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Melissa Howe, Chair
DEPARTMENT : String Department"It's a huge challenge—a lifelong challenge—for a student to figure out which suggestions work and which ones don't. And because these things aren't instant, they have to take a leap of faith. So as a teacher you really have to feel authentic about what you're teaching. I do lean pretty hard on students to give something a try for a reasonable period of time, but then they have to make the decision for themselves whether or not it's working for them."
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Darol Anger, Associate Professor
DEPARTMENT : String Department“We have students coming from a classical music background who are interested in playing various vernacular styles—jazz and fiddle music, blues, pop—and then we also have fiddle players who learned by ear or through various traditional routes and who are interested in expanding their theoretical knowledge. That’s two very different approaches, although after a couple of years it all evens out. Usually they wind up expanding their taste buds a little bit, so they’re interested in more styles. There’s a string style for every country, usually four or five.”
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Jason Anick, Instructor
DEPARTMENT : String Department"When I teach students jazz I always encourage them to learn from other musicians in their ensembles, or give them suggestions for records to listen to and solos to transcribe, or encourage them to play with different instruments. That's how I learned. That's what worked for me. I try not to overwhelm them with harmonic concepts at first but instead help them build a solid foundation and understanding of what the music is all about."
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Mike Block, Associate Professor
DEPARTMENT : String Department"One of the things that I’m interested in exploring with my students is the concept and implementation of group practice sessions. Like improvising chord changes, but instead of a backing track, improvising with someone else who is working on bass lines, and combining all the different components of music so that people can practice together and make practicing itself a social experience. There’s a lot of technical practice that you need to learn how to do in order to learn to play an instrument, and when you’re playing, a lot of these styles, you need to learn how to improvise over chord progressions. There’s a certain abstraction that happens, where you’re not playing any specific piece of music, but you’re practicing something very focused. The musician, student or professional, generally exists by yourself in a room working on something, and I think there are ways to actually get more out of practice sessions in certain contexts if you have somebody to practice with."
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Wesley Corbett, Associate Professor
DEPARTMENT : String Department"I found my way to the banjo completely by accident, through the roots of the banjo. We did an African percussion workshop at a Suzuki workshop that I was at. I started doing that as well as playing piano, and then from that started playing the kora, which is a West African traditional harp. It's basically a grandfather to the banjo. And then I heard Béla Fleck when I was 16 and just went banjo-crazy."
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Eugene Friesen, Professor
DEPARTMENT : String Department"String players have a reputation for having a lousy sense of rhythm. But the players I have met at Berklee are different because they love rhythm and are looking for a way to express that. They come here because they love playing rock, jazz, or Celtic music. The orchestra expands their rhythmic palette by exposing them to odd meters and the discipline for playing in a large ensemble."
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Sandra Kott, Assistant Professor
DEPARTMENT : String Department"I teach private violin lessons and a performance lab, which is run like a master class. Berklee students don't often have to stand and deliver solo violin music for one another. So in this lab, about every other week, each student is required to perform a solo piece in front of the class, be it a concerto movement, a Bach unaccompanied movement, or an étude. We do a general critique, and I work with the student."
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Felice Pomeranz, Professor
DEPARTMENT : String Department"Harp students at Berklee receive traditional training in classical repertoire, études, and exercises. But they also get experience in jazz ensembles, both small and large. They learn how to improvise and make arrangements for the harp. They also learn freelance skills that they can immediately take into the world."
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Mimi Rabson, Associate Professor
DEPARTMENT : String Department"Many string players come to Berklee with a strong background in classical music, but few improvisational skills. They read pretty well but interpret everything through a classical music lens. I help them work on the new skills they need to become strong improvisers and to develop a unique musical voice. Playing over changes, as well as hearing and expressing the subtleties that make one genre different from another, are core issues for me."
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Simon Shaheen, Professor
DEPARTMENT : String Department
"What I'm bringing to Berklee is my experience as a Western classical musician, Arab traditional musician, and this eclectic fusion of music from around the world, which I grew up with. I speak five languages because I grew up with it; it's not like I learned in later stages. So it's part of me. Berklee is the place where I can bring all this experience, because the idea is not to create compartments of music, but to open the walls and let all these experiences seep into each other."
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