The Zurich School of Music, Drama and Dance was founded in 1999 and is a member of the new Zurich Universities of Applied Sciences. However, the SMD’s three departments, with their partner schools, have a long history and tradition to look back on.

In 1873, the «Musikkollegium Winterthur» ran the first School of Music in the Canton Zurich. Two years later, the city of Zurich also had a «Musikschule». In 1999, the two institutions were united, at which moment the professional Jazz School, founded in 1977 by renowned Jazz musicians, was integrated into the newly founded institution.

The SMD’s Drama Department had its forerunner in the «Buhnenstudio Zurich», an institution founded in 1937 with the fellowship of the «Schauspielhaus», Zurich’s main theatre, and was
renamed «Schauspiel Akademie Zurich» at the beginning of the seventies. The SMD’s Dance Department is a national institution, founded in 1946 as «Schweizerische Theatertanzschule» and integrated in the Zurich Opera in 1966. In 1986 the «Ballettberufsschule AG» was founded.
It was incorporated by the SMD in 2001.