool, and my students got to play with pedals and all sorts.

We attended our son Shreeyash’s graduation ceremony in March 2025, and we were truly impressed with the overall experience. The event gave us a great opportunity to interact with faculty members and college leadership, through which we learned a lot and gained valuable insights. Shreeyash graduated in Music Production and Recording, and he has done remarkably well. Most importantly, he’s genuinely happy with his decision to join LACM for his music education. He feels fulfilled by the progress he’s made and the activities he was able to participate in throughout his time there. He is now a proud LACM graduate — and so are we!

If I’d written this review after leaving the school, I’d likely have only given a one star rating. Since it looks like some of their faculty have changed or moved on, I want to give the benefit of the doubt that things have improved. I attended LACM in 2010 and couldn’t complete the program after the unprofessional behavior by two of my instructors. I was verbally abused by an instructor in front of about 10 students and a few guest musicians only a few weeks into school for not understanding how to sight read and play a drum chart. I was accepted into the school with an understanding I’d be offered the time and space to grow in my abilities of reading music among other skills, but the expectations made that impossible. One instructor, who still works at LACM, would make comments regularly that were insulting towards students in general. They weren’t anything I’d call abusive so much as a brash or obnoxious personality. Make sure to visit before applying, as I think you should with any school, and try to develop familiarity with the faculty. I want to believe things have changed for the better, but I wouldn’t recommend this school after my experiences.

A lot of top notch players in the industry teach here. Many of them teach at other schools in the area. I attended for the jazz program; one of LACM’s newer degrees. If you are considering attending here, the best advice I could give you is to drop by the school and learn more about the program(s) you are interested in, if you can. That way you will know what you’re signing up for before you sign up to attend. The school, at this point, is slightly pressed for space and some classes are forced to meet at 9pm or 10pm. The school only has a small number of practice rooms. About 8 rooms, total. That’s slightly problematic when you’re sharing with multiple ensembles. A big band can have, on average, about 20 players. If many of them are practicing at the same time, you may not be able to find a practice room. A lot of students have to have their private lessons in practice rooms because of the lack of facilities. That makes finding a practice room harder. I had a couple of classes in the «Garage», or the north building. It was frustrating to me because that building is also full of administration offices and has the school’s visitor center. I had an ensemble class in there, and it was distracting to hear teachers talking and walking through to other rooms, administrators making business calls, etc. Definitely come by and see if the school would be a good fit before you attend.

Composing for visual media major of this school is incredibly terrible. Curriculum is cheap. No one teaches how to compose, analyze and study music. No one teaches style of each composer deeply. Every lecture of only this faculty is superficial. It’s not enough to be a composer, but unfortunately they think it’s enough. And teachers of this faculty don’t teach seriously(Davich and Tom Hiel are terrible, especially Hiel is the worst teacher I’ve ever met because of his laziness). Of course there are good teachers, but you have few chance to meet them because they are busy. We must know that good player isn’t always a good coach. Actually they work at real music industry, but it doesn’t mean they can teach well. After all, names of these famous people are used to tempt people who don’t know anything and think by themselves at all. I was a person like this, and I regret that It took so long time to notice this thing. I hope no one who has motivation to study hard is betrayed by bad teachers. Only people who understand my frustration are guys of front desk. By the way, performance faculty of this school is very nice, I think.

Great drum program, teachers, staff and interesting and talented students from all over the world..fantastic masterclasses with the best of the best and overall a top school for music. Graduated in 2014 and couldn’t be happier I decided to go there.

I attended the Drummer’s Reality Camp last summer and it was AWESOME . We toured the DW facility and the teachers were amongst some of the best drummers in the land.