Berklee College of Music inks album contract with Epic Records. For faculty advisor Jeff Dorenfeld and the staff of Heavy Rotation Records, Berklee's student-run record label, the evening of October 18, 2000, must have seemed like a dream. Midway through a sellout performance at the Berklee Performance Center, an event produced by Dorenfeld and his students, a top record executive stepped up to the microphone and said,

"I hope this is the beginning of a long and successful relationship between Epic [Records] and Berklee." But the words of Chris Poppe, Epic's vice president of marketing, preceded wild applause, not the screeching of an alarm clock. It wasn't a dream, but it was the product of one. What began as an inspiration a few years ago has earned Berklee a prize shared by music industry superstars such as Michael Jackson, Pearl Jam, and Gloria Estefan: a contract with Epic Records.

But all Dorenfeld, an associate professor in Berklee's Music Business/Management Department, knew at the end of 1998 was that he wanted to do something big for his students. He had managed multiplatinum rock band Boston throughout the 1980s, so he was used to thinking big. Fortunately, at Berklee, he still could. He knew what major labels wanted, and he knew he could find it right on campus. "Berklee's like a candy store of talent," says Dorenfeld.

He met with his friend Dan Beck, who at the time was president of V2 Records, and Beck's vice president of A&R, who proposed a "Best of Berklee" compilation. But that seemed like too exclusionary an angle for Dorenfeld's taste. "That's like saying if we pick out 10 artists, then those are the best, that the other 2,990 students aren't," says Dorenfeld, "but that's not true."

So Dorenfeld and Beck set to work on refining the theme for the album. Berklee, of course, had a rich jazz heritage, but Dorenfeld had always worked in pop and rock, and he decided to go in the direction with which he was most comfortable. But assigning an album a genre isn't the same as giving it a hook, a perspective. "Jeff and I had a number of discussions," says Beck, "not only about the music, but what statement the project would make overall. Jeff had mentioned the numerous well-known alumni from Berklee. I noticed that many of them happen to be women. We discussed the idea of tying this recent history to the future....The idea of a women's album is not new, but it provided a focus and some continuity to a multiartist album."

With alumnae such as Melissa Etheridge '80, Paula Cole '90, and Aimee Mann '80, Berklee certainly had the legacy to build upon. But before the contract between V2 and Berklee could be made final, Beck resigned from his post at V2 in late 1999 for health reasons. Dorenfeld and his students had already recruited a few musicians and had begun developing a marketing strategy, but suddenly they had lost a key industry contact and a loyal advocate - or so they thought. Although Beck resigned, he never abandoned the project, and he was still in good standing with his former employer, Epic Records. "Once I stepped down as president of V2," says Beck, former senior vice president of marketing at Epic, "I felt that since this was not necessarily about being a financially profitable album, that it needed to have a guardian at whatever label we placed it. I became a salesperson rather than a buyer."

Epic executives weren't sold right away, but they were interested, so much so that several of them visited Berklee's campus. From there, it was up to the Heavy Rotation Records staff to make the visit worthwhile. "We put a lot of work into developing a slide show presentation that kind of told the story of why we were pursuing this, why we felt it was important, and why we thought it was a great thing," says Natasha Bishop '01, a former director at Heavy Rotation Records. "We had the whole class researching like mad - the artists, where they came from, how we were going to promote the album."

Peter Robinson, senior vice president for A&R at Epic Records, liked what he saw. "It seems like there's a real attempt to have students assimilate into the real world," says Robinson, who at one time considered attending Berklee as a drummer. "Jeff [Dorenfeld] has been in the business a long time, and his experience certainly rubbed off on these kids."

To be clear, Dorenfeld and his students weren't pitching a finished product. In fact, though they had a few songs available, they didn't even play any music for the Epic representatives. But that wasn't an oversight: that was the plan. "I never said, 'We've got a hit song here,'" says Dorenfeld. "I didn't want to put that kind of pressure on the artists. I don't feel that that is what I'm selling. I'm selling a concept of a college with great artists that has really good departments other than performance and that can make a record that can stand up. There hasn't been a record label and a college institution that have actually worked together to make a record."

But no idea, no matter how inspired, will fit in a CD player. So while Epic's attorney negotiated the details of the contract with Berklee's attorney, Music Business/Management Associate Professor Jay Fialkov, the time had come for Dorenfeld and his students to lay down more tracks. And for that, of course, they needed artists. With Epic's imprimatur on the project, it wasn't difficult generating interest from the college's women musicians, but more interest meant more work for the staff of Heavy Rotation Records. "Finding the acts was no easy chore," says Mark Hunter '00, who, like Natasha Bishop, was a director at Heavy Rotation Records. "That was the hardest part of the whole thing. There are so many talented people...but some people are better suited to be recording artists than others. There are a lot of great performers, but it's a totally different thing to go into a studio and do different parts. A good recording is totally different than a good live show."

Two of the artists who made it onto the album were Rhea Dummett '00 and Polina Goudieva, who is in her fifth semester at Berklee and is originally from Moscow. For the latter, the Heavy Rotation/Epic album was more than an extracurricular activity - a lot more. "It was like the American Dream," Goudieva says. "I was looking for this chance....It's a really, really good thing for artists. I know the main reason [for the album] is to promote Berklee, but for the artists, it's an amazing opportunity to show your music to people throughout the country." The final roster of artists, 13 altogether, reflected the breadth of pop/rock talent at Berklee - rock, roots, trip-hop, heavy metal, folk, and r&b, courtesy of Dummett. "I was so excited. I've never been on a Berklee CD," Dummett says. "Plus, they needed diversity on their CD just to represent the diversity of Berklee - different styles, different faces, different colors, different feels."

The album, to be released in spring 2002 and entitled Shekinah, was a Berklee project from start to finish. Music Production and Engineering Professor Stephen Webber personally produced six of the cuts, including Dummett's, and assembled the production teams for most of the other artists. He says that Shekinah, like any compilation album, presented a unique set of challenges. "Since the concept was to do a compilation of female singer-songwriters, it was almost like making 13 entirely different records from scratch," Webber says. "A lot of care was taken to make sure each artist got a great track. I stopped counting the recording time I personally put in on the project after it passed 200 hours. It was definitely worth it." Meanwhile, Dorenfeld and his team were hard at work on another important element of any successful album release - the buzz. Before Dorenfeld took over Heavy Rotation Records, the label had concentrated on signing artists outside the Berklee student body and, consequently, lacked visibility on campus. The task before Dorenfeld and the Heavy Rotation staff was to get some attention. After all, if the college community wouldn't back its own project, then why would Epic expect anyone else to? "How are we supposed to get support from the school if it doesn't know about the album," says Heavy Rotation's Hunter. "And how are we supposed to go outside the school if we can't promote it within the school?"

So they sent out press releases to every faculty and staff member at Berklee - not bland interoffice memos, but 500 scrolls personally sealed in wax by Hunter and Bishop. They produced a sampler CD with five of the Shekinah artists. They launched a column in Berklee's student newspaper, the Groove. What was most important was getting the word out, no matter what. "Sometimes I'd write the same Groove column twice just to make sure we had an article in there every single week," says Bishop. "Once we got the school behind us, we started ringing up the Epic people to show them that people around here were excited about us and they should be, too. And they were."

The October 2000 Berklee Performance Center showcase was the first occasion that anyone at Epic had heard almost the complete artist lineup for Shekinah, and its success added momentum to the contract negotiations that had been continuing for more than half a year. But, finally, in early 2001, Berklee and Epic made their partnership official in the form of a one-record deal, the proceeds of which will go toward an endowed fund for music business students. When rock stars sign with labels, the discussion usually centers around money, but in this case both sides realized there was something more important to be gained. "The interaction that the students are going to have with Epic is so valuable, it's not even quantifiable," says Music Business/Management Department Chair Don Gorder. "How in the world could they get that experience otherwise? We give them a lot of things in the classroom, but we can't give them that."

Maybe Shekinah contains a Madonna waiting to happen, but Epic's Robinson says that the album is not a venture for profit, but a gesture of appreciation. Every performer on Epic's roster, after all, began as an up-and-comer, and were it not for them and for their willingness to struggle to the top, Epic could not exist. And many of the best emerging talents, Robinson says, can be found at Berklee. "We're nothing without the artists," says Robinson. "Here's one of the most prestigious and largest music institutions in the world. What would be more worthwhile to support?" Releasing an album isn't the same thing as letting it go. Once it's on its way to distribution, the marketing begins. Dorenfeld and his students plan to contact the media outlets in the hometowns of all the students connected to Shekinah. If they can get the story picked up by the local and regional press, then they can probably sell some records.

And after the marketing campaign? "Hopefully," says Dorenfeld, "another record."