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Medicine to Music!

May 13, 2015 By richtere Leave a Comment

As college students we have to choose what profession we would like to do for the rest of our lives. For most of us it takes trying new classes or exploring new fields and ideas. Dr. Charles Frantz is adjunct professor of Theory at Westminster Choir College and he didn’t realize that music was his true love until his grandfather asked him halfway throughout med school.
Dr. Frantz’s family was very much involved with music and that was what sparked his interest. His father was not a musician but he had a deep love for jazz music. His mother was the musical one in the family. She was a pianist and singer and actually was even invited to sing with the MET opera chorus but did not accept it. She mostly performed in smaller opera theaters.
He started out his college career going to undergrad at a few different schools because he wasn’t sure exactly what he wanted his end goal to be. He loved the sciences but struggled with what exactly he wanted to do. He went to University of Miami then Franklin Marshall then Temple University for different degrees. Then when he was 24 years old, his grandfather asked him what he wanted to do with his life and he answered that his love was really music. But he didn’t believe he could because it had been a while since he focused on it. He played piano and guitar when he was growing up before college. Then his grandfather told him that if he’s going to do music, he better get started right away. From then on he worked very hard to make his dream come true.
He prepared for auditions at his final year of undergrad and eventually went to Temple University for music history and piano. He graduated then and went back to Temple to get his masters in Piano Pedagogy. He then went to Rutgers University to get his Doctorate in musicology. This took a long time and he said it was one of the hardest points of his life.
After school he started been teaching. He’s has a private studio in Lawrenceville since 1989 where he teaches piano and guitar to many different students. He also has been teaching at Westminster Choir College for a long time teaching many different theory classes. He performs around the Princeton area and has been for a while at benefits and other events. He plays classical piano and jazz as well.
Dr. Charles Frantz is very involved with music in Princeton. He’s either teaching at the choir college, playing piano at events or teaching students at his private studio. He shows college students that everyone should do what they really love and that it’s possible to follow your dreams and be successful.

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Kristen Zdepski Sands– Founding Member of The Antioch Chamber Ensemble, Professional Vocalist and Teacher
Justin Kodner– Musician and Administrator at the Princeton Folk Music Society

Filed Under: Classical Music, Music in Princeton Blog, Popular and Folk Music Tagged With: college, Education, music, Oral History, Princeton, Westminster Choir College

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Upcoming Ecomusicology Conference

Locations and Dislocations: An Ecomusicological Conversation

April 8-10, 2016 Westminster Choir College of Rider University Princeton, NJ "Locations and Dislocations: An Ecomusicological Conversation" seeks to bring together scholars, performers, and composers to further explore the relationships between music, culture, and the environment. The conference will tune to sounds as they fit or belong in the place they are heard, as they fit or belong in some other place, or as they have no ecological home, either built or natural. Among the questions at

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