Rochester: “City of the Arts”

Question: Which city has the largest concentration of professional musicians in the nation? If you guessed Nashville, you’d be right.

But Rochester’s in second place. Among all metro areas with at least half a million employed, Rochester leads San Francisco and Portland, both recognized for their music scene.

And Austin—“The Live Music Capital of the World”—clocks in at #16. Musicians may flock to Austin for SXSW and Austin City Limits, but many of them live right here.

Many of the nation’s professional musicians learned their trade right here, too. Among roughly the same group of large metros, Rochester colleges and universities graduate more musicians per capita than anyplace but Boston.

Much of the credit goes to the Eastman School of Music, routinely ranked one of the globe’s top music schools. In addition to frequent performances by faculty luminaries like the Ying Quartet and lutenist Paul O’Dette, Eastman’s three principal venues bring the best musicians in the world to our ears. But the spillover from Eastman’s riches is vast. The Hochstein School of Music & Dance is the largest community music school in the nation (for a comparably-sized city). Read more »