Berklee Alumni Build Careers, Connections in Brooklyn

For the better part of the last decade, Berklee alumni artists, engineers, producers, songwriters, and venue owners are among the graduates who have sown deep roots in Brooklyn’s neighborhoods. 

August 21, 2015

Brooklyn, Manhattan’s hipster sister borough, has increasingly become a destination—to work and live—for people serious about music. Berklee alumni undoubtedly fit that category, and for the better part of the last decade, artists, engineers, producers, songwriters, and venue owners are among the graduates who have sown deep roots in Brooklyn’s neighborhoods, finding space to work, connections, and endurable networks.

Stu Brooks ‘00

Almost 10 years ago, Stu Brooks ’00 was playing a hip-hop and reggae show with the Adam Deitch Project at The Rose in Williamsburg (Deitch, incidentally, is a 1998 alumnus). Reggae rapper Matisyahu, who was in the audience, was impressed—so much so that he came to another show and sat in with the group. Fast forward and Brooks is now the bassist/keyboardist and music director for Matisyahu, and his own band, Dub Trio, backs and sometimes opens for the artist.

Connections like these aren’t unusual in Brooklyn. The borough’s incubator quality, affordability, and space availability are among the qualities that continue to draw music industry professionals, though the biggest draw may be the borough’s sense of community.

“It’s important to be in New York because of the spontaneity that’s available,” said Brooks, who lives in the Greenpoint neighborhood. “Everything you’d ever need in the world is within a couple blocks radius in Brooklyn: rehearsal and recording studios and fellow musicians. I bump into musicians every day, and that includes Berklee alumni I’ve known over the years. It’s a community that’s really important.”

Brooks notes that Brooklyn’s growth has yielded many new music venues, restaurants, and recording studios. “It’s such a hot spot right now,” he says. “The creative energy here is happening.”

After Matisyahu connected with Brooks at The Rose, he invited Dub Trio to do a recording session for an album to benefit crisis relief in Darfur; Brooks later recorded and played bass on Matisyahu’s album Light.

Dub Trio is working on its next studio album and Brooks produced and composed Matisyahu’s Akeda, which came out last June. Brooks also recently toured with Dr. John as his bassist; has rubbed shoulders with Lady Gaga (Dub Trio was her studio band during the creation of her first album, The Fame); and has worked as a session player for G-Unit, 50 Cent’s crew and record label; for the album Pac’s Life (a posthumous release from the late 2Pac); and for Lauryn Hill.

Read about more Berklee alumni working in Brooklyn.

Janice “JC” Cruz Brooks ‘00

One integral piece of Brooks’s network is his wife, Janice “JC” Cruz Brooks ’00, whom he met at Berklee and who is the supervising dialog and music editor and music director for Nickelodeon’s educational animated show Dora and Friends: Into the City! and an audio engineer for Saturday Night Live. Since 2001, she has worked as the music and dialog director for several other Nickelodeon TV shows, games, and apps, including multiple other Dora iterations, Paw Patrol, and Backyardigans.

At Berklee, Cruz Brooks majored in music production and engineering (MP&E), starting out as a voice principal and then switching to electric bass. Since graduating from Berklee, she has had a prolific career. In addition to recording vocals and working on vocal production and arranging for Matisyahu, and taking on production coordinator and additional engineering roles for Dub Trio, she is also a vocalist in her own bands, Dark Room and Kill the Moonlight, and she has recorded background vocals for a solo project from Patrick Stump of Fall Out Boy. She has composed for various artists, her own bands, and several TV shows, and shouldered lead/rhythm guitar, percussion, and background vocal duties for Hesta Prynn…and the list goes on.

Cruz Brooks’s work extends to vocal coaching, too. Her clients have included Entourage’s Adrian Grenier; Taking Back Sunday’s lead singer, Adam Lazzara; Motion Singer Soundtrack’s lead singer, Justin Pierre; Fall Out Boy’s Stump; and Eric Krasno of the Berklee alumni-driven funk collective Lettuce.

Living in Greenpoint, where there’s a glut of studio space and less expensive property than neighboring Williamsburg, gives Cruz Brooks and her husband a creative and collaborative atmosphere with peer musicians. “I feel like we’re in on a secret,” she said. “We live in a place where there are a lot of musicians you can just work with so easily.”

Fernando Lodeiro ‘07

Trained in Berklee’s music production and engineering (MP&E) program, Fernando Lodeiro ’07 was able to navigate his way around the console during his internship with Avatar in New York, and his proficiency paid off. Avatar offered him a job and he worked there for more than five years with such artists as Lady Gaga, Paul McCartney, Prince, and Berklee alumna Esperanza Spalding ’05. Lodeiro took home a Grammy for his work as a recording engineer on Spalding’s Radio Music City, which received the Best Jazz Vocal nod.

Lodeiro is now working as a freelance engineer, producer, and mixer out of his studio in Greenpoint and in other studios in New York City and around the world. Most recently, he mixed three songs on Mike Flanigin’s album The Drifter, which is featured in Rolling Stone’s list of 30 great country albums of 2015. He also engineered music for Karmin’s (composed of alumna Amy Heidemann ’08 and alumnus Nick Noonan ’08) debut album, Pulses; produced and mixed Brooklyn band Canon Logic’s WYLD; engineered, mixed, and helped with production for the Brooklyn band the Brazilian Johnsons’ Howdy Duty; and worked on James Taylor’s new album, Before This World.

Until recently, Lodeiro served as a front of the house engineer for saxophonist Kenny Garrett, with whom he still occasionally tours and he has also produced, engineered, and mixed a lot of independent artist albums. Whenever he's not working with other artists, somehow Lodeiro also finds the time to write and produce his own music, which included leading the (now inactive) band On Impulse and writing for, producing, and engineering its 2014 album, We Are Everything.

When Lodeiro first moved to New York, he lived in Queens but he quickly realized he was going to Williamsburg all the time to hear music. “There are lots of venues, rehearsal spaces, and studios,” he said. “It keeps growing and growing.”

Stefan Held ’96

Stefan Held '96 came to Berklee in 1992 with the intention of improving as a bass player. Hailing from Austria, where he played a lot of pop, funk, rock, and even some cabaret, he wanted to take his playing to the next level. After Berklee, he played out a lot, but he wanted to get back into the studio. He soon realized that he’d get more work and incur fewer expenses if he had a setup at his house. “Once I started putting a studio together, I did more and more bass work, but I also had people asking, ‘Can you record me?’ So the whole studio thing slowly but surely started taking off.”

About five years ago, he opened a small boutique recording studio in Williamsburg after years of working out of a home studio. It was new construction in a great neighborhood for a good price and, at the time, a five-minute walk from home (Held and his family have since moved to Long Island). “Williamsburg is very energetic and very young, which is great for my music business,” he said.

Now, Held’s music production and marketing company, Steven Hero Productions, does everything from finishing lyrics and compositions to recording, mixing, and mastering music, to social media consulting.

Held has worked with artists such as Kinky Boots’ Tony Award-winning book writer Harvey Fierstein; Billy Porter, who won a Tony Award for his role in Kinky Boots; Darlene Love, who appeared in the documentary 20 Feet from Stardom; Victoria’s Secret model and singer Jessi M’Bengue (who appeared in Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” video); and Tituss Burgess, who has appeared in Broadway musicals, NBC’s 30 Rock and the Netflix series Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Several cable TV networks, commercials, and indie movies have also used his original music from his company.

“When you look at the places here, from Brooklyn Bowl to the Music Hall (of Williamsburg) to you name it, all the hip places are here,” Held says of Brooklyn. “It’s constantly evolving.”

There's no question that Berklee alumni are right there evolving with it.