Cornish College of the Arts

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Cornish College of the Arts is a fully accredited institution in the Denny Triangle and Capitol Hill neighborhoods of Seattle, Washington, USA that offers the Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Dance, Theater, Performance Production, Design, and Fine Art, as well as the Bachelor of Music degree.

Cornish was founded in 1914, as the Cornish School, by pianist and voice teacher Nellie Cornish, who was influenced by the pedagogical ideas of Maria Montessori, as well as Calvin Brainerd Cady's ideas on music pedagogy, and who served as the school's director for its first 25 years. Within three years it had enrolled over 600 students, and was the country's largest music school west of Chicago.

The Cornish School began its operations in rented space in the Boothe Building and Broadway and Pine Street. Initially, the school taught only children, but it soon expanded to functioning also as a normal school (roughly what would now be called a teachers' college). While music was at the heart of the curriculum, Cornish recruited opportunistically where she saw talent, and the school soon offered classes as diverse as eurhythmics, French language, painting, and dance. The school gathered a board of trustees from among Seattle's elite, who funded her school through the hard economic times during and after World War I, and raised money for a purpose-built school building.

Campus

Cornish's 1921 building, now known as Kerry Hall, is on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) as "Cornish School"; its Denny Triangle building is also listed on the NRHP, as the "William Volker Building". The Raisbeck Performance Hall is a Seattle City Landmark under the name "Old Norway Hall".

Notable faculty

• Guy Anderson
• John Cage
• Ping Chong (artist in residence)
• William Cumming
• Imogen Cunningham (artist-in-residence)
• David Dorfman (dancer) (artist-in-residence)
• Rinde Eckert (artist-in-residence)
• Syvilla Fort (artist-in-residence)
• Bill Frisell (artist-in-residence)
• Martha Graham
• Morris Graves
• Lou Harrison (artist-in-residence)
• Gary Hill
• Alexander Koriansky
• Ralph Lemon (artist-in-residence)
• Raymond Maxwell
• Peter Meremblum
• Meredith Monk (artist-in-residence)
• Mark Morris (artist-in-residence)
• Julian Priester
• Mark Tobey
• Richard E.T. White

Notable alumni

• Maurice and Ellen Van Volkenburg Browne
• Merce Cunningham
• Brendan Fraser
• Wolfe Bowart
• Chet Huntley
• Eyvind Kang
• Briggan Krauss
• Anson Maddocks
• Jesper Myrfors
• Rosie Thomas
• Steve White of The Blue Man Group
• Nancy Wilson of Heart
• Reggie Watts
• C.S. Lee

Notes

References

• Mildred Andrews, Cornish School, HistoryLink Essay 596, December 26, 1998, updated on June 28, 2006.

External links

• Cornish College of the Arts (official site)
• Seattle Weekly article on Cornish

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Last updated on Thursday March 13, 2008 at 14:43:11 PDT (GMT -0700)
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