President's Letter May 3, 2001

Dear colleagues,

After 25 years of service to Berklee as a trustee and finance committee chair, including the past nine as board chair, William M. Davis is retiring from the board of trustees. Will was the third board chair of Berklee and is responsible for the building of a modern board that has done much to help identify and advance the college's strategic initiatives. Will is senior vice president of the investment firm of Donaldson, Lufkin, and Jenrette. He will receive an honorary doctorate from the college at our commencement, recognizing his many leadership contributions to advancing the mission of our college.

Succeeding Will as board chair is Allan T. McLean, vice president of William J. Lynch Associates, a company that designs and provides employment benefit programs and products. Allan has served as a board member since 1977 and has served as vice chair of the board since 1992. He recently served as cochair of Berklee's Encore Gala, which raises funds for Berklee City Music scholarships. He also served as chair of the trustees' Annual Fund solicitation. Serving alongside Allan as vice chair will be Vivian C. Beard, who has been a Berklee trustee since 1998. Vivian is director of equal opportunity for the Massachusetts Housing Finance Agency. She has contributed her other identity as a jazz singer to raise funds for Berklee's Sarah Vaughan Scholarship Fund, which she played a leading role in establishing. Both Allan and Vivian bring to the leadership of the board a complement of skills and potential to advance the board to the next level of excellence in supporting the president and meeting the needs of Berklee in the period ahead.

In addition to Will, three others will receive honorary doctorates during this year's commencement ceremony. Walter Becker and Donald Fagen '66 of Steely Dan, two consummate musical figures whose Two Against Nature CD just earned four Grammy Awards, will be joined by Larry Linkin, retiring CEO of NAMM, the International Music Products Association. Linkin has expanded the vision of NAMM to support research in many new areas of music involved with health, wellness, and intelligence, and has agreed to deliver the commencement address on May 12. Berklee commencements have historically been memorable for the graduating seniors and their families. I am certain that this year's honorees will be no exception.

Grammy-winning pianist/composer Alan Broadbent '69 began his appointment as the first Herb Alpert Visiting Professor during the week of April 11. The Alpert Professorship was established with the support of the Herb Alpert Foundation, the philanthropic organization launched by A&M Records cofounder, Grammy-winning artist, and board of overseers member Herb Alpert H'00. The program will bring Berklee a steady stream of world-class performers and music industry leaders. I am very pleased to mark its auspicious beginning with not only a very talented individual, but also a Berklee alumnus. Alan's impressive career has been recognized with many Grammy nominations and two Grammy Awards so far. The first was in 1997 for his arrangement of "When I Fall in Love" for Natalie Cole. In 2000, he earned his second Grammy for Best Arrangement Accompanying a Vocal for "Lonely Town," which he wrote for Charlie Haden's Quartet West's The Art of the Song. Alan spoke of his affection for his alma mater during a recent luncheon in his honor. "I've been to many schools, but none compare to Berklee," he said. "Just being here brings back all the nurturing feelings I had as a young musician here."

This year's ASCAP Foundation Songwriter in Residence, John Leventhal, visited the college earlier this month to teach master classes and to serve as a mentor to songwriting and production students. John cowrote and produced Shawn Colvin's album A Few Small Repairs, including the Grammy-winning single, "Sunny Came Home." Berklee was honored by his visit, and I am certain many students benefited immensely from his expertise. Thanks are due to ASCAP for supporting his residency.

I am very pleased to announce that Berklee's Music Therapy Department has been granted $10,000 from the Children's Hospital League to support music therapy services at Children's Hospital in Boston. The grant will be used to develop fieldwork experiences for our students and to provide music therapy services to children in the hospital. Currently, Berklee students are carrying out music therapy services in the oncology and hematology unit and hope to expand to other units throughout the hospital. Thanks to this new funding, music can continue to enhance the quality of children's lives and provide meaningful learning experiences for our students.

On April 8, the Composition Department presented a special tribute concert in honor of composer and former faculty member Jeronimas Kacinskas, who taught at Berklee for 19 years beginning in 1967. Jeronimas, who turns 94 this month, is believed to be Boston's oldest living classical composer. The tribute concert featured music from his past and present, including Nonet (1938), String Quartet no. 4 (1997), and his latest composition, "2000 Year Anniversary of Jesus Christ's Holy Message to the People" (2000), completed just a few months ago and written especially for this concert. Nonet, in particular, has a colorful history. During Jeronimas's harrowing escape from Lithuania, following the communist takeover of 1944, nearly all of his manuscripts were lost. With the help of Berklee alumnus Emil Viklicky '78, string and woodwind parts to Nonet were located and retrieved from the shelves of a Czech archive in 1992 and returned to Berklee. Professor Emeritus of Composition John Bavicchi then helped Jeronimas recreate a score and generate new parts to the piece. Nonet is one of only a handful of surviving Kacinskas compositions composed prior to World War II, and I am thrilled that such a precious piece of music was performed here at Berklee.

For the third year in a row, a very talented group of Berklee students will play at New York's famed Blue Note Jazz Club. Five of the college's top instrumentalists and composers, dubbed the Berklee Scholarship Jazz Quintet, will perform their original compositions. Tenor saxophonist Walter Smith '02 leads the quintet and makes his second Blue Note appearance, along with drummer Kendrick Scott '02 and bassist Mark Kelley '02. Also joining the group will be Warren Wolf '01 on vibraphone and Milton Fletcher '04 on piano. The quintet will perform on May 14. I would like to wish them luck and to thank them in advance for representing the college at this historic venue.

I would like to recognize just a few of the many recent accomplishments by Berklee faculty. Composition Department Chair Greg Fritze has been commissioned by the Carcaigente Instructional Musical in Valencia, Spain, to compose a major work for symphonic band, which will be performed in July 2001 at the International Certamen of Bands in Valencia. In addition, Acting Assistant Composition Department Chair Jim Smith will have his composition "Savishna's Dance" premiered by the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra of Boston at the Sanders Theatre in Cambridge on May 20.

Also, the work of three faculty members, Voice Professor Mili Bermejo, Ensemble Department Assistant Professor Fernando Brandao, and Bass Department Associate Professor Oscar Stagnaro, will be chronicled in a cable television program for the HBO Latin America Group. Earlier this month, all three were interviewed and their classes filmed as part of a documentary series that will profile the accomplishments of Latino professionals in the United States. The program will air this fall on HBO-Ole, the most watched cable network in Latin America, whose coverage spans from the Rio Grande River in Mexico to Tierra del Fuego in Argentina.

Berklee Press recently released the first four volumes (guitar, piano, bass, and drums) of a 12-volume set entitled The Berklee Practice Method: Get Your Band Together. The design team for these volumes includes Guitar Department Chair Larry Baione, Piano Department Chair Paul Schmeling, Assistant Professor of Piano Russ Hoffmann, Bass Department Chair Rich Appleman, Bass Department Assistant Chair John Repucci, Ensemble Department Chair Ron Savage, and Associate Professor of Percussion Casey Scheuerell. The Berklee Practice Method design team, led by Performance Division Dean Matt Marvuglio and the chairs of the instrumental departments, has teamed up with some of Berklee's best faculty to produce a set of books with play-along audio tracks that prepares its readers to play in a band. The goal of The Berklee Practice Method is to expand music education opportunity by publishing Berklee's instrumental/ensemble teaching methods in book and CD format.

The entire college community mourns the passing of Joseph Viola, chairman emeritus of Berklee College of Music's Woodwind Department. Joe and his wife, Alice, have been a part of the Berklee community from the start. Joe was among the first faculty members to be hired by my father, Lawrence Berk, in the mid-1940s. His teaching actually predated the formation of departments, and he taught classes in theory, composition, ensembles, applied saxophone, clarinet, and flute. He taught most of the ensembles first offered by the school. Joe will always be at the forefront of those to whom our college owes so much of its great legacy. Alice has requested that contributions in Joe's memory be made to the Joseph E. Viola Scholarship Fund at Berklee.

Joe would have been so pleased and proud to learn that the first oboe Performance major in the history of the college is about to graduate. After fulfilling the strenuous requirements, Jaleen Hall '01 of Oneida, New York, will graduate this May. Not only did Jaleen surpass all expectations, she is also one of only seven oboists accepted into the master's program at New England Conservatory of Music. This is a great milestone for Berklee's growing oboe program, and I congratulate Jaleen, Associate Professor Barbara Lafitte, and Woodwind Department Chair Bill Pierce.

Sincerely,

Lee Eliot Berk
President