 |
Gregory Fritze, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Composition Department"Students who get a composition degree learn how to write their music so that other people can perform it. Very often students have ideas and they don't know how to put them down. Sometimes they don't have the experience to connect their ideas. Or in many cases, they have too many topics. Most beginning students do overwrite. We teach the students how to develop an idea completely and how to trim away the excess. And the main thing is that the students do hear their work performed. Most of what they write can be performed right here at the college."
Read More |
Yakov Gubanov, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Composition Department"Because Berklee is a very international institution, about one half of my directed studies students are international ones, and I'm always trying to encourage a student to maintain his national tradition. It's a big temptation when a student comes to the United States to try to develop this kind of international idiom which will sound American. I never push, but if you have this feeling of your own tradition, I suggest, just stay with your own tradition. In my opinion the 21st century will be the time when the national tradition of art will be restored. It seems to me the future of music is in the return of each individual to his or her national roots."
Read More |
"I think a lot of times people think about theory as random rules on how notes have to go together. I'm trying to stress that nothing is random, that everything makes sense from point A to point Z, and that everything at point A is the same as everything at point Z, just on a smaller scale. If you look at one phrase of music, everything that happens in that phrase is similar to what happens over the course of the entire piece. And everything that goes into each chord within the phrase is related to the shape of the entire phrase. I think a lot of times, especially in theory classes, you just look at the details endlessly and you lose track of what the whole piece is about. I try to keep a balance as much as possible."
Read MoreDerek Hurst, Associate Professor
DEPARTMENT : Composition Department"My experience as a self-taught rock guitarist has undoubtedly influenced my work as a composer. I came to music through popular and rock avenues, and sidled into formal classical studies after seeing a performance of a Bach Lute Suite on guitar. I'd never seen a guitar do that, and my fate was sealed."
Read More |
- B.A., Harvard University
- M.S., D.M.A., the Juilliard School
- President of Rhythm, Rhyme, Results, an educational rap music company
- CEO and creative director of Belvedere Productions, a music production company specializing in educational materials
- Guest conductor with the New York Philharmonic; the Cleveland Orchestra; the Los Angeles Philharmonic; the National Symphony (Washington, D.C.); the symphonies of San Francisco, Toronto, Houston, and Dallas; and the Boston Pops
 |
"Nobody would have written so much music if they had waited for divine inspiration. It is technique. It is logic. Making music is the same as making spacecraft or a pair of shoes or a washing machine. The same human brain that creates music and art also makes all these diverse things. So in music it's not just about having an inspiration; it's coherence in how to put things together."
Read More |
Vuk Kulenovic, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Composition Department- M.A., Belgrade Music Academy
- Former professor of composition and analysis, Belgrade Music Academy
- Compositions include over 100 works for symphony orchestra, solo instruments, chamber ensembles, choral and vocal pieces, ballet, and scores for film and stage music
 |
Dennis Leclaire, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Composition Department"In my Western Music classes, I love to make students aware of music that they've never heard before; they're always surprised when they find out that there's very little new under the sun. When they listen to some of the music from the Middle Ages, they often say, 'Wow—these are the kinds of things we're doing now.'"
Read More |
Allen LeVines, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Composition Department
"I try to help students become aware of how much there is out there in any given field. In the orchestration courses I teach, I have a listening list, and students take an exam based on that listening list at some point during the semester. The list is long; it might be a hundred pieces or more. . . . There is a sense in which it is asking too much—to be able to identify any of the pieces from 30-second excerpts. On the other hand, if students take the assignment seriously and listen to half a dozen to a dozen pieces a day—just getting to know some of the themes in the piece—perhaps they will realize what they may have thought was a lake of music is really an ocean, or several oceans."
Read More
 |
"In my classes, the composer's view is there always. I insist that people think of even the most insignificant technicality in the creative sense. What is it that you can do with this specific sonority? Where can you go with that? I try to inspire in the minds of the students the creative approach, not just the approach of the performer who has to deal with a set of notes. How would they write things? What is their own interpretation of a given musical text?"
Read More