Liberal Arts
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"I'm assuming a certain level of dedication and competence and passion on the part of the students, and I'm appreciating that very deeply. When a student has that level of depth in any one area, I find that it's very easy to give them something that isn't in their area and, very quickly, something coagulates. They build a world around it much more easily than if there aren't some simple structures in place. When you've had your own deep experience of something, you're able to say, 'I recognize that. This sounds like something that I know, but it's just being done in visual art instead of music.'"
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"We live in a world that, within specific disciplines, demands a complex set of skills. Musicians need a skill set that is broad to perform at the highest level in a complex world. Having a broad view with a 'lens' that understands the connections between the liberal arts, music, writing, art, theater, and dance is important. The more connections one can make to 'the muses,' the more informed one's own particular chosen art will be, in my opinion. Studying the liberal arts makes artists better artists."
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Mike Mason, Assistant Chair
DEPARTMENT : Liberal Arts Department"I think that the most important aspect of a Berklee student's education is that liberal arts doesn't stand apart from the music curriculum. We infuse the liberal arts with music and music with liberal arts. So, for example, students learn in a history class about where a certain music originated, but they also learn about the social and historical contexts of that place, what was going on, who were the people that lived there, and what influenced the music. Another example might be in a music criticism class, where music is played but students are taught to analyze it through a certain social or political lens. So in class, students are not only using their skills as musicians, but they're also using their skills as writers and critical thinkers as well. We try to combine very different disciplines in a very natural way."
Read More"It’s possible to appreciate the scientific side of music without losing your appreciation of the fact that it is a form of expression, that it is an art form. That’s something I try to communicate to my students so they don’t see me as some sort of dry scientist who just wants to reduce everything to a bunch of tedious equations. Mathematics isn’t just numbers and formulae and equations, it’s taking things that you know and trying to use those to find out something that you would like to know but do not currently know. I don’t expect to produce a class of mathematicians, but I at least hope that my students appreciate the greater role of mathematics and the ideas underlying it, not just in music but in the wider world."
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"I incorporate music into my Spanish classes. Each student brings in music twice per semester and talks about the music and the artist. My intermediate students write a music review in Spanish; and I use a lot of musical examples in grammar lessons. I try to present music as an aspect of culture, because there is so much Latin music. The music in Cuba is very different from the music in Argentina, which is very different from the music in Colombia. Students get to truly understand the diversity of the Spanish-speaking world through the lens of music."
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- M.A., Dance and Cultural Studies, UCLA
- B.F.A., Theater Studies, Boston University
- Vocalist
- Performances with Alicia Keys, Mos Def, John Legend, Reggie Gibson, Joshua Bennett, and Donna De Lory
- Recordings include HBO's Def Poetry season 5 and Ever Widening Circles
- Published in the Legendary, Numinous Magazine, and the Charles River Review
- Participant in Slam Team San Jose 2004 and Boston Cantab Slam Team 2005
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"History is about choices and outcomes—the ideal learning opportunity. History brings people back to primary sources. So much of our information is filtered. Newspapers, books, and television offer someone else's conclusions. We ask students to peel back a layer and look at the evidence for themselves. Often students are surprised at what they find. In the discussion that follows, we can all learn from each other."
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Eric Reuter, Assistant Professor
DEPARTMENT : Liberal Arts Department"Outside of Berklee, I'm a live engineer and acoustician, and I integrate these experiences into my classes. The reality is that there aren't enough jobs in recording studios. It's a really difficult world. So I try to introduce other possibilities. There are a lot of jobs in audio that aren't 'recording engineer' or 'producer.' And the things that you need to know, or that are useful to know, are very similar for a lot of these various careers—live sound or location recording, or even acoustics to some extent. These other jobs are viable and respectable. I think it's our responsibility to present those as options."
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Linda Chase, Associate Professor
DEPARTMENT : Liberal Arts Department"My class in interdisciplinary arts is about the big picture: how all the arts are expressions of our human experience on earth. Understanding visual art, dance, and poetry—and incorporating aspects of them—enables our music to reach new levels of communication and expression."
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"I realize that most students are not here because they want to take a science class, so I want them to see that what we're talking about in class is absolutely relevant to their everyday lives, whether or not they think of those things as science, per se. Whatever's on the news, we'll be talking about it in class. Somewhere over 4 million people have been affected by the floods in Pakistan. They're not getting food; they're not getting water supplies that are safe to drink. That starts a lot of political unrest, and that's all related to the environment. The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico absolutely has relevance in terms of seafood supplies, economic impact to the United States, etc. Hopefully we can tie all of those in and see why they should care about those things."
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