2009-2010 Newbury Comics Faculty Fellowships Announced

In support of Berklee's 2015 vision, Mike and Laura Dreese have created the Newbury Comics Faculty Fellowship.
January 28, 2010

This unique fellowship provides Berklee faculty with resources to engage in innovative learning opportunities that strengthen and transform Berklee's distinctive curriculum. As the music industry has changed, so too have the tools needed to propel music forward. This fellowship will support the creative and experimental approaches of faculty as they engage this changing music industry and teach courses that prepare students for success in it.  

This year's recipients are: 

Michael Bierylo is an associate professor in the Electronic Production and Design Department. For this project, he will immerse himself in the electronic music scene in Berlin, working with VJs turned DJs who are producing some of the most interesting electronic music in the world right now. Berlin has a vibrant and very modern arts and culture scene from which new forms of popular musical expression are emerging. Bierylo will attend the city's electronic music and arts festival and then continue studying the range of current electronic performance practices there. He will create a series of works that reflect Berlin's electronic arts culture, and plans to produce audio and video interviews with the artists and make this available, with his reflections, online.

Michael Heyman, an associate professor in the Liberal Arts Department, is assembling, in English translation, a representative collection of the nonsense arts from outside the Anglo-American tradition. The Anthology of World Nonsense will include poems, stories, novels, songs, media, and other manifestations of artful nonsense from around the world. His collection of Indian nonsense, completed just a few years ago with assistance from the Faculty Grant program, has become a bestseller in India. For this specific project, he will be traveling to Cape Town, South Africa; Harare, Zimbabwe; Nairobi, Kenya; Entebbe, Uganda; and Lagos, Nigeria where he has contacts who will assist him in unearthing these cultural treasures.