Chrissi Poland
John Kaczorowski, chair of the Ventress Memorial Library Board of Trustees, in Marshfield, Massachusetts, described himself as the "tall, bald-headed guy with sideburns." He was waiting at the library last fall for Berklee student Chrissi Poland, winner of the Robert Barnett Kaplan Endowed Scholarship. The two had never seen each other, but he figured that the young woman who walked up and gave him a hug, a kiss, and a copy of her debut CD was the person he had arranged to meet.

Poland's affection was justified. Kaczorowski was instrumental in bringing the Kaplan Scholarship, which recognizes talented composers from Marshfield, to Berklee. Marshfield composer, teacher, and concert pianist Robert Kaplan died in 1995 with no children and no immediate family, and he left his estate to his hometown. But Kaplan's generosity was proving difficult to execute in some cases. His home, which Kaplan had intended to become a residence for student composers, was being vandalized, and his wish that $250 be dedicated every 100 years toward a new town song wasn't workable, Kaczorowski says. Since Ventress Memorial Library was already involved in the probate - Kaplan had also stipulated that funds be put toward concerts to be held at the library and had given the library his piano - representatives of Marshfield government asked the library to help them restructure Kaplan's estate. Kaplan's home was sold, and now the challenge was using the proceeds in the spirit of Kaplan's will.

"Some people said we should just donate it to the South Shore Conservatory of Music or some similar place," Kaczorowski says. "But we didn't want the funds to go out of town."

That's when the library board came up with the idea for a scholarship. It's also when Kaczorowski came up with the idea for Berklee. He'd seen some performances at the college, and he knew its reputation. And he sensed that Berklee had enough composition opportunities to make Robert Barnett Kaplan happy.

"I knew Berklee had the right programs," Kaczorowski says. "A lot of people were composing there. If a Berklee student is doing some composing or is interested in composing, that's going to be good enough for us."

Kazorowski and Poland talked in the library for more than an hour, and his first impression of her has lingered over the ensuing months.

"I have only one beautiful young daughter," Kaczorowski says, "but I would say that if I had another, it better be Chrissi Poland."

Poland, a 22-year-old vocalist and composer, wasn't unknown to Kaczorowski, though he doesn't recall where he came across the name first. Maybe he heard about one of the summer concerts she gave on the town green. Or the concert she put on at the Marshfield Community Center during her junior year in high school. Or one the performances her drama troupe put on for the town. Clearly, Poland loves the spotlight. She always has. Her first unofficial gig was at the age of four.

"Being the ham that I was," Poland says, "I walked up to the band at my cousin's wedding and said, 'Hi, my name is Chrissi, and I can sing the Annie song. Wanna hear me?'"

The singer turned over the microphone, and Poland belted out her version of "Tomorrow." Poland may not have been the first child to perform a show tune for cooing family members, but she was different in an important respect - she stuck with it. In her teens, she decided to get serious: chorus, choir, and particularly musicals, which she liked because they allowed her to act, dance, and sing. When Poland was 17, she was selected to the prestigious All Eastern Choir, whose members were chosen from across the eastern United States. Poland was poised for the next step, but she didn't know what it should be.

"I was confident in the fact that I could sing," Poland says. "As far as what I was going to do with it, I had no idea. My friends were going to Harvard, Brown, and Princeton, but I was just confused. But I knew music couldn't just be a hobby."

Poland enrolled at the Boston Conservatory, where, influenced by performers such as Liza Minnelli and Judy Garland, she began studying musical theater. But after a year, Poland discovered that though she had the versatility for musical theater, she didn't have the temperament for it.

"There wasn't a lot of room for creativity, self-expression," Poland says. "There was a lot of following the rules, learning the lines, which is the opposite of what I am."

Poland's first love was singing, though she didn't think enough of her abilities to consider it outside a package also including drama and dance. She also didn't consider herself a songwriter and says she didn't know the language of music at all. So while her friends from home were finishing off their first years at Harvard, Brown, and Princeton, Poland was in a rut.

"I was lost," she says.

One night, her friends at the conservatory invited Poland to a gospel concert at Berklee. Though at the time she was generally too gloomy for such excursions, she grudgingly agreed to go. Not only did she go, she stayed.

"All of a sudden, everything was clear," Poland says. "I knew that there was where I needed to be. There was no doubt in my mind. There's something about gospel music that really enlightens you and fills you up whether you're religious or not."

Poland is now in her second year as part of Berklee's Reverence Gospel Ensemble, and, despite her doubts, has proven her ability to go it alone as a singer.

"She's going to do wonders," says Associate Professor Charles Sorrento, Poland's private voice coach. "She can certainly do this professionally."

She's on her way. She and her band perform around the Boston area, and her self-produced CD, Mellow & Sublime, contains six jazz and r&b cuts, all written by Poland. But she realizes that she has much more to learn about composition, and she never forgets the man who will make that possible. Poland, in fact, is in the process of putting together a concert in honor of Robert Barnett Kaplan.

"I'd like to honor this man," she says. "He left a great gift that's helped me in ways I can't express."

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Daniela Schächter
Craigie Zildjian never took drum lessons. Sure, she studied guitar, piano, and even ballet, but drums never really came into the picture. This wouldn't be anything peculiar except for the fact that her ancestor Avedis Zildjian founded the Avedis Zildjian Company, the world's leading cymbal manufacturer, more than 375 years ago. Percussion was the family business, but even in her home, the expectations were different for little girls.

"Here I am growing up in this household founded around the drum set," says Zildjian, now CEO of the Norwell, Massachusetts-based Avedis Zildjian Company and a Berklee trustee, "and never did anyone suggest that I should play the drum set."

Granted, a few decades have passed since Zildjian's childhood, but the stubborn stereotypes remain largely intact, even if women today are more willing to defy them. Drums are still widely considered masculine instruments, and even instruments as a whole are tied to gender assumptions: Men play, women sing. Zildjian says she wanted to help women who chose to make music through something other than their vocal chords, and she wanted to begin where lots of talented young musicians get their start - at Berklee.

"Berklee's done a wonderful job of broadening its female enrollment by broadening the Voice Department - and that's great," Zildjian says. "What I wanted to do was something to attract instrumentalists rather than continue in that same vein of going after vocalists."

Zildjian decided a scholarship would be the perfect way to encourage female musicians to stick with their instruments, but she still needed someone to wrap her idea around, a role model. As it turned out, she had already known one for two-and-a-half decades: drummer Terri Lyne Carrington.

At age 12, Carrington was the youngest performer to ever endorse Zildjian cymbals as well as the youngest to receive a full scholarship to Berklee. So, if the now 35-year-old Carrington seems young to be the inspiration for Zildjian's scholarship, officially known as the Terri Lyne Carrington Scholarship, keep in mind that prodigies tend to run ahead of schedule.

 

In October 2000, Carrington, a native of Medford, Massachusetts, came back to campus to award the scholarship to its first recipient, pianist Daniela Schächter '02 of Messina, Italy. Though Carrington's career has included collaborations with Branford Marsalis, James Moody, and Carlos Santana, a stint as house drummer for The Arsenio Hall Show, and a Grammy nomination for her album Real Life Story, she says that her eponymous scholarship represents a new level of achievement.

"I was extremely honored, flattered, and surprised," says Carrington. "By far this is the most precious thing that's happened in my career as far as recognition. But the whole point is not to pat me on the back. The point is that young talent is being recognized and will continue to be."

The Carrington Scholarship was funded by a personal gift from Craigie Zildjian (the Avedis Zildjian Company, however, previously established the Zildjian Endowed City Music Award for percussionists attending Berklee's City Music SYSTEM 5 Summer Performance Program and the Avedis Zildjian Memorial Scholarship Fund for percussionists). For her, Carrington was the obvious choice to lend her name to the award. True, Carrington is a successful Berklee alumna with long-standing ties to both the college and the Zildjian family, but Zildjian says that Carrington deserved the honor because she's something else. She's a pioneer.

"Maybe she doesn't like to be talked about as one, but she had to have been," says Zildjian. "The drum set has been considered to be a male instrument for a long time. Now, you see many more young girls out there playing percussion. She really did start something. She put that whole gender issue to bed."

Though her mother was a jazz vocalist, Carrington Scholarship winner Daniela Schächter took to the piano like her father. Though he played a variety of styles, it was Schächter's older brother Davide, a guitarist, who offered her the most meaningful introduction to jazz.

"He was playing jazz guitar, and I went to all his concerts," 29-year-old Schächter says. "He was also listening to jazz all the time, so I listened too, and I fell in love."

Jazz wasn't her only love, though. Throughout high school she studied with jazz and classical tutors, all the while gigging with rock, blues, and r&b bands in Rome and Sicily. But when she began studying classical piano performance at a conservatory, she no longer had the time for other styles.

"For a few years, I didn't play jazz because I was so much involved with classical," Schächter says. "I had my diploma to do. I was playing classical 10 hours a day."

After graduation, Schächter spent a few years teaching piano, music history, and solfege at Sicily's Progetto Suono music school. She also played with funk and dance bands, but as far as jazz was concerned, she didn't really know what to do with what she knew or where to go to explore what she didn't. Then she heard about Berklee. Each year, the college sponsors clinics in conjunction with Umbria Jazz, one of Europe's most prestigious jazz festivals. Schächter thought her trip to Umbria would end with the seven-hour drive home to Messina - not an eight-hour flight to Berklee's Boston campus.

"I wasn't thinking about a scholarship," says Schächter, who partook of the $60,000 in scholarships Berklee awards to young musicians at the Umbria clinics. "I didn't think about moving to Boston or anything like that. I just went there because it's a nice experience anyway. There are the clinics, the festival, and the city is beautiful. I had no plans to win anything, though."

Her scholarship award was so unexpected that Schächter had to delay her matriculation into Berklee for a year to prepare for the move. But postponing her opportunity wasn't easy.

"I started dreaming about Boston," Schächter says. "It was like a flower opening. I thought, 'Maybe I can change my life.' Now, after two years, I feel like everything in my life brought me here. Every step I did, every choice was in one direction."

Schächter is a Performance major, though she's considering pairing that with a Jazz Composition major. She's looking for balance in her studies, but she hasn't lost sight of her priority.

"My first goal is to improve my playing," Schächter says.

A few years at Berklee will help, but at the scholarship ceremony last October, Schächter found a short cut: performing with Terri Lyne Carrington.

"When you play with a good musician, you can play like you never played before," Schächter says. "Playing with her was amazing. It's an experience that makes you understand how you can play differently. Your playing changes somehow."

But if she can't jam with Carrington every day, she'll settle for the next best thing.

"I went to the media center to get all the CDs they had. I have to know her better."

Maybe that's just what Craigie Zildjian had in mind.