The School of Music of Sichuan University of Science and Engineering, formerly known as the Music Department of Zigong Normal College, began enrollment in 1987. It is one of the earliest universities in Sichuan and Chongqing to offer music programs. With the merger of four colleges in Zigong in 2004, it became the Music Department of Sichuan University of Science and Engineering. In December 2018, it assumed its current name of the School of Music of Sichuan University of Science and Engineering. With nearly forty years of development, the school has achieved fruitful results in arts education. Guided by an open-minded concept, a pragmatic attitude, and an innovative spirit, the school actively explores the challenges of offering arts education programs, strives to improve the level of teaching, and has cultivated many outstanding arts talents for society. In 1992, the Arts Department of the former National Education Commission gave the school a positive evaluation of being “serious in running the department with a strong faculty.” In recent years, the school has seized opportunities, accelerated development, strengthened its characteristics, highlighted its advantages, and achieved a good reputation in the province and even the whole country.
The school currently has 62 professional teachers, including 14 professors and associate professors, and 58 teachers with doctoral and master’s degrees. There are 60 full-time Master of Fine Arts (MFA) students and more than 1600 full-time undergraduate students in the field of music. In the college there are five research and teaching sections: vocal, piano, instrument, dance, and music theory and more than 20 teaching and art practice labs. The school has jointly established the “Ethnic Folk Music and Dance Research Center” research platform and the “Zigong Piano Culture Popularization Center” science popularization platform with Zigong Social Sciences Association. The school has always adhered to the cultivation of practical and application-oriented talents, actively explored the rules of arts education that adapt to local economic and cultural development, continuously improved the quality of education, and enhanced its distinctive administrative characteristics. The school takes “expanding opportunities, grasping internal strengths, and attracting external ones,” actively engaging in international academic exchange activities. Renowned Chinese and non-Chinese artists such as Yu Hongmei, Zhang Qian, Fan Jingma, Yang Xiaoyong, Ge Yi, Yang Guang, Tan Xuesheng, Shi Shucheng, Zhao Xiaosheng, Shen Wenyu, Song Siheng, Gong Jingyi, Dejan Sinadinović, Tatiana Tsybulskaya, and others have been invited to the school to hold master classes or give lectures.
The school has established and advanced hardware facilities and a teaching practice area of more than 40,000 square meters. The facilities include one 1,200-seat theater (including lifting stage, lifting orchestra pit, and scrim system), one 300-seat theater, one 550-seat professional concert hall (equipped with a Steinway D274 grand piano), two 240-seat professional concert halls, 589 practice rooms (with a cloud practice room intelligent management system), two standardized digital piano classrooms, eight professional dance training rooms, two computer music production studios, as well as professional recording studios, electronic organs (double-row keyboard) classrooms, chorus rehearsal rooms, chamber music rehearsal rooms, and other teaching practice venues. All teaching practice venues are fully serviced by air conditioning and fresh air systems.
The school currently has one authorized master's degree in arts (MFA), offering three streams: vocal, piano, and instrument. It also offers two undergraduate majors: musicology and music performance, with streams in vocal, piano, dance, violin, clarinet, saxophone, erhu, guzheng, etc. The schoola also provides professional courses such as sight-singing and ear training, basic music theory, harmony, musical form and work analysis, music aesthetics, music appreciation, art introduction, Chinese and non-Chinese music history, choral conducting, guzheng, electronic organ (double-row keyboard), chamber musicl.
The school actively engages in international exchange and cooperation. It has signed cooperation agreements with institutions such as the Belarusian State University of Culture and Arts, the Belarusian State Academy of Arts, and the University of Pécs in Hungary, actively conducting international cooperation in teacher exchanges and academic activities, etc. The school has launched a joint undergraduate and master's degree program with the Belarusian State University of Culture and Arts, and many students have successfully graduated.
The faculty and students of the School of Music have won numerous awards in professional competitions such as the “Debussy International Piano Competition” in the United States, the International Youth Piano Competition in Finland, the Golden Bell Award for Chinese Music, the Peacock Cup National Higher Art Institutions Vocal Music Performance, the “Golden Hibiscus” Vocal Competition, the National University Music Education Major Vocal Music Competition, the National University Music Education Major Students' Basic Skills Performance Exhibition, the Sichuan Provincial University Students' Art Festival, and other professional competitions. The works by the school's faculty and students have been featured in the opening ceremony of the Winter Paralympic Games, CCTV, some provincial and municipal TV stations, and other mainstream media.
