Students, alumni, and faculty are everywhere at the city's annual music awards and conference.

By Rob Hochschild
Berklee.edu Editor
October 5, 2004

	Michael Dreese, Berklee trustee emeritus and founder and CEO of Newbury Comics, presents a Boston Music Award.
	Photo by Rob Hochschild

After all of that, mid-terms might feel anticlimactic.

Unlike most of the musicians who won BMAs on September 29—Aerosmith and Aimee Mann among them—Cambrone's $10,000 Suskind Scholarship says more about expectation than accomplishment. But to Cambrone, who studied his craft in the Berklee City Music Saturday School for three years and the Five-Week Summer Performance Program for four, the scholarship sends a message that he has been on the right path.

"The biggest part of this is that it's recognition and validation of all the hard work," says Cambrone, who takes his Berklee lessons from Fred Lipsius, an original member of Blood, Sweat & Tears. "On top of that, the scholarship money just really helps." Cambrone was accompanied at the BMAs by J. Curtis Warner, Jr., assistant vice president for community and governmental affairs and Lynette Gittens, associate director for Berklee City Music programs.

Cambrone's scholarship marks the beginning of a new era for the Boston Music Awards, whose proceeds benefit the NEMO (Northeast Music Organization) Foundation, a nonprofit organization that provides funding to talented youth seeking a music education. The formation of the foundation and NEMO's new relationship with several community organizations stem from NEMO executive director Chip Rives's plan to strengthen ties between everyone involved in the Boston music scene.

The large number of Berklee alumni who received awards attests to the college's impact, as did the presence of trustee emeritus and Newbury Comics CEO Michael Dreese, who was one of the award presenters during the BMA show at Boston's Avalon nightclub. Nine awards went to alumni artists or to bands whose members attended Berklee:

• Album of the Year (major label) – Aerosmith (drummer Joey Kramer '71, guitarist Brad Whitford '71), Honkin' on Bobo
  
  
• Album of the Year (independent) – Juliana Hatfield '90, In Exile Deo
  
  
• Local Debut Album of the Year – The So and So's (guitarist, vocalist Meghan Toohey '96), Give Me Drama
  
  
• Female Vocalist of the Year – Aimee Mann '80
  
  
• Local Female Vocalist – Melissa Ferrick '90
  
  
• New Local Act – The Street Dogs (drummer Jeff Erna '83)
  
  
• Blues Act – Susan Tedeschi '91
  
  
• Country Act - John Lincoln Wright and the Sourmash Boys (drummer Kathy Burkly '83)
  
  
• Folk Act - The Resophonics (guitarist Sean Staples '88)
  
  

Student Ryder Cambrone (center) backstage at the Boston Music Awards with Aerosmith bassist Tom Hamilton (left) and Boston Celtics forward Walter McCarty

The Boston Music Awards acts as the kickoff event for the NEMO Music Conference, a two-day series of panels covering a wide range of music industry topics. Several members of the Berklee community were involved as panel moderators (including Don Gorder, chair of music business/management, and Jeff Dorenfeld, associate professor of music business/management), panelists (Richard Davis, associate professor of film scoring; alumnus and Sonicbids CEO Panos Panay; and Dave Franz, Berklee Press author and alumnus), and performers (alumni Gavin DeGraw, Meghan Toohey, and Deb Pasternak). In addition, Berklee Media product marketing manager Barry Kelly, a Dublin-born guitarist, organized a two-night festival featuring bands from his home country titled the Irish Invasion Showcase.

By the time the weekend concluded, nearly every corner of the musical universe had been covered, in terms of both styles and possible career paths. It was hard to escape the parallels between that diversity and Berklee's own wide-ranging curriculum and character. And from the way things looked during BMA/NEMO, both the Boston music scene and the college appear to be thriving. The most obvious connection of them all, however, was Ryder Cambrone, a 19-year-old Bostonian with a great track record already and a pretty fair chance for a few awards in his future.