Occidental College celebrated the establishment of its newest program with a combined concert featuring a capella, Jazz Ensemble, Glee Club, Symphony Orchestra and a faculty ensemble Oct. 18. The John Branca Institute for Music was first announced in June after partner and head of the music department at Ziffren Brittenham LLP John Branca ’72 gifted the school with $5 million.
The gift, coupled with a recent half-million-dollar donation from the Mike Curb Foundation, will provide the school with improved music production facilities, a series of guest speakers from the music industry, enhanced contemporary music and music business courses and transfer pathways for Los Angeles City College (LACC) students to study at the program.
Associate Professor of Music and Inaugural Director of the John Branca Institute David Kasunic said the music department used to be very different when beginning his professorship at Occidental and that the program had previously failed to connect students to the local music scene.
“I came here, and I saw that the music curriculum in Los Angeles looks like any music curriculum,” Kasunic said. “It didn’t reflect what I increasingly found students were coming to Oxy to want to study.”
Kasunic said that since becoming chair of the music department in 2014, he sought to redefine the program and focus its efforts on the popular music industry and music business, despite his background as a classical music scholar. The program has since been named a “Top Music Business School” for four years by Billboard Magazine, most recently in 2023. It is the only liberal arts college among a slew of graduate programs.
Branca said this happened to catch his attention while scrolling through the news.
“It opened my eyes, because I hadn’t realized [the school] had built such a good music department,” Branca said. “I wanted to help Occidental get the recognition it deserves and also give back to the school.”
Branca said he wanted to establish an institute dedicated solely to the study of popular music and the music industry at the undergraduate level that could couple with the liberal arts experience at Occidental.
“At Occidental you [study in] different departments, whether it’s economics, English, history,” Branca said. “You’re able to bring a different level of knowledge to the study of music. I think that’s important.”
Kasunic, who emceed the inauguration event, said he made sure the celebration was a thank you to all the donors that contributed to the music department, not just Branca.
“I never take philanthropy lightly,” Kasunic said. “It’s a big commitment for someone to give a lot of money like that to an enterprise.”
According to Kasunic, the program will be built around three pillars as a structure for Branca’s vision. He said the first pillar will focus on educational partnerships, which will allow the school to create articulation agreements with community colleges, most notably with LACC.
“It allows us to specify a pathway of courses that [transfer students] would take while at [LACC] that would pave the way for their transferring here as a junior,” Kasunic said. “Because we’ll have an articulation agreement, this will facilitate that happening so that a transfer student then will be able to receive the full complement of [a] liberal arts education, [something that] all Oxy students have.”
Kasunic said he recognized the obscurity of a liberal arts school to most transfer students, noting that students often only recognize several local universities. However, he said he believes the transfer pathway will remove uncertainty and help more students discover the liberal arts experience.
“How we get students to consider what, for me, was a transformative educational experience is by creating these avenues of access,” Kasunic said.
According to Kasunic, the second pillar will focus on industry partnerships. The Mike Curb Foundation’s recent gift will provide the new institute with several speaker series, including workshops and masterclasses with experts in the music industry. Kasunic said it will also enrich internship opportunities.
“The aspiration there is that we will then house all music internships within the music department,” Kasunic said. “We’re hoping that the institute will serve as a way of convening people, current students, alumni and members of the music industry.”
Kasunic said the final pillar will bring guest artists to the classroom through residencies. According to Kasunic, the residences will provide Occidental students with direct connections to professionals in the field.
“[What we are] trying to do is tighten the connections of the college and the music department to Los Angeles, and make permanent our commitment to the study of popular music in the music industry,” Kasunic said.
Assistant Professor of Music Ramona Gonzalez, who teaches Introduction to Music Industry, said she sees great potential with the heightened budget for the department as a whole, especially as her class aims to cover a vast array of topics in a limited curriculum.
“We’ll be able to have a wider curriculum of popular music,” Gonzalez said. “The sky’s the limit with this new institute, and it’s going to do much more than just what one class that I teach can do.”
Contact Hugh Baldwin at hbaldwin@oxy.edu
