The two honorees will help welcome Berklee's entering Class of 2005, which includes approximately 950 students from over 75 countries. Some of Berklee's most outstanding current students also will welcome the entering class with a tribute concert featuring music associated with the careers of the two honorary doctorate recipients. The Convocation ceremony will be held at 7 p.m. in the Berklee Performance Center. The concert will follow at 8 p.m.

Elvin Jones

Elvin Jones stands among the most influential musicians in the history of jazz. Over the course of a professional career that began in the 1940s, Elvin Jones has transformed the role of drums in jazz, illuminating new directions for the entire genre. Jones remains one of the preeminent jazz percussionists performing today. His influence has extended beyond jazz to rock and other styles of music. His contributions to the development of free improvisation, which underplays or ignores a regular pulse altogether, were adopted by numerous avant-garde players.

Elvin Jones was born into a musical family in Pontiac, Michigan, in 1927. He and two of his brothers, pianist Hank Jones and flugelhorn player and composer Thad Jones, each developed distinctive jazz voices in their separate careers. By the age of 13, Jones had decided to become a professional drummer and practiced tirelessly to reach his goal. After a stint in the U.S. Army, he took a job in 1949 with the house band at Detroit's Bluebird Club, giving him the opportunity to play with many prominent jazz artists, such as Miles Davis, Sonny Stitt, and Charlie Parker, who frequently appeared at the club. In 1956, Jones moved to New York and began working with such artists as Charles Mingus, Donald Byrd, Stan Getz, Sonny Rollins, and Bud Powell.

By 1960, Jones was a member of the groundbreaking John Coltrane Quartet. His work during his six-year association with Coltrane constitutes one of the most creative and innovative periods in the evolution of modern jazz. Among the classic recordings that feature Elvin Jones and John Coltrane are Live at the Village Vanguard, Impressions, Live at Birdland, and A Love Supreme. During this

period, Jones became the premier drummer in jazz, consistently topping music magazine critics' and readers' polls. Jones developed a new role for jazz drummers, diverging from simply keeping the beat, to becoming an equal, collaborative improviser. His simultaneous use of several metrically contrasting rhythms, irregularly shifting accents, and interjections of counter-rhythmic motives against the prevailing pulse became hallmarks of his style.

After leaving Coltrane in 1966, Elvin Jones led a series of groups notable for their instrumentation that often omitted the pianist in favor of one or more horn players and a bassist. Jones has performed all over the world and has received sponsorship from the U.S. Information Agency and the Department of State for tours of Europe, South America, and Asia. Most recently, he has worked with a quintet called Jazz Machine that features pianist David Pulphus, bassist Eric Lewis, saxophonist Pat LaBarbera '61, and trombonist Delfeayo Marsalis '89.

Al Kooper

Most musicians in the rock world enjoy but a brief season in the sun, yet the fruits of Al Kooper's work as a songwriter, session player, and producer are still staples of the airwaves. His first success came in 1959, followed by his most productive period in the1960s and 1970s. His music influences many of today's artists and has been sampled by numerous hip-hop producers and was part of a recent Beastie Boys album that sold five million copies.

Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1944, Al Kooper was attracted to gospel, blues, and soul music at an early age and began playing guitar and keyboards. He was playing gigs with a band called the Aristo-Cats by the time he was 13. Two years later he had joined the Royal Teens, who had two hit songs, "Short Shorts" and "Believe Me." By the early sixties, two songs he wrote, "I Must Be Seeing Things" and "This Diamond Ring" became hits for Gene Pitney and Gary Lewis and the Playboys respectively. "This Diamond Ring" was Kooper's biggest hit and has since logged close to three million radio performances.

A big break came in 1965 when Al Kooper played organ on Bob Dylan's landmark Highway 61 Revisited album. Kooper's signature organ part on the single "Like A Rolling Stone" made his stock as a session player rise dramatically. It also began a long and fruitful association with Dylan that led to an historic 1965 performance at the Newport Folk Festival, session work on the Blonde on Blonde album, and a job producing Dylan's New Morning album. The two continue to perform together on occasion.

In the late 1960s, Kooper recorded three critically hailed albums with the Blues Project and founded Blood, Sweat, and Tears (BS&T), the first band to feature a horn section in a jazz-rock context. After one album with BS&T, Kooper left the group and returned to playing sessions, backing superstars like Jimi Hendrix, the Who, and the Rolling Stones, to name a few.

Kooper's next stop was a job in A&R at Columbia Records in 1968. Among his notable accomplishments during his Columbia years was signing the Zombies, who had a monster hit with "Time of the Season." Kooper also masterminded the million-selling album Super Session with guitarists Mike Bloomfield and Stephen Stills, and its follow-up, The Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper.

In the 1970s, Kooper relocated to Atlanta, Georgia and launched his own Sounds of the South label. He signed Lynyrd Skynyrd and produced the band's first three albums that yielded the huge hits "Sweet Home Alabama" and "Free Bird." He also produced sessions for B.B. King, the Tubes, Nils Lofgren, and others. Kooper's celebrated 1977 autobiography Backstage Passes chronicled his experiences as one of the most important behind-the-scenes figures in rock. Revised and reissued in 1998, it is now called Backstage Passes and Backstabbing Bastards.

Although in semi-retirement from the music business during the 1980s, the 1990s found Al Kooper performing again with Joe Walsh, John Mellencamp, and Bob Dylan, and recording with his all-star band, the Rekooperators. He taught at Berklee College of Music from 1997 to 2000 and has helped establish a fund to provide adaptive technology for handicapped Berklee students. Earlier this month, Al Kooper and the Funky Faculty, comprised of Berklee teachers, were headliners of the three-night Notodden Blues Festival in Notodden, Norway. The group will perform at Scullers Jazz Club in Boston on September 9^th, two days after Kooper receives his honorary degree, and the Bottom Line in New York on September 13th.

And on September 18, Columbia/Legacy will release Kooper's career-spanning retrospective Rare & Well Done: the Greatest and Most Obscure Recordings, 1964-2001. The two-disc set includes 33 tracks and over two-and-a-half hours of music. The Rare disc features 18 unreleased gems from Kooper's vaults, plus his long out-of-print first single from 1965. The Well Done disc features Kooper's collaborations with The Blues Project; Blood, Sweat & Tears; Mike Bloomfield; Stephen Stills; Shuggie Otis, and many others; plus the best tracks from Kooper's solo albums. Both discs have been digitally re-mastered under Kooper's supervision.

Founded in 1945, Berklee College of Music has been advancing careers in contemporary music for more than 50 years. The world's largest independent college of music, Berklee has a multi-cultural enrollment of more than 3,300 students, 35 percent of whom are international. The college's alumni include some of the most respected figures in contemporary music, including many multi-Grammy award winners.

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Toni Ballard
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