Alumni Affairs/See All BT IssuesBerklee Today Fall 2017
A Magazine for Contemporary Music and Musicians
Berklee Beat
Welcoming the Class of 2021
Berklee President Roger H. Brown was among the many who welcomed members of the class of 2021 during the Entering Student Convocation ceremonies at the Berklee Performance Center.
Recharging the Power Station
The city of New York has joined forces with Berklee and Pete Muller, a Berklee trustee, in a public-private-nonprofit partnership to establish a center for Berklee in New York at the historic Power Station Studios on West 53rd Street. The facility was most recently known as Avatar Studios.
Graduates Number 137 in Valencia
On July 8, the commencement celebrations at the Berklee Valencia, Spain campus kicked off with a concert titled “La Nit de Berklee,” that attracted thousands to Valencia’s Hemisfèric.
Reach Out Initiative Promotes Student Well-Being
Thanks to the Gary Slaight family’s continuing support of an initiative called Reach Out, there has been increased awareness and focus on issues related to mental health and well-being, substance abuse, and violence prevention specifically as they relate to the performing artists’ experience....
Beyoncé Chooses Berklee
In celebration of the one-year anniversary of the critically acclaimed and academically heralded visual album Lemonade, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter chose Berklee to receive a $25,000 Formation Scholars Award. It was awarded to Sadiya Ramos, a sophomore at Boston Conservatory at Berklee.
Scholarship Named for Fred Taylor
On September 12, an all-star cast of musicians performed at the Berklee Performance Center to pay tribute to Fred Taylor, Boston’s revered jazz promoter and concert producer. Taylor has devoted more than five decades of his life to booking countless musicians primarily in jazz, but in popular...
Africana Studies Marks a Decade at Berklee
This fall, Berklee’s Africana Studies program is entering its second decade. Since the program’s founding in 2007, we have achieved a number of the things we set out to accomplish.
Regional Spotlights
West Coast News
Northern California alumni are abuzz with news of their work in a variety of areas. Here are some recent highlights.
Benjamin Flint ’85 of Oakland led two Diablo Valley College jazz choirs Reno Jazz Festival where they took first and third places in their division. Flint also directs the...
Nashville Pros
Making inroads in the music business is no easy feat for anyone. But for women in Nashville, the uphill climb has traditionally been especially tough. A casual look at the Billboard country top-30 quickly reveals that...
Expert Testimony
Expert Testimony: A Career Built to Her Specs
Lori McKenna has become one of country music’s most sought-after songwriters without having ever having lived in Nashville. A lifelong Massachusetts resident, she opted to stay local even when it became apparent that moving to the Music City could boost her career.
The Woodshed
The Woodshed: Arranging a Jazz Classic for Solo Piano
“Autumn Leaves” is one of the most recognizable melodies in popular jazz repertoire, and has been recorded by countless jazz artists, including vocalists Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, and Sarah Vaughan, and pianists Bill Evans, Keith Jarrett, and Monty Alexander.
Featured
Career Retrospectives: From Hollywood to Rome
Victor Vanacore ’74 is preparing for a concert that is the culmination of a life of study and work throughout his four-plus-decade music career. On October 8 at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre in Hollywood, he will conduct the premiere of his composition La Sorgente (The Source).
Coda
Lessons Learned While Going to Play
Ed Bettinelli ’79 found his drumming career take off after enrolling at Berklee, landing a gig with the band Preview. Two major record deals and 20 years later, Bettinelli set up a teaching studio and later developed and manufactured the innovative Thumb Thang.
Lead Sheet
Preserving Cultural History
Mayer Tunes Up Songwriters
Faculty Highlights
After returning to Berklee from a semester-long sabbatical, bass professor Bruce Gertz dove into his duties in the summer bass workshop with Victor Wooten, the Berklee Global String Intensive, and Berklee’s Five Week Summer Performance Program.
Professor of piano Joanne Brackeen was among those named 2018 National Endowment for the Arts NEA Jazz Masters. Also on the list were guitarist Pat Metheny H’96, vocalist Dianne Reeves H’03, and producer, artistic programmer, and club owner Todd Barkan.
The Omaha Symphony Orchestra, led by music director Thomas Wilkins, performed the orchestral suite The Great Chaplin by associate professor Elena Roussanova Lucas. Additionally, Fanfare magazine published an interview and reviews of a CD featuring her composition Moments of Arrival.
Professor Laszlo Gardony released the solo piano album Serious Play featuring jazz standards and spontaneous improvisations. Visit lgjazz.com.
Alumni News
After completing her studies at Berklee, Sharon Farber heard an orchestra play her music for the first time. That was it. “After hearing the sound of my music coming at me I was hooked,” she says. Since then, her composing career has unfolded across genres and international boundaries.
Ken Field of Cambridge, MA, was a 2017 finalist in music composition by the Massachusetts Cultural Council. He played on the soundtracks for a special program of the animated films by his late wife Karen Aqua at the Animator Festival in Poznan, Poland in July. Visit kenfield.org.
Kiyotaka Takiyama of Omeshi, Japan, has toured and recorded with various Japanese artists and released several drum programming and instructional DVDs. Follow him on Instagram @kiyo_takiyama.