Austin, TX or Urbana-Champaign, IL???

[Spell]

What sort of music do you want to compose? Austin has a good music scene, but if I'm not mistaken it's rather narrow in variety. Mostly jazz, IIRC.

I have a friend there who plays trumpet for UT, and he likes it a lot Also, I'm in Texas, so I'm biased when I say I prefer Austin. I hear Illinois is good, though, and is probably closer to a bigger city.

the idea is going somewhere that can give me the chance to widen my studies towards the classical direction. for some reason, my tutor believes that going to france to study classical music is a bad idea (mostly because he says they are too focused into that to understand why somebody from a rock/ jazz/ avant garde background wants to study classical).
i assume that one can find jazz nearly everywhere in US. from the UT website it looks like there's also a lot of classical music studying going on...

 

[Barendd Nobeard]

What sort of music do you want to compose? Austin has a good music scene, but if I'm not mistaken it's rather narrow in variety. Mostly jazz, IIRC.

I have a friend there who plays trumpet for UT, and he likes it a lot Also, I'm in Texas, so I'm biased when I say I prefer Austin. I hear Illinois is good, though, and is probably closer to a bigger city.

Nope, Chambana is in the middle of nowhere. About two hours to Chicago, two hours to Indianapolis, and three hours to St. Louis.

Austin, the state capital of Texas, is only 75 miles from San Antonio. And not too far from Houston or Dallas, either. Of course, when you live in Texas, a 3+hour drive is a "short drive" for you.....

There's all kinds of music in Austin. I have a friend who used to play in an "ooom-pah" band at a beer garden there.... Don't forget, Austin is "The Live Music Captial of the World" (thank you, Austin Chamber of Commerce).

I lived in Austin for 8 years. The summers can be brutal, so be ready for that. But I think it's a better town than Champain-Urbana (at least in terms of "stuff to do"). The schools are both great.

 

[Jdvn1]

Nope, Chambana is in the middle of nowhere. About two hours to Chicago, two hours to Indianapolis, and three hours to St. Louis.

Austin, the state capital of Texas, is only 75 miles from San Antonio. And not too far from Houston or Dallas, either. Of course, when you live in Texas, a 3+hour drive is a "short drive" for you.....

Well, Austin is about two and a half to three hours from Houston or Dallas, so I don't see how two hours to Chicago or Indianapolis is so bad. Three hours might be a relative short drive in Texas, but it's not like people make that sort of trip willy-nilly. Living in Houston the vast majority of my life, I consider the drive to the other side of town to be "far" since it can take an hour or more.

 

[ragboy]

What sort of music do you want to compose? Austin has a good music scene, but if I'm not mistaken it's rather narrow in variety. Mostly jazz, IIRC.

I have a friend there who plays trumpet for UT, and he likes it a lot Also, I'm in Texas, so I'm biased when I say I prefer Austin. I hear Illinois is good, though, and is probably closer to a bigger city.

Nope nope nope. Absolutely false. There is a huge variety of music in Austin, including classical, though I don't know much about that scene. The University of Texas is an outstanding school, but it's also a very large school. If you're coming for undergraduate studies, it's easy to get lost and overwhelmed. If you're coming here to get an advanced degree, you probably couldn't do better. The city itself has mutiple personality disorder, but, in a lot of ways, this is a good thing. Downtown, you can walk from a crawfish boil to a tattoo parlor to a kicker bar (country and western) to a heavy-metal big-hair dive, etc. etc. The music opportunities aren't the only things going for Austin. Here's a few of the high points:

• Plenty of outdoor activities - Barton Springs (natural spring swimming hole in the middle of the city), the Green Belt (a 15 mile stretch of hiking/biking trails from the middle of the city out to the northwest side), hundreds of lakes, creeks, rivers and streams to hike, camp and fish at within a 200 mile radius, Various running tracks and trails, biking trails, and probably a thousand city pools and swimming holes.
• Gaming - We have a very active gaming community, mostly due to UT, but also those Tex-ex's that stayed around.
  • Dragon's Lair is the 'largest' gaming store (They have two locations in the greater Austin area and one in San Marcos. The central location has the biggest gaming room).
  • Great Hall Games - Mostly war/miniature gaming, but they sell every kind of game. They have open gaming and various hosted games almost every night.
  • Thor's Hammer - The 'dark horse.' Started by a local guy with not a lot of money and has quickly gained loyalty from its client base by offering open gaming almost every night from the day the doors opened. They also have 'try before you buy' games. I believe that all the Austin-area RPGA events are based here.
  • Gaming Conventions - We used to have three, but Overload-a-con seems to have died a quiet death. Now we have Milleniumcon and Linucon. Milleniumcon is a large one (for us) and usually occurs in the autumn (October this year) and Linucon is usually in late Sept. Milleniumcon has a variety of games, from war/mini to rpg to board to whatever. RPGA has a big part of this as well. Linucon has a peripheral gaming component, but it's generally a Linux and science fiction conference. Wil Wheaton spoke at Linucon last year. Not sure who they have on tap this year.
• Bookstores - I think we have more bookstores per capita than any other city in the world. I could be exaggerating about that.
• Culture - Ballet Austin, shows at the Bass Concert Hall, Art movies at various places around town (Alamo Drafthouse, Dobie theater, Great Hills--if it's still around).
• Winter - There ain't one. You get about 2 weeks of winter spread out over three to four months. I came home once and swam in our pool on Christmas day. Of course, when it actually does snow/ice the entire city shuts down for the 15 minutes that it's around.
• Food - Austin has more resturaunts per capita... yeah. TONS of food. The best Mexican food in Texas (bar none...get out of here San Antonio). Go over to East Austin and get yourself some tamales and enchiladas, hop down to South Austin for barbeque and steaks bigger than your head, go downtown for ritzy fare of various cultures. North Central Austin has the best Vietnamese food I've eaten (and I've eaten a lot). Greek, Italian (though we're severely lacking in this department), Indian...whatever you want. Just DO NOT eat at a chain resteraunt in Austin. You're wasting yer bux.
• Beautiful women... that taken with the 9 months of summer....NISM.
• Jobs - You can make a living very easy in Austin while you go to college (if this is even a consideration).

Downsides:

• Traffic - We also have the worst traffic per capita than any other city in the world. I know I'm not exaggerating about that.
• Heat - You get used to it. I grew up in Texas and actually missed the heat when I was away at various places. We have GREAT air conditioners and cold beer and swimming pools.
• Traffic - so bad I have to list it twice.
• Housing - Not so much now, but we get in a housing crunch about every three or four years and apartment prices skyrocket. It's still bad down around the campus, from what I've heard. You may be used to worse, though.
• Cost of Living - It's going up and seems to outpace the nation, but I could be wrong...I live in Round Rock now, so I'm out of all that craziness.

I sound like I should work for the dad-blamed Chamber of Commerce...