The Music Program within the MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences serves more than 1,500 MIT students who enroll in music classes each academic year. More than 500 student musicians participate in at least one of 30 on-campus ensembles. MIT Music faculty hold Grammy Awards, Guggenheim Fellowships, and perform worldwide. The program welcomes all students, regardless of major, who wish to take subjects in music history and culture, composition and theory, music technology, and performance. Through the study and creative practice of classical, jazz, popular, and world musics, the program offers students an experience that is intensely rich and uniquely MIT. A new Music Technology and Computation graduate program will begin in the fall of 2025 in partnership with the School of Engineering (SoE).
The Edward and Joyce Linde Music Building
Officially opened to the public on February 15, 2025, the Edward and Joyce Linde Music Building at MIT features three volumes dedicated to different parts of the MIT Music curriculum: The Jae S. and Kyuho Lim Music Maker Pavilion, the Beatrice and Stephen Erdely Music and Culture Space, and the newest concert hall in the Boston area, the Thomas Tull Concert Hall. The 35,000 square foot Edward and Joyce Linde Music Building was designed by Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of SANAA, which won the 2010 Pritzker Architecture Prize, and features acoustics designed by Nagata Acoustics.
Pictured above is the exterior of the Edward and Joyce Linde Music Building. Original photograph by Ken’ichi Suzuki.
Music Technology
MIT’s Music & Theater Arts Section (MTA) and the School of Engineering (SoE) have partnered to launch an exciting new graduate program in Music Technology and Computation (MTC) housed within the Edward and Joyce Linde Music Building. With new faculty hires in MTA, SoE, and the Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing (SCC), MTC is attracting students with exceptional command of both the technical and artistic aspects of this multidisciplinary field. The program establishes a research and education environment for developing the technologies, applications, and experiences that will shape how people produce and consume music. The renowned excellence of MIT’s research and education in engineering and computer science – combined with its illustrious Music program – will expand the frontiers of music technology theory and application while also positioning MIT as the top institution in this rapidly growing field.
Pictured above is an open rehearsal of FaMLE, the MIT Laptop Ensemble, in the Thomas Tull Concert Hall. Original photograph by Jonathan Sachs.
Thomas Tull Concert Hall
The state-of-the-art Thomas Tull Concert Hall in the Edward and Joyce Linde Music Building features flexible seating in the round and can accommodate up to 390 audience members. For its inaugural spring 2025 season, Music at MIT presented Grammy-winning jazz, classical, and rap artists, as well as faculty-led ensembles of student musicians, solo performances by faculty and students, and even a special campus-wide project led by the winner of this year’s Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts, Es Devlin.
Pictured above is a performance by the Boston Symphony Chamber Players in the Thomas Tull Concert Hall. Original photograph by Winslow Townson.
