McNally Smith recently celebrated its 20th year as the United States pre-eminent institution for those who wish to study Contemporary Music in all of its facets. It has recently instituted an accredited bachelor of music program (which means you can transfer this to Universities). All of the performance faculty are top notch, plus the music history instructors can talk at length connecting jazz, metal, country, blues, etc with such arcane subjects as Mozart opera, and esoteric medieval stuff (which might otherwise seem boring!)