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Andrew List, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Composition Department"I believe that the inner ear is just as much an instrument as the external ear. In a way, it's the stronger instrument, since the inner ear is connected with your intuition. And composing music is about being open to your own intuition. It's when you don't think 'complicated' that the purest ideas come through. When a student gets to that point, and comes up with something fresh and original, it's very exciting to see. It's very creative and very beautiful, and that makes it all worthwhile to me."
Read More- Undergraduate work in film scoring, Berklee College of Music
- Graduate studies in classical composition and music theory, Boston University
- Commissions and performances from many professional solo artists and performing ensembles, including the New Millennium Ensemble, Alea III, Boston Composers String Quartet, Tapestry, Krousis, Pandora's Vox, Ives Quartet, Seraphim Singers, as well as on National Public Radio and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
- Cofounder of Crosscurrents, a new music platform dedicated to performing the works of young and emerging composers
- Copresident of Composers in Red Sneakers
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Donald McDonnell, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Composition Department"I tend to like to compose at the piano. The computer I use at the final stage for engraving, once I've made all the decisions. I encourage my students to do that, as well. Depending on the style of music that you do, the process is crucially important to producing a certain product. I know a lot of film music people who will compose at a MIDI keyboard and play right into the computer. But I think for the sort of music that I do, and that my students do , it actually doesn't work out that well. It can be quite limiting. Sometimes students will play something on the computer and it'll go by so quickly that it won't register on their ear—they can't hear the wrong notes."
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Thomas J. McGah, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Composition Department"It's very easy sometimes in academic settings to begin to live in an unreal world, especially if you're talking to other composers all the time. It's the rockers, the jazzers, and the business majors who are going to keep us healthy and keep us in the real world. I firmly believe this: a composer is one who should have wide horizons. The great masters of the past were very involved in the popular music of the day. Beethoven didn't look down his nose at writing a good waltz. Even Schoenberg composed and arranged cabaret music in Berlin."
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Jeffrey Means, Assistant Professor
DEPARTMENT : Composition Department"The technical situation in the classrooms is pretty remarkable. There’s not a live ensemble in most of the beginning classes that I teach, but there is a computer software program. The students tap along with the computer in a way that simulates performing on instruments, but it’s realistic enough that the student who’s conducting gets an experience that is relatively close to actual conducting without having the pressure of having a real ensemble there. And they can go on to conduct a live orchestra every week, which is not the case in a number of major conducting programs across the country. It’s really special. And the faculty is very strong, and they’re all active professionals. Berklee is really a very cool place to learn how to conduct."
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George Monseur, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Composition Department- B.M., Arizona State University
- M.M., New England Conservatory of Music
- Conducting studies with Leopold Stokowsky, Leonard Bernstein, Leon Barzin, and Attilio Poto
- Appearances with Tanglewood Festival Orchestra, National Radio/Television Orchestra of Athens, National Symphony of Costa Rica, and International Music Festival of Caracas
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Carmen Moral, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Composition Department"A good conductor must be able to transmit with body language. In order to transmit, you need technique. You have to convey your intentions not with long speeches, but mainly with your gestures. I conducted an orchestra in China, and I do not speak Chinese. But I can communicate what I want, musically."
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"In Conducting 211 and 212, I aim to show students what it takes to prepare a score for performance and give an overview of what conducting is all about. A production engineering student, for example, gets to see what it takes to conduct an orchestra or an ensemble in a recording session. Somebody's first job might be teaching general music in high school, and as part of their obligation they have to conduct a musical. You just never know which way your career is going to go. So it is one more tool we give our students."
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Apostolos Paraskevas, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Composition Department"Most of my courses are in composition: traditional tonal harmony, counterpoint techniques of Johann Sebastian Bach, and contemporary techniques for composers, including guitar composers. Many people think we're just theorists in the composition department, but I'm an active performer. So if I'm talking to students about Bach's style of writing music, I'll start playing Bach on the guitar. And their eyes open wide because some of them have never heard guitar that sounds like this."
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Tibor Pusztai, Associate Professor
DEPARTMENT : Composition DepartmentWhen one teaches, one is not teaching subjects, but people. The things that I teach—primarily conducting and composition—are pretty esoteric and have to do very much with the development of self-confidence in the student. I bring the kids out of themselves, so that they can explore their own inner poetry. My task is to make my students understand that conducting, for instance, is the synthesis of all the various things that we study, such as history and harmony, and that the conductor is the galvanizer of all of this information when interpreting a score and seeing what the vision of a composer is. It's essential to teach this even if the student never conducts at all. For a business major, for instance, or a drummer, it might not be of great utility from a technical perspective, but from a conceptual perspective, certainly, it's very important."
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