Berklee Today Spring 2024

BerkleeToday S/S 2024

A Magazine for Contemporary Music & Musicians

Big Bandwidth HOW GRAMMY-WINNING MULTI-INSTRUMENTALIST CHARLIE ROSEN ’12 ORCHESTRATES A THRIVING CAREER THAT SPANS FROM BROADWAY TO VIDEO GAME MUSIC PERFORMANCES.

Contents

S/S 2024

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR SHERRY LI

F EAT U R ES

DE PARTME NT S

12

04

46

ALL THE BERKLEE NEWS THAT FITS

NEWS FROM OUR ALUMNI COMMUNITY

Charlie Rosen’s Big Bandwidth How the Grammy-winning multiinstrumentalist orchestrates a thriving career that spans from Broadway to video game music performances.

BY KIMBERLY ASHTON

20

Mothership Transmission Lessons from Electric Lady, and studio tips from the architect whose career it launched.

Beat

Alum Notes 48 36

Lysa Cárdenas 51

NEWS FROM OUR FACULTY COMMUNITY

DAMOYEE 53

BY JENNIFER H. MCINERNEY

26

BY MARK SMALL

BY ALEXANDER GELFAND

BY HANNAH CALLAWAY

FA C U LT Y F E AT U R E

38 Sherry Li

Inside a new generation of immersive, multisensory experiences that blend music and light to create magic.

ALUMNI PROFILES

Tempo

BY JOHN MIRISOLA

The Future Sounds Bright

Pulse

Faculty Notes 41

Final Cadence 54 56

Coda

Working to Make Music More Accessible to All

BY ADRIAN ANANTAWAN

32

Many Happy Returns For some Valencia students, one course of study inspired them to take another, then another.

BY KIMBERLY ASHTON

A career in music was a highly unusual route to take, and I captured the interest of many Chinese netizens.

SEE PAGE 38

On the cover: Charlie Rosen ’12 photographed by Mackenzie Stroh. Opposite: Photograph by John Huet. Back cover: Photograph

by Aram Boghosian.

Berklee Today | Spring/Summer 2024 A PU BLICAT ION OF T H E O FFI C E O F C O MMU N I C AT I O N S A N D MA RKE T I N G

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

DESIGN

Kimberly Ashton Adrian Anantawan, Nick Balkin, Hannah Callaway, Alexander Gelfand, Colette Greenstein, Jennifer H. McInerney, John Mirisola, Daniel Pesquera, Mark Small, Talia Smith-Muller Patrick Mitchell, André Mora MODUSOP.NET

COPY EDITOR

CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS

EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT

SENIOR DIRECTOR SENIOR COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER PROOFING MANAGER

Nick Balkin Bryan Parys John Mirisola

Diane Owens Thomas Hedger, John Huet, Mackenzie Stroh, James Yang

OFFICE OF INSTITUTIONAL ADVANCEMENT

SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT OF INSTITUTIONAL ADVANCEMENT SENIOR DIRECTOR, ALUMNI AFFAIRS AND ANNUAL GIVING ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF ALUMNI AFFAIRS/LOS ANGELES

Erin Tunnicliffe Joseph Dreeszen Dana M. James B.M. ’09

Lesley O’Connell

As the alumni-oriented magazine of Berklee College of Music, Berklee Today is dedicated to informing, enriching, and serving the extended Berklee community.

By sharing information about college matters, music industry issues and events, alumni activities and accomplishments, and musical topics of interest, Berklee Today serves as a valuable forum for our family throughout the world and a source of commentary on contemporary music.

Berklee Today (ISSN 1052-3839) is published twice a year by Berklee College of Music’s Office of Communications and Marketing. All contents © 2024 by Berklee College of Music.

Send all address changes, press releases, letters to the editor, and advertising inquiries to Berklee Today, Berklee College of Music, 1140 Boylston St., Boston, MA 02215-3693, +1 617-747-2843, kashton@berklee.edu. Alumni are invited to send in details of activities suitable for coverage. Unsolicited submissions are accepted.

Alum Notes may be submitted to berklee.edu/alumni/forms/alumni-updates. To manage print or digital subscriptions, go to college.berklee.edu/alumni/bt/subscribe.

Visit us at berklee.edu/berklee-today.

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Letter from Leadership

Dear Berklee community, Since the founding in Boston of the Boston Conservatory in 1867 and Berklee College of Music in 1945, Berklee has evolved into a global institution, boasting the world’s premier online music education provider, campuses in New York and Spain, and partner schools worldwide.

The remarkable diversity and global reach of today’s Berklee underscored the need for a unified mission and vision, one that embodies our shared identity and purpose. Last summer, we embarked on an eight-month engagement campaign to achieve this goal. This extensive process involved gathering over 5,500 suggestions from our community—including students, faculty, staff, alumni, and board members— through more than 100 workshops and webinars. After thorough feedback and review, the mission and vision statements were approved by the Berklee Board of Trustees in late April.

Grounded in our fundamental values, these statements define Berklee’s core purpose and help us envision the positive impact we can have on our students, our communities, and the broader world. They will also shape our strategic direction moving forward. You can view the mission and vision statements at berklee.edu/ mission-vision.

Thank you to each member of the Berklee community for your invaluable contributions. Your dedication and creativity have been instrumental in charting our shared path forward.

Sincerely, David Bogen Interim President and Provost

As we transition into the summer and celebrate the class of 2024, I want to extend warm greetings to each and every one of you. This is a time for renewal and a time for rekindling our commitment to using the transformative power of music, dance, and theater to enrich lives and foster positive change.

Throughout history, the performing arts have served as a beacon of hope during times of adversity. They possess a unique ability to bridge divides and build communities. Whether through the improvisational magic of jazz or the expressive movements of a dance performance, music transcends barriers and brings people together.

As members of the Berklee community, we understand the profound impact that music and the arts can have on society. This understanding drives our commitment to extend our reach beyond our home base in Boston. From Berklee Online and our campuses in New York City and Valencia, Spain, to the Abu Dhabi Center, we are creating new avenues for artists to pursue their dreams and developing new models for artistic, educational, and cultural exchange.

Together, let us reaffirm our commitment to using the transformative power of music not only to enrich our own lives but also to uplift those around us.

Sincerely, Ron Savage Vice President and Executive Director Berklee College of Music

Betsy Newman Interim Executive Vice President and Senior Vice President of Student Enrollment and Engagement

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KELLY DAVIDSON

BETHANIE LIU, AN EIGHTH-SEMESTER ELECTRONIC PRODUCTION AND DESIGN MAJOR, PLAYS HER ELECTRONIC DIGITAL INSTRUMENT.

All the Berklee News That Fits

Beat

Berklee Honors Three Outstanding Artists at Alumni Achievement Awards

BY DANIEL PESQUERA

Berklee College of Music and Boston Conservatory at Berklee recognized three decorated graduates—NATALIE TORO B.F.A. ’86, GUSTAVO BORNER B.M. ’89, and MARK KELLEY B.M. ’03—at the annual Alumni Achievement Awards on April 4 at View Boston in the Prudential Center.

A veteran of the biggest stage in musical theater, Toro made history in her Broadway debut when she became the first American to play the role of Éponine in a production of Les Misérables. The Boston Conservatory alumna has originated several acclaimed roles, including Sally in the Broadway production of Alan Menken’s A Christmas Carol and Madame Defarge in A Tale of Two Cities.

Borner has been one of the most sought-after producers in Los Angeles since he began his career in 1985. The Buenos Aires native has worked on albums with Lalo Schifrin, PHIL COLLINS ’91H, Santana, Juanes, and Plácido Domingo, collecting 14 Latin Grammys and six Grammy Awards along the way. His work has also appeared on a myriad of film scores, including those for Deadpool 2, the Rush Hour franchise, all three Guardians of the Galaxy films, as well as best-selling video game series such as God of War and Fallout.

Kelley is best known as the bassist for Grammy-winning band The Roots, a gig he landed in 2011 after playing with Questlove’s band Mo’ Beta Blues. Growing up in a musical family in Houston, Kelley played cello and guitar before eventually switching to bass at age 13. After earning a scholarship and graduating from Berklee, he spent two years touring with JOHN SCOFIELD ’73, ’97H and his band Überjam. Kelley has gone on to collaborate with a myriad of major artists, including Meshell Ndegeocello, MICHAEL MCDONALD ’11H, and Sara Bareilles.

The honorees joined Berklee’s interim president and provost, DAVID BOGEN, who led a conversation that touched on the bonds they formed at Berklee, their paths as professional artists, and the lessons they carried with them throughout their careers.

Berklee’s renowned a cappella group Pitch Slapped capped off the ceremony by performing a medley paying tribute to the works of each honoree.

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Berklee Online —

Berklee Online Offers Courses to Students in Juvenile Justice Centers B Y TA L I A S M I T H - M U L L E R

Through a program that launched in 2021, Berklee Online has offered more than 80 scholarships to students in juvenile justice centers across the U.S., providing them the opportunity to earn college credit through music courses taught remotely by Berklee professors.

“Berklee Online has a responsibility to make music education an empowering and enriching journey for everyone, yet students who have experienced the juvenile justice system have unique perspectives that often lead to a complete mistrust or disinterest in formal learning,” says MICHAEL MOYES, chief operating officer and associate vice president of enrollment strategy at Berklee Online. “I believe music is the right language to get these students excited about learning and to show them they are capable of amazing things.”

To date, Berklee Online courses are offered at nearly 30 juvenile justice agencies across the U.S. The majority of the partnership agencies are run by the Massachusetts Department of Youth Services (dys), but there are also partnerships with agencies in California, Texas, and Missouri. Courses that have been offered include Music Foundations, Developing Your Artistry, Creative Writing: Finding Your Voice, Music Production Fundamentals, and Music Production Analysis.

SEAN SLADE—a Berklee Online instructor who’s worked with Radiohead, Hole, and Lou Reed—taught Music Production Analysis through this initiative last fall.

He adapted the curriculum to focus on hip-hop and rap, as well as concepts like prosody and groove.

“It really touched me that the students were very, very appreciative, and they let me know at the end of the class

that they really enjoyed hanging out with the old man once a week to listen to music and to get some insights into how it was made,” says Slade.

One of those students was Mekhi C., who was in a Massachusetts dys program. The two Berklee Online courses he took taught him how to use songwriting to process some of his hardships.

“I made a song about my friend that passed away and it was deeper than I would think. It showed me not only just the aspects of myself, but it showed me how influential music is in my life,” he says.

Moyes says he would like to expand course offerings and to make Berklee Online courses available at more juvenile justice agencies. “Success would be seeing students use the power of music as a launchpad to ignite a passion for learning,” he says.

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Beat

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Performance —

Thriller Night E V E N T : The Michael Jackson Ensemble: Human Nature D AT E : Friday, April 12, 2024 L O C AT I O N : Berklee

Performance Center, Boston

D E TA I L S : Conservatory dance major Emma Guan performs to the song “Human Nature.”

Photograph by DAV E G R E E N

Beat

Connecting People and Culture: The BGJI Marks 15 Years

BY COLETTE GREENSTEIN

The Berklee Global Jazz Institute (bgji) marked its 15th anniversary with a Berklee Performance Center concert in February dedicated to the late WAYNE SHORTER ’99H . The night featured music composed by the 12-time Grammy Award–winning Shorter and included a set by the three other members of the acclaimed Wayne Shorter Quartet: drummer Brian Blade; bassist and Berklee visiting scholar JOHN PATITUCCI ; and pianist DANILO PÉREZ , the founder and artistic director of the bgji.

Since its inception, the bgji has been committed to fostering creativity, interconnected learning, and the use of music for social development. Its mission has remained the same since its founding: to develop artists who use their music to create positive 10 B E R K L E E TO D AY S/S 24

change in the world.

The concept for bgji was built upon the ideological foundation laid by Pérez’s father, Danilo Enrico Pérez Urriola—an educator and well-known Panamanian singer who argued in his 1967 university thesis that all subjects should be taught through the lens of music—as well as by the impactful social work Pérez does with his wife, Assistant Professor PATRICIA PÉREZ, in his homeland.

Under the leadership of Pérez and saxophonist MARCO PIGNATARO , the institute’s managing director, the bgji has been a catalyst for the global jazz movement by reshaping the identity of modern jazz. The institute created undergraduate and Master of Music in global jazz programs and hosts an annual summit, a symposium,

and the Global Jazz Festival. It developed educational exchanges with the Panama Jazz Festival, the Conservatory of Amsterdam, and the Siena Jazz Academy in Italy. Over the past decade and a half, the bgji has mentored over 300 students from six continents and won a State Department grant for a four-week cultural exchange program in West Africa. Additionally, it was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts grant that brought visionary artists such as Shorter and Randy Weston to the institute for concerts, clinics, and panels.

In both 2016 and 2023, the Berklee Global Jazz Ambassadors, a group of bgji students and alumni, won the Keep an Eye International Jazz Award, an annual competition for outstanding young musicians from the

Conservatorium van Amsterdam and a selection of comparable institutions in the United States and Europe. “It’s truly an honor to witness the realization of the Berklee Global Jazz Institute’s vision,” says Pérez. “Many bgji alumni are now influencing the global jazz scene and mentoring a whole generation of students.”

Pérez says the bgji plans to expand the institute’s reach through educational exchanges worldwide and broaden the curriculum with an increased emphasis on the interconnectedness of music and nature. Plans include launching a weeklong high school summer camp program and building a space to digitally record music and video to promote the work of the institute’s numerous alumni and faculty.

ELIZABETH FRIAR

DANILO PÉREZ (FOURTH FROM RIGHT), MARCO PIGNATARO (SECOND FROM RIGHT) WITH BGJI MUSICIANS AT THE GROUP’S 15TH ANNIVERSARY CONCERT.

City Music —

Berklee City Music Celebrates Three Decades of Transforming Lives

BY JENNIFER H. MCINERNEY

While Berklee College of Music is well-known for training worldclass musicians, the institution has also been transforming the lives of underserved youth through its City Music program for the past 30 years.

In the early ’90s, when arts programs were being cut in public schools, the leadership at Berklee created City Music to provide supplemental education, along with financial aid to attend the program, to schoolchildren in Boston communities in which such after-school opportunities were not readily available.

From its inception, City Music

set out to broaden the horizons of children of all abilities and interests through creative expression. This approach, which is now commonly defined as Creative Youth Development, helps to foster in children important life skills and development, including artistic expression and social and emotional well-being.

“Everyone has art in them, particularly music, and this program has benefits well beyond learning about music,” says KRYSTAL BANFIELD, Berklee’s vice president for education outreach and social entrepreneurship.

City Music offers year-round

OMARI SPEARS

CITY MUSIC STUDENTS JORDAN VOLEL (LEFT) AND HEIBYN SANDOVAL (RIGHT) PERFORM AT THE HIGH SCHOOL ACADEMY WINTER SHOWCASE AT THE BERKLEE PERFORMANCE CENTER ON DECEMBER 19, 2023.

extracurricular music education programming to students in grades four through 12. Students audition for a spot in the program and those who attend receive intensive instruction from Berklee faculty, who teach musicianship and music theory, lead ensembles, provide mentorship, and offer weekly master classes.

Students also attend workshops with visiting artists and access the pulse online music curriculum. To help students pay for these programs, City Music offers scholarships to those in need.

Since 1995, it’s awarded more than $24 million in scholarships.

The very first recipient of a scholarship to City Music was SEAN SKEETE B.M. ’95 , who now serves as dean of Berklee’s Professional Performance Division.

Before this appointment, he chaired the college’s Ensemble Department from 2018 to 2023.

“When I came into the program, it was very small, but it provided opportunities that I and the other handful of students hadn’t previously had access to,” Skeete says. In addition to invaluable educational, mentoring, and networking support, City Music offers a path to pursue further studies at Berklee, if desired. “Through City Music, I had a community to support me and help me thrive,” he adds.

A generation later, his daughter NIA SKEETE, 20, is continuing the tradition. As a teenager, she took part in the City Music summer program, where she honed her skills as a bassist and thrived in the ensembles she joined.

“In the program, I felt connected for the first time in my life, as a musician and as a student,” she says. The City Music experience inspired her to continue her studies at Berklee. Today, she’s in her sixth semester, pursuing double majors in music business and performance.

Since its founding, the program has expanded beyond Boston. Today, the Berklee City Music Network includes a consortium of 46 community organizations across the U.S., Canada, and Latin America that engage more than 60,000 students in City Music opportunities each year.

“The City Music Network is about building the sustainability of our communities and the health and wellness of our children. We’re increasing equities and offering hope and opportunities,” Banfield says. “There’s no other program like this one.”

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Charlie Rosen’s Big

Bandwi How the Grammy-winning multi-instrumentalist orchestrates a thriving career that spans from Broadway to video game music performances.

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S T O R Y BY

P H O T O G R A P H S BY

Kimberly Ashton

Mackenzie Stroh

dth

Charlie Rosen ’12 was just three years old when his parents noted his perfect pitch.

Not long after learning his colors, he could say whether a piano sound came from a black key or a white one. His parents, both musicians, started giving him lessons and let him experiment with the assortment of instruments they had around the house, an assemblage that included his mother’s woodwinds and his father’s theremin and backyard pipe organ.

As Rosen’s interest grew, so did the number of instruments in his musical quiver. By the time he left for his first Broadway gig at age 17, he played several dozen. And though he considers himself “instrument fluid,” he identifies primarily as a bassist.

It’s the instrument that brought him to Broadway and to Berklee.

During his initial years at both institutions, he toggled back and forth between New York and Boston, discovering the gaps in his knowledge while on the job and filling them at college, where he was pursuing a double major in film scoring and contemporary writing and production.

“One of the semesters I was doing this off-Broadway show while I was enrolled [at Berklee], so I scheduled every single one of my classes on Monday. I would take the Amtrak at two in the morning on Sunday night back to Boston, crash on a couch, and go to class all day, and then get on the Amtrak from South Station back to New York in time to make my show. That was insane. Only when you’re 19 can you do that,” Rosen, now 33, said during a recent interview from his Brooklyn apartment.

The effort, along with tirelessly working shows and gigs and cabarets in New York, is paying off. He’s been nominated for three Tony Awards for orchestration, winning two—in 2020 for Moulin Rouge! and 2023 for Some Like It Hot—and has won

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two Grammy Awards, in 2024 for Best Musical Theater Album (for Some Like It Hot) and in 2022 for Best Arrangement, Instrumental or A Cappella (for “Meta Knight’s Revenge” with his 8-Bit Big Band).

Not long after his latest Grammy win, Rosen spoke with Berklee Today about the unusual opportunity that led him to Broadway, how he went from being a pit musician to an orchestrator, and how he sees video-game music as a canon ripe for reinterpretation. He also answers a student’s question: What’s the most sustainable job for a musician on Broadway today? What follows is a condensed version of that conversation, edited for clarity.

I was reading a little bit about your history, and you have quite an interesting one. I understand your parents are both musicians. Tell me about your early exposure to music.

I grew up in a really musical household. My mom is primarily a bassoon player but does some woodwind doubling and… would tour with woodwind quintets. And then, at a certain point, she started her career as a music educator. My father is somewhat more of a niche instrumentalist…he’s a silent movie theater organist. So in our house in L.A., in the Valley, we have installed in a separate building in our backyard an 11-rank Wurlitzer pipe organ that we used to screen silent movies there, and he would accompany them on the organ.

But he also plays piano and accordion and is a big early jazz fan. And also bluegrass—he plays banjo and some guitar and bass and stuff like that. And so I grew up in a household with tons of just random instruments around all the time.

Your parents were both professional musicians?

My mom, yeah, absolutely was.

My dad, as you can imagine, anytime after 1950 being a silent movie theater organist is not a super lucrative job, and so he became a workers’ comp attorney.

What was your first instrument?

I started on piano, and I took piano lessons from my mom at first, and then some other pianists when I was in, you know, single digits.

When did you start branching out and playing different instruments?

When I was maybe 8 or 9 I started taking cello lessons. Maybe 10 or 11 was flute…. Maybe when I was in high school I was playing a lot of sax because my mom had a sax, an alto sax. And also in high school I started playing some brass a little bit, but just messing around. But I was really serious in high school about taking drum lessons, guitar lessons, and bass lessons. Also in high school I got serious about taking piano lessons, like, jazz piano.

I went to high school as a drummer, actually, a jazz drummer.

Somewhere in my middle teenage years, I picked up bass. I think it was because…the jazz orchestra [or] some after-school jazz program needed a bass player. So there I was. Now I’m a bass player.

Did you go to a performing arts high school?

I did. I went to a high school called Alexander Hamilton High School. It’s a Los Angeles Unified School District school…but they also have a music magnet with-

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“I just got very, very lucky. This is so unusual.

People play all sorts of developments of shows for years.

Somehow I picked two winners.”

in the school that a lot of L.A. musicians have gone to…. But to be in this music magnet you had to audition, and I auditioned as a drummer.... So I was playing drums in my high school, I was playing bass in this after-school program, [and] I was playing guitar in this musical that was being developed which was called 13: The Musical, which is not based on the movie.

And, yeah, I just spent a lot of my early years in high school playing in bands with my friends, and, specifically in Southern California at the time, ska was a big thing.

So a lot of horn sections. That’s where I first started writing for horns. And I was writing some big band charts in high school.

five-week program. So the show was starting rehearsals in New York in September of 2008, and I did the five-week program that summer. And then I…moved to New York right after. And then I lived with the guitar player from the show. Me and him lived in an apartment in Midtown.

[13: The Musical] transferred to Broadway the fall of 2008 and then…closed after six months. I went to Berklee and I did one semester. And then, somehow, the other show [I did in high school with the Music Center], Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson, also transferred to Broadway the following year. And so I took a pause from Berklee, I did that [show], and I went back [to Berklee]. So I just got very, How did the opportunity to very lucky. This is so unusual. play for the musical come People play all sorts of developabout? ments of shows for years. Somehow I picked two winners, and I was really lucky when I was in they both transferred to Broadhigh school to do a production way within a year of each other, of a [Los Angeles Music Center] and that was obviously a really musical where the gimmick of it strong foothold for me in the was that it was all teenagers in world of musical theater. the cast, and also the composer insisted that it’d be all teenagers So you already had a career in the orchestra, which is high- started in New York when ly unusual. Incredibly unusual. I you were an undergrad at don’t think it’s been done since. Berklee. Was part of you I don’t think it had been done be- thinking you should stay in fore that. But right place, right New York and pursue your time. And that gig ended up go- career instead of going to ing to Broadway. So I moved college? to New York when I was 17 to do that—before I even went to Berklee was very, very underBerklee. And so I was living [in standing about that. …Berklee is New York], gigging as a pit mu- so cool about being like, “You go sician. Didn’t know I was going work. We’ll hold your scholarto fall into the world of theater, ship for a year, you come back.” really, and really just stumbled And what was so good about into it in that way. And I’ve real- that was, I had a career in New ly found a home for myself there York, a gig ended, and I said, ever since.

“Okay, I understand the scene.

I know what I need to learn.”

You lived alone in New York [I’d] go back to Berklee, take at 17? the classes that I knew I would need to use in this field. Another Actually, I got into the Berklee gig, left, grew more as a profes16 B E R K L E E TO D AY S/S 24

sional musician, learned a lot of stuff in the real world and on the job…“Okay, well, this gig’s over, I’m going to go back to Berklee again. But this time I really want to focus on the following skill sets: using music technology to produce demos, arranging in these styles which I’m going to be asked to do….” It was incredibly, incredibly useful.

the groove studies class where you’re picking apart the Motown grooves and Stacks and Muscle Shoals, and talking about the differences in the groove stylings of these heavy recording studios in the mid-century.

And that was so, so, so important, especially for work in the theater, when your reference point is [that] they give you another song, and they want it to You ended up doing four sound like this. And you’re like, semesters this way before “Great. No problem. I know how leaving Berklee, right? that works. That makes perfect sense. I know what these horn It was bittersweet because, I parts need to sound like.” mean, I loved it at Berklee. …

Berklee is a large school, but the How did you make the thing that’s great about that is transition from being a it’s a way more accurate micro- pit musician to being an cosm of the music business as a orchestrator? whole, which is massive. Even these sub-scenes, like the the- I started playing concerts outater world, is very big. And so side of the show, for cabarets and if you want to make something showcases and people’s concerts happen, you gotta have the ini- at venues around New York like tiative to do it yourself…. At Joe’s Pub and Le Poisson Rouge, Berklee, [having] so many peo- and lots of Rockwood [Music ple can work to your benefit to Hall] shows. And playing in peolearn actual, real-world skills ple’s bands that were sort of affilabout how to find the musicians iated with theater. It first started you need. with me just going, “Hey, listen, what do you need?” Or being on How did you apply the skills the gig and, to be honest, readyou learned to Broadway? ing less than exemplary charts.

They were wrong, or they looked People talk about Broadway or terrible, or the copy work was musical theater like it’s a genre bad. And just being like, “Hey, of music, like, “Oh, I love Broad- listen, let me fix your charts. I’ll way music.” And you’re like, do it for free, whatever. I’ll tranwell, it’s not actually really a scribe your charts. I’ll transcribe genre. Broadway is any genre. So your piano parts. I’ll make piano it requires being a bit of a chame- vocal music for you. I’ll write out leon of a musician, and under- rhythm section parts for you. I’ll standing many, many different write horn parts for you, whatevgenres and playing styles. And I er you want to do.” And I started felt like Berklee was kind of the doing more and more of that… only place that really was repre- meeting these writers, asking sentative of that in the academ- them if they needed any muic music world. For example, I sic preparation stuff. And then took the South Indian rhythmic they started asking me to help solfège class at Berklee. And Af- them do arrangements for their ro-Caribbean percussion for the albums. …That eventually startnon-percussionist. You know, ed rolling into bigger and big-

MANOLI FIGETAKIS/EVERETT COLLECTION/ALAMY LIVE NEWS

ROSEN AT THE 76TH ANNUAL TONY AWARDS IN NEW YORK, JUNE 2023

ger things: people asking me to do single charts for off-Broadway shows or live concerts. And it sort of just snowballed from there. …And then a club in New York called 54 Below opened. It sort of became theater’s cabaret/nightclub/performing space. …I was there three or four times a week, playing the bass or the guitar as a side musician. I really got to know all the owners. At one point I said to them, “Hey, you know what would be cool?

The Village Vanguard, Birdland, the Blue Note, these are these establishment jazz nightclubs and they all have big bands. I’m a big-band writer, and I’ve done a couple of Broadway shows….

Can I be your house big band?

Once a month we’ll do a bigband concert. I’ll do all these fresh, reimagined Broadway arrangements. We’ll get Broadway singers to come in front of the band. We’ll shove 17 musicians on a tiny stage. It’ll be great.”

And we started doing that, and they loved it. And I did that for eight years.

I invited everybody I could possibly invite. Directors and choreographers and composers of all walks of life: newer, younger, older…any contact I ever made. And that led me to start getting some actual bigger gigs.

I got asked to contribute a couple charts, orchestrations, for a Broadway show that was kind of a big-band thing called Honeymoon in Vegas. And I think that’s around the time I met Joe Iconis. So we started working on Be More Chill together. …[54 Below] was an incredible lab for me to work on my craft and try stuff out and see what worked, see what didn’t work, see what was playable, what was unplayable, what was easy, what was difficult, and just learn a ton about arranging. And conducting, because I was conducting it once 17

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“The most sustainable career for a musician in New York is to not have one career.”

a month. So that’s the thing that really got me known.

Another thing you’re really known for now is being the leader and creator of the 8-Bit Big Band, which brought you your first Grammy. Can you tell me how this band came about?

I went to Japan for fun [in 2017]. …I asked [a friend there], “Do you have any friends that play shamisen or koto?” And he said, “Yeah, I got a friend in Tokyo.” I went to his apartment, and he gave me a shamisen lesson. …And I noticed that he had a soundtrack for a very obscure video game that I love…I said, “Oh, is that Ganbare Goemon?”

He said, “Oh, do you like video game music?” And I thought, “I mean. I’ve never said it out loud, but yeah, I do.” I played a lot of games growing up. I still do.

And I really like the music from them, especially Nintendo stuff.

He said, “Let me give you a gift.”

And he gave me a copy of his album [which] is all video game music arranged for traditional Japanese ensemble.

I was listening to it on the plane, like, “This is so awesome.

I love video games…maybe it’d be cool to do an album of my favorite video game music.” So I just did it for fun. …I expected nothing. Turns out, there’s an incredibly robust and very hardcore and dedicated fan base to video game music that is thriving on the internet. I had no idea. …And the response was so strong that it has motivated me.

We’re on our fourth album.

The thing that’s great about it now, and sort of has become the point of the band, is…when you talk about canons of music— the Great American Songbook, film scores, Broadway scores, jazz standards, Motown…the 18 B E R K L E E TO D AY S/S 24

Beatles—jazz musicians historically…take from popular canon and we reinterpret it. And so in the same way that Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, the Rat Pack singers, Nelson Riddle, QUINCY JONES [’51, ’83H]—all these mid-century singers and orchestrators and arrangers— were taking from the popular canons…and creating standards from these that jazz musicians could then take those as jumping off points for their own ideas and arrangements. …In the same way, we now have a collection of video game music. …So it’s ready to be reimagined and reinterpreted.

I was looking around the scene, going…“There’s all these big orchestras playing video game [music], but they’re all very classical.

They’re very straightlaced. They are one-to-one adaptations. …

But there wasn’t anybody doing the things that these mid-century arrangers [did]. They’re adding solos and intros and outros in their own arranging styles.

They’re bantering. They’re doing bandleader stuff. They’re doing crowd work. There are solos, featured instrumentalists, featured guests. It’s fun. It’s lighthearted.…

There’s no one doing that kind of large ensemble arranging in video game music.” So I just was like, “I’m gonna do that.”

tion, and how to serve the story and the lyric, or the text, the dialogue—whatever’s in the foreground. How to not distract and how to enhance.

I was talking to a student on campus recently who’s a big fan. I asked him if he had any questions for you, and he had a couple. The first was, “How does one find work as a pit musician?”

I’m really lucky because I came into it in this kind of backdoor way, where they specifically needed teenagers. …But the normal way is moving to New York, trying to gig as much as possible and going to people’s concerts, meeting people, meeting music directors at these little concerts/cabarets, meeting other musicians, hanging for a long time, being a face people recognize, getting asked to play $50 gigs. The upstart cost is sadly pretty high, because the city is so expensive. …It’s 100 percent network-based. And the gatekeeping is strong. So it’s tough.

The student’s second question was, “What’s the most sustainable career for a musician on Broadway?”

The most sustainable career for You’ve also done film and a musician in New York is to not TV scoring. Are those things have one career. The only way you’d like to do more of or are I’ve been able to survive is to be you happy in the Broadway able to play, to be able to orchesworld? trate in a traditional sense—that is, put sheet music directly into They’re both great. And they’re notation software and have it both similar and dissimilar at come out and be read by instruthe same time. Ultimately, what- ments and be good—[and] being ever you’re writing music for—if able to program tracks and synyou’re writing music for a piece thesizers. Do my own keyboard of visual media, if it’s on stage programming. Do my own track or not—it’s the same skill set of production click work, you know, just understanding dramatic mu- generating click tracks. Working sic writing and how it can func- on the technology side of the

music. Being able to do it all myself meant that in the early part of my career, when I could be either working or not, I did shows where I was just programming Ableton. …I just had to kind of do it all before I got well known enough at one particular thing that that [thing] became sustainable. But the most sustainable thing you can do is not just do one thing.

And even a more micro sense, like, if you play the sax, you better play every woodwind. Cast as wide of a net as you can. …

Do as much as you can, because you just never know. And there’s always gonna be this one thing where it’ll be like, “Oh, man, do you know anybody for this gig that can play the guitar, sing, trigger Ableton, and play keyboard 3?” ...So the only way to really make a sustainable career is to just be a Swiss Army knife, because none of them on their own are sustainable. …[You] gotta go like this [zigzags hand back and forth] and then eventually you get to a sustainable job, but it takes a long time; you have to go through about 10 or 15 years of unsustainability before you get there.

Are you there?

I might finally be getting there.

But I don’t have health care, for example. I didn’t do enough union work in the last six months to have health care through the union. So does that count as sustainable? I don’t know.

Have more calls been coming in since you got the Tonys and Grammys?

Yes and no. I don’t know if the quantity of calls coming in has changed quite yet. But the quality of the negotiations has gone up.

Mothership

Lessons from Electric Lady, and studio tips from the architect whose career it launched.

STORY BY

John Mirisola

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Transmission

I L L U S T R AT I O N BY

Thomas Hedger

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dio’s 55 years of operation, the ceiling’s porous plaster has absorbed sound waves from some of the most storied sessions of all time, and has shaped the sonic character of records by artists ranging from the studio’s original owner, Jimi Hendrix, to Stevie Wonder, the Rolling Stones, Patti Smith, D’Angelo, Lana Del Rey, and Taylor Swift.

John Storyk, the architect and acoustician who designed the studio back in 1969, admits that the distinctive low-frequency-absorbing acoustic properties of that ceiling was “partially an accident.” Electric Lady was his very first studio project, and he was following intuition, plus a basic understanding that the live room’s wooden floor shouldn’t be parallel he ceiling of Electric Lady’s Stu- to its ceiling. But he was also “just dio A hangs over the live room exploring a shape.” like a spaceship, its twisting hull “I was a huge fan of Antoni parting the psychedelic clouds Gaudí, the Barcelona architect,” and soaking up the sounds hu- most famous for his whimsical mans make below. Over the stu- and elaborate Sagrada Família

basilica. “I was in love with curves and I was in love with those shapes,” he says. So he created the “twisted propeller shape” to float above that curved room in a studio full of curved surfaces.

He decided to use plaster to coat the ceiling shape, and to “put a lot of air in the plaster. And by troweling the plaster relatively thin on this frame, we made, without really knowing what we did, a membrane absorber. And to this day, it hasn’t changed.”

Because of its shape and the air-entrained plaster covering its surface, the ceiling is remarkably good at absorbing low frequencies. “That’s what gives that live room its very tight rock sound,” explains Storyk, who’s taught courses in studio design and acoustics at Berklee for two decades. “Reverb time actually goes down as you go down in frequency. Whereas in many, many larger rooms, it goes up.”

While some might call the ceil-

COURTESY OF WSDG

THE MGM MUSIC HALL AT FENWAY, BOSTON

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ing’s merger of form and function a kind of lucky break, launching Storyk into a sprawling career designing tens, then hundreds, then thousands of studios and music spaces around the world, he prefers a different word: “serendipity.” It’s as though the conditions for success—know-how, intuition, and a bit of chance—were simply waiting for the happy coincidence where they could collide.

City, and thinking he might make it as a musician. Then serendipity struck on a hot summer afternoon.

“I was waiting for an ice cream cone, picked up a newspaper, and saw an ad asking for carpenters to work for free on an experimental night club,” Storyk recalls. “And I thought, ‘That might be fun.’” So he called the number and signed on to help with the project, “under the condition that I could redesign it.” The club, called CeLift-Off rebrum, lasted only nine months, — but the mark it made on the city’s Since childhood, Storyk has been arts scene—aided by Storyk’s passionate about music and ar- adventurous redesign—was inchitecture. He grew up playing delible. “I get a call to talk about clarinet through high school, this club on an average of once a entered college as an architec- month.” ture major as well as a member It was after seeing this club of the Princeton marching band, that Hendrix commissioned Stoand then played in several blues ryk, just 22 at the time, to design bands. a club in Greenwich Village. But In the months after he gradu- Hendrix’s producer, Eddie Kramated, Storyk was playing in an up- er, convinced him that what and-coming band in New York he needed instead was a stu-

dio. Rather than lose out on the commission, Storyk found himself suddenly in the studio design business. So he toured the city’s other recording facilities, drew on his architectural knowhow (and the one college class in acoustics he’d taken), leaned on the expertise of Kramer and the engineer Phil Ramone, and managed to design one of the world’s most renowned recording spaces.

“It was famous before it was built,” says Storyk. “Before it opened, I had three more studios to design” based on the buzz around Electric Lady. From there, Storyk’s career achieved lift-off.

discussed above, is the low-frequency absorption in the studio’s live room, which has made it a go-to recording destination for generations of rock bands looking for a tight, uncluttered sound.

But there’s something else about the studio’s overall layout and aesthetic that’s always made it a welcoming space for artists.

“It was conceived not as a commercial studio, but as a private personal studio,” Storyk explains.

While it was “built to commercial specs,” the layout was geared toward artists working not just as session musicians in the live room, but also as active participants in the control room.

“With artists in mind, it was Have You Ever Been one of the first studios to have a (to Electric Lady) very large control room. It was — at a time when artists were beWhat was it, exactly, that made coming producers,” Storyk says.

Electric Lady Studios such an in- “If you look at the studios in the stant and enduring success? Sto- ’50s, the control rooms are realryk has some ideas. One reason, ly small.… Artists didn’t engineer

COURTESY OF WSDG

“[Hendrix] wanted it to feel like his living room.”

ELECTRIC LADY’S STUDIO A, NEW YORK CITY.

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their own music.” But as the recording industry evolved through the ’60s, artists took on a larger role in the technical execution of their musical vision—a tradition that’s continued into the present day, where producers and artists and engineers are all considered collaborators on the final product, or are all one-in-the-same person.

“Jimi wanted a really big control room. He wanted the control room to feel connected to the live room,” Storyk says. And Hendrix also wanted to infuse the space with his own personality: “He wanted it to feel like his living room. He wanted the lights to change colors—that’s where he sought me out, because that’s exactly what we had done at Cerebrum.”

Storyk says the studio still has that homey feel. “You go through the door, and it’s safe. That’s another reason why I think artists like it.”

Motherships and Satellites

— In the decades that followed his success with Electric Lady, Storyk has gone on to design thousands of recording and performance facilities around the globe. These include personal studios for Bob Marley, Whitney Houston, Bruce Springsteen, and Jay-Z, and performance spaces such as mgm Music Hall at Fenway and Jazz at Lincoln Center. His firm, Walters-Storyk Design Group (wsdg)—founded in 1987 with his wife, interior designer Beth Walters, as an extension of his solo practice—also designed Berklee’s own studio facilities at 160 Massachusetts Avenue.

During his career, he’s also seen the role of the studio in the entertainment industry shift, most notably beginning in the ’90s with the advent of professional-quality digital audio. He

credits a 1994 Mix magazine article called “Motherships and Satellites,” written by Chris Stone, then partner and co-owner of New York City’s Record Plant studio, with laying out the clearest vision of what the new studio landscape would look like going forward.

“He predicted that there would always be a very [small] number of motherships—large studios—and that there would be thousands and thousands of satellite studios, or home studios.”

Storyk points to Billie Eilish’s debut album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, which she recorded primarily at home with her brother, finneas, as an example of this dynamic. “They made the record in their bedroom,” he says, “but it most likely wasn’t mastered in her bedroom. Believe me, it was most certainly mastered in a very high-tech room.”

Building Your Satellite

— Storyk stresses that even satellite studios operate on many of the same acoustic principles as do the motherships: “Listening to accurate audio in rooms is not going away.” So we asked him for his best advice on how musicians can build out their own studios: “Orient your room correctly,” he says. Don’t position the listener in the center of the room, and “try to place your speakers in the room symmetrically with respect to boundaries.” Both of these steps help ensure the listener gets an accurate picture of the mix.

Use quality equipment. “Make sure you have one or two really good mics…a quiet interface… [and] one or two good preamps,” which may or may not be included in the interface.

“I’m happiest when I’m watching Berklee students make music in the studios.”

COURTESY OF WSDG

THE SHAMES FAMILY SCORING STAGE, ALSO KNOWN AS STUDIO 1, IS THE LARGEST STUDIO AT BERKLEE.

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Make the room quiet. This could involve setting up a smaller, separate booth for recording—or, if you’re recording in the same room where you’re mixing, “you’ve got to figure out how to make the room quiet.” This might involve housing equipment in a sound isolation rack, using an air conditioning system that’s “designed to be quiet,” or simply turning off the AC while you’re recording. The solutions will scale with your budget and your ambition.

no problem spending thousands of dollars on plug-ins, but they won’t get $500 worth of advice “Manage your low-frequency to get in the right position in response.” This is much more your room.” difficult in a personal studio without access to, say, the twist- Make it fun yet functional. ed propeller ceiling covered in “Every studio has to have some air-entrained plaster that Elec- kind of signature…. You’re suptric Lady’s Studio A has. Low posed to have fun in these stufrequencies aren’t effective- dios. They’re supposed to have ly absorbed by standard home your personality. On the other acoustic treatments. However, hand, I’ve always thought that Storyk says, “Do the best you there has to be a kind of neutralcan.” Focus on the room’s cor- ity in the studio.” ners, since they have the most surface area and “low frequency is always going to build up on A Bit of surfaces…. So even if you were Messiness to just put anything in the cor- — ner—maybe some foam, or What this balance of form and tube traps, or anything, you’re functionality looks like will be going to be helping yourself.” specific to each studio’s user, but Storyk says a studio should Ask for help. It’s always an op- be a “workshop” in which the tion to seek some consulting on “real personality” comes from personal studio design. “It’s fun- the music made there. ny,” Storyk says, “people have Storyk says the most ad-

vanced designs wsdg works on use these same basic principles.

“If I’ve done my job correctly, I’ve got that perfect sweet spot of acoustics, technology, geometry, form-following-function, but a little bit of messiness—a little bit of individuality.” It’s remarkable how close this description comes to the daily scene in Berklee’s 160 Massachusetts Avenue studios—and, of course, that’s anything but chance.

When Storyk finds himself on campus teaching, sometimes he’ll wander down to the facility he designed with wsdg to see what students are getting up to there. “It always makes me smile.”

“Within 30 minutes they’ve made their space their own.

They’ve wiggled the stands and changed the rugs and opened up some of the variable acoustics,” he says. “I’m happiest when I’m watching Berklee students make music in the studios.”

COURTESY OF WSDG

“Introduce some targeted acoustic treatment.” Focus on the “first reflection position”— the first position where “your speaker is going to send sound off a close boundary…. That could be your console, it could be a close wall, it could be a ceiling.” For absorbing high and mid frequencies, Storyk says there are a number of effective products on the market. “They

all say they’re better than the next, but that’s just marketing.”

THE SHAMES FAMILY SCORING STAGE AT 160 MASSACHUSETTS AVENUE

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KEY CHANGES A SPECIAL SERIES TRACKING EVOLUTIONS IN THE MUSIC INDUSTRY

The Future Sounds Bright ECLIPSE, 2023 MASARY STUDIOS, PRESENTED AT SOLSTICE BY THE MOUNT AUBURN CEMETERY

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Inside a new generation of immersive, multisensory experiences that blend music and light to create magic.

STORY BY

PHOTOGRAPH BY

Alexander Gelfand

Aram Boghosian

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DANIEL PEMBROKE (ABOVE) AND PETER ZEBBLER BERDOVSKY

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February 3, visitors to the Bellforge Arts Center in Medfield, Massachusetts, braved a frosty wind and ventured outdoors to play with blocks.

These were no ordinary toys, however. Rather, they were part of Sound Sculpture, an interactive musical artwork conceived by composer, percussionist, and interdisciplinary artist RYAN EDWARDS B.M. ’11, cofounder of Boston-based masary Studios. The installation, which tours nationally, allows users to create musical compositions by moving around oversized plastic blocks that measure 17 inches on a side and that look for all the world like enormous glowing ice cubes.

Each block contains a package of electronics that includes a location tag, a microcontroller, an led light array, and a Wi-Fi transponder. The blocks communicate with a computer that uses custom software to track their location in space, generating signals that cause the blocks to change color while triggering notes of varying pitches and durations across a multichannel surround-sound speaker array.

The resulting system comprises a patented, location-aware instrument that a group of individuals

RYAN EDWARDS

can play together regardless of musical training.

While the technology behind Sound Sculpture is impressive, it is also essentially invisible to users, allowing even the least technically inclined to experience the act of composition in a direct, hands-on way. At Bellforge, children used the blocks to build towers, forts, and stairs, collectively improvising a multimedia artwork as they experimented with different configurations.

“The point isn’t that we made an instrument that is location-aware,” Edwards says. “The point is that it’s a social environment for creativity that often surprises people with what they can do.”

Sound Sculpture is illustrative of the evolving field of immersive, interactive art—a field that has experienced rapid growth over the past decade or so due to technological and societal changes—that often combines sound and light to create unique, multisensory experiences.

“We try to create a synergy between the sonic and the visual—not to merely represent one alongside the other, but to blend the two worlds into a singular presentation,” says Assistant Professor PETER ZEBBLER BERDOVSKY, founder

of Zebbler Studios in Boston.

Interactive art that incorporates audio and visual elements is not new. Examples of such work can be found in the early 20th century, although the trend toward immersion and interactivity really took off during the ’60s and ’70s. Over the past several decades, advances in spatial audio technology and projection mapping—the projection of video content onto 3d surfaces such as stages, sculptures, and building facades—have significantly expanded the ability of practitioners to create novel experiences. So too has the availability of sophisticated, affordable software, like Touch Designer and Unreal Engine, that enables users to create content in real-time based on participant input: digital sensors and cameras can track audience members’ motions, for example, and this data can be used to trigger or even generate musical accompaniment and visual displays.

Consumers, meanwhile, have become increasingly accustomed to interactive experiences mediated by technology—partly thanks to the ubiquity of smartphones and similar devices, and partly thanks to the pandemic,

ARAM BOGHOSIAN

NOT LONG AFTER THE SUN SET ON

which forced many people to live through their screens.

As a result, there’s been a proliferation of immersive, interactive work in recent years, some of it produced by studios like masary and Zebbler for museums, festivals, and public events, and some of it produced by groups like Meow Wolf, Wonderspaces, and artechouse that mount installations in dedicated locations across the country. Major corporations have also picked up on the trend, with companies from Nike to Intel commissioning installations to promote their brands. And live events are being similarly transformed by the adoption of spatial audio, programmable led lighting, and projection mapping.

“The immersive industry is a huge industry. And it’s growing rapidly,” says DANIEL PEMBROKE, program director of the Live Music Production and Design graduate program at Berklee nyc.

Pembroke, who runs the New York-based installation house Sluice Labs, points to the 2023 opening of the Sphere—a $2.3 billion, 366-foot-tall spherical theater in Las Vegas that hosts immersive and interactive

events—as evidence of just how large the sector has become.

It is also extremely varied.

JAVIER CRUZ P.D. ’11 , who works for the Brooklyn-based immersive media design studio Volvox Labs, has composed music, written code, and created visuals for clients from ibm to the contemporary multimedia artist Roy Nachum. Recently, Cruz contributed to a custom-built theater experience that Cadillac commissioned to introduce its new line of electric vehicles.

A short film about the history of the carmaker was projected in high definition on the theater’s walls while a score Cruz composed filled the space in multichannel surround sound. At the same time, software tracked participants’ movements with digital sensors and projected video content based on those movements onto the theater floor. Even the exterior of the theater became part of the installation, as shifting 3d images played across wraparound led lighting arrays on the building’s facade, turning the entire structure into an enormous trompe-l’oeil.

“This industry, and this artform, can create magic,” Cruz says.

Much of that magic comes from the powerful combination of sound with light. “We’re visual creatures,” says Edwards. “So the more we accompany a sound work with visuals, the more we can connect with our audience.”

Connecting with audiences is top of mind for DANNY SCHEER M.A. ’23, who helps create immersive audio and visual environments for live shows in New York City. Scheer studied songwriting along with creative media and technology at Berklee nyc, and he sees the work that he does now—namely, manipulating sound and light to communicate and reinforce an artist’s vision— as a form of “prosody in space.”

At the most recent iteration of the Sound and Vision of David Bowie, an annual mini-festival at the Cutting Room in New York City that celebrates the late singer’s birthday with performances of his songs, Scheer and his colleagues enhanced the emotional contrast suggested by the evening’s set list with a series of coordinated audio-visual maneuvers.

The finale to “Lazarus,” an emotionally intense work in which Bowie addressed his own mortality, ended with blindingly bright

JAVIER CRUZ

“ We try to create a synergy between the sonic and the visual to blend the two worlds into a singular presentation.”

COURTESY OF ANDREW HLYNSKY

A S S I S TA N T P R O F E S S O R P E T E R Z E B B L E R B E R D OV S K Y

HLYNSKY USED A PLAYSTATION CONTROLLER AND CUSTOM SOFTWARE TO MANIPULATE THE DISPLAY AT THE ENVISION FESTIVAL IN COSTA RICA.

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DANNY SCHEER

movers (mechanized, computer-controlled lights) silhouetting the performers from behind, creating a sense of separation between the artists onstage and their audience. Then the theater plunged into darkness, with only a single spotlight illuminating a lone performer holding a guitar and singing the opening lines of “Space Oddity” (“Ground control to Major Tom…”). By using spatial audio techniques to manipulate the sound in the room, Scheer and his colleagues were able to collapse the distance between artist and spectator, drawing both into the same intimate sonic and visual space.

“Spatial audio in itself is great,” Scheer says. “But if you have visual input that confirms that auditory sensation—you see it there, you hear it there, it is there—you can really paint this whole world.”

Painting, or perhaps building, a whole world is an apt description of what Zebbler Studios achieved at the Envision Festival in Costa Rica this past March.

Zebbler and his team, which included the Providence-based musician and video artist ANDREW HLYNSKY M.M. ’16 , were charged with designing and fabricating one of several live stag-

es at the weeklong event. Using local materials such as bamboo, corrugated metal roofing, and hand-cut plywood, they constructed a physical framework with a sculptural facade and recessed platforms for dancers. To that they added computer-controlled leds as well as conventional lights, and then projected video imagery onto the entirety of the stage’s 3D surface. Working from a single control table, the team was able to synchronize these different lighting systems with each other and with the live music—rap and reggae, rock and world electronica—emanating from the stage.

“Our stage was around 120 feet wide and 40 feet tall, so for people standing in the middle of the crowd, it must have felt like a pulsating, psychedelic, rhythmic imax screen—fully surrounding their field of vision, yet orchestrating the visuals to fully match the music in real time,” Zebbler says.

Hlynsky, who develops technology for interactive and immersive experiences, even hooked up a PlayStation controller to a custom software patch so that he could control the onstage visuals while mingling with the

crowd, altering what attendees saw in response to the music.

In addition to his work for Zebbler Studios, Hlynsky works on a wide range of projects with corporate clients and with the Rhode Island artist collective known as the Reliquarium. He particularly enjoys crafting inclusive environments that invite participation, blurring the distinction between artists and audiences. “Creating situations where there are no spectators is great,” he says.

Hlynsky created just such a situation at the Berklee Abu Dhabi Center in 2022. His instructions were simple: build something musical and interactive; draw inspiration from the location of the site; and provide people with a memento of their experience. He settled on a touchscreen-based experience that drew on the rich tradition of geometrically complex tile patterns found throughout the Islamic world. Participants began by collectively creating tile patterns on a large touchscreen display. The tiles were then mapped to musical notes, transforming the display into a giant visual keyboard that participants could play by donning motion sensors and moving their hands across the dig-

“Spatial audio in itself is great. But if you have visual input that confirms that auditory sensation...you can really paint this whole world.”

SOUND SCULPTURE, 2018 MASARY STUDIOS PRESENTED BY CANAL CONVERGENCE

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SCOTTSDALE ARTS

DANNY SCHEER M.A. ’23

THE SHABAKA INTERACTIVE MUSICAL EXPERIENCE AT THE BERKLEE ABU DHABI CENTER

“ Anybody can go in and enjoy it, and it doesn’t matter if you’re Black or White or gay or rich or poor or anything.”

BERKLEE ABU DHABI

A N D R E W H LY N K S Y M . M . ’ 1 6

ital tiles. Afterward, they received a keepsake video clip.

The project took six months to complete and involved a series of daunting technical challenges. But for Hlynsky, who delights in using interactive art to break down social divisions and level the experiential playing field, the end result was worth it. “These interactive spaces are unpretentious in a way,” he says. “Anybody can go in and enjoy it, and it doesn’t matter if you’re Black or White or gay or rich or poor or anything.”

Although Hlynsky tackled the Abu Dhabi project alone, the range of skills required to create such installations—Pembroke says that the Berklee nyc program covers everything from sound and lighting design to coding and project management— means that most of this work is collaborative and team-based.

The live events that Scheer works on, for instance, may require a director, a lighting designer, and a camera technician, along with several audio specialists.

Studios like masary and Zebbler, meanwhile, typically employ multiple people with different areas of expertise. masary, for ex-

ample, has 10 people on staff with backgrounds in composition and performance, architecture, and artificial intelligence.

“There’s an emerging, studio-based practice of collaborative creatives that are wildly combining sound, light, tech, and other media,” says Edwards, whose interest in multimedia work grew out of his experience playing West African drum music for dancers. “They rely on one another, and they’re better for it.”

Collaboration was essential for the design and fabrication of solstice, a project that masary undertook to celebrate the winter solstice at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The solstice marks the longest night of the year as well as the point in the Earth’s orbit when the days begin to lengthen once again; solstice included components inspired by the celestial underpinnings of the event and by the various rituals that mark the annual transition from darkness to light.

Over the course of several days last December, visitors experienced cinematic, projection-mapped displays tailored to the cemetery chapel’s Gothic fa-

cade and accompanied by original electronic music; witnessed an artist’s rendering of a solar eclipse; and wandered through Phase Garden, an installation comprising 12 towers—each equipped with a loudspeaker and color-changing lights—that were arranged along a pedestrian path circumscribing a circular garden. The towers were controlled by custom software that generated a constantly shifting musical and visual landscape based on the ever-changing relationships among the Earth, the sun, and the stars.

“All of the pacing, all of the lighting, and all of the sound incidents were truly connected to celestial time,” says Edwards, who adds that the mathematics of the relationships guaranteed that the work wouldn’t repeat itself unless it played for 30,000 more years.

As was the case with Sound Sculpture, however, the technical complexities of solstice’s Phase Garden were invisible to the people who encountered it. Instead, they simply perceived the totality of the installation as a fully integrated piece of sonic and visual art—a singular experience that could not be achieved with either sound or light alone.

ANDREW HLYNSKY

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GLOBAL SPOTLIGHT BERKLEE’S CAMPUS IN VALENCIA, SPAIN

Many Happy Returns 32 B E R K L E E TO D AY S/S 24

For some Valencia students, one course of study inspired them to take another, then another.

S T O R Y BY

Kimberly Ashton

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or some students, doing one program at Berklee’s campus in Valencia, Spain, just isn’t enough.

Of the thousands of students who’ve studied there since it opened in 2012, several became repeat customers. Some initially chose to go to Valencia because it was convenient; others were looking for a change. But these aren’t the reasons they went back, or signed up for another program.

“I finished my first year and I was like, ‘I don’t want to leave,’” says PAULA CORIA, who attended three programs—the Spain Summer Performance Program, First Year Abroad, and Berklee Study Abroad—before arriving in Boston in January to complete her film scoring major.

To be sure, many students and alumni say Berklee Valencia and Berklee Boston each offer distinctive experiences.

Though both campuses provide high-quality instruction, their cultures differ—at times, significantly. Part of the reason for these differences is that each campus is influenced by the national culture in which it resides. Another part boils down to the fact that Berklee Valencia is a smaller community than is Berklee Boston. Both campuses have their strengths, which are often overlapping or complementary, but for many students, spending as much time as possible in Berklee Valencia was the right call. Here’s why.

PAULA CORIA

ZOE SCHNEIDER

LINUS MARKUS HELD

HANNI NGUYEN

PIETRO VILLANI

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What I love about Berklee Valencia is it’s a place that is abundant with yeses.

If you are willing to ask the question, the ‘yes’ is there.”

The Opportunities for Growth

— Whether it’s playing in-house concerts, going to jam sessions in town, or creating unique projects, current and former students say Berklee Valencia is full of possibilities.

“What I love about Berklee Valencia is it’s a place that is abundant with yeses. If you are willing to ask the question, the ‘yes’ is there,” says ZOE SCHNEIDER B.M. ’18, M.A. ’19, who hails from Chicago and did two Berklee Study Abroad semesters before going back for a master’s degree in music production, technology and innovation.

She says that by going to Valencia for her third and fourth semesters, she was able to capitalize on opportunities that are

normally more competitive in Boston. “You can explore all of them in a more manageable way in Valencia, so that when you’re back in Boston, you know what you’re doing and you can just explode,” says Schneider, who credits the confidence and skills she learned at Berklee Valencia with how she’s approached her career, which includes her current job working in marketing and publishing at Epic Games, makers of Fortnite and other big titles. Schneider says that in Valencia she began looking at things as “Oh, maybe it’s not a ‘no,’ it’s a ‘not yet,’ or a ‘not now,’ or ‘not like this.’”

For German student LINUS MARKUS HELD , now 19, Valencia offered plentiful performance opportunities. “You can go into clubs at 18. And you can go to jam sessions and you’re not restricted by the age. And they have a lot of jam sessions there, which are incredible. Every day of the week, you can go somewhere and play,” says Held, who, like his classmate Coria, did Valencia’s summer program, First Year Abroad, and Berklee Study Abroad before coming to Boston.

The Community

— Because the Valencia campus is small, there’s an opportunity to connect deeply with other members of the Berklee community.

Coria says that the fact that students from every Valencia program live in the same residence and see each other on campus regularly meant that during her first year she was able to build relationships with her peers as well as with graduate and study-abroad students.

“You know that vibe of a big family? I had that from Valencia…. Like, you’re going to feel so warm and so accepted,” says Coria, who originally comes from Madrid.

Vietnamese student HANNI NGUYEN , who attended First Year Abroad and Berklee Study Abroad with Coria and Held, says that in addition to making good friends who now form the basis of her friend group in Boston, she also felt close to the faculty. “It’s like the community in villages,” she says. Held agrees: “Just the people, the faculty, were so welcoming and warm.”

The Quality of the Academics

— Despite Valencia’s small size, students say it delivers the same big results they’re finding on the Boston campus.

“I was scared of coming [to Boston] and being like, ‘Oh my God, maybe [Valencia] wasn’t as hard as here.’ But no, I know all my stuff,” says Coria.

Classmates Nguyen and Held felt similarly. “All the teachers there are really passionate about what they’re doing, and they’re really good at what they’re doing,” Nguyen says.

PIETRO VILLANI B.M. ’19, M.A. ’21, calls his decision to pursue a master’s degree in Valencia, where he had already completed two summer programs and two rounds of Berklee Study Abroad, the best choice of his life.

“I managed to…gain so much knowledge, [and] meet probably the best professors I ever met—shout out to the music business professors in Valencia!” says Villani, who hails from Italy and Belgium and now works in London as a communications officer at the International Confederation of Music Publishers (icmp).

Of her time in Valencia, Schneider says she’s “coasting on the results of the efforts I put in in 2015 and 2016. That year that I spent in Berklee [Valencia as an] undergrad, and then…the grad program, is honestly one of the biggest, strongest foundations that I’ve built my current life upon.” Some of her mentors included EMILIEN MOYON, the director of the Global Entertainment and Music Business program, and Professor ALEXANDRE PERRIN . “He made accounting and finance—these subjects that I didn’t really have an interest in—he helped me realize how important they are and made me feel capable of…doing it well, and made it interesting on top of it,” Schneider says.

portation, and more. “There’s this culture of just living life and enjoying it in Spain…and then Valencia is close to the beach and everything is warm. And that even extends to the people,” says Held.

“Valencia is literally the city of music in Spain,” Coria says.

She found this to be true both in smaller cultural attractions

around town as well as at Fallas, the large, five-day annual celebration in which brass bands play all over the city.

For her as well as for others, the alchemy of the city combined with the Berklee experience created something special.

“Valencia,” she says, “is kind of like a fever dream. Everyone tells me that.”

THE PALAU DE LES ARTS REINA SOFÍA, ON THE GROUNDS OF VALENCIA’S CITY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES, HOME OF BERKLEE VALENCIA

COURTESY OF WSDG

The City

— Of course, the Berklee Valencia experience is bigger than the campus itself. Coloring the entire experience is the city of Valencia, which students and alumni say has incredible food, great weather, efficient public trans 35

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MATT URBAN, NUPOINT MARKETING

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR MEAGAN LEWISMICHELSON STARRED AS PATSY CLINE IN DELAWARE THEATRE COMPANY’S PRODUCTION OF ALWAYS...PATSY CLINE.

News from Our Faculty Community

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SONGCRAFT FOR SOJOURNERS By teaching lyric-writing in Mandarin, Assistant Professor SHERRY LI helps prepare Chinese students for the industry they’ll go back home to.

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S T O R Y BY

P H O T O G R A P H BY

Mark Small

John Huet

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR SHERRY LI HELPS HER STUDENTS BRIDGE WESTERN AND CHINESE CULTURES

Tempo “ She’s pointing out some issues that will help us make sure that students...will have a better idea of how to use the tool set they got here at Berklee.”

Although Assistant Professor SHERRY LI joined the Songwriting Department in 2022, she has already had a transformative effect on international students and faculty members alike. Born in China, Li emigrated with her parents to Montreal, Canada, when she was in elementary school. Consequently, she is fluent in Mandarin, French, and English. Her understanding of Chinese culture has enabled her to narrow cultural gaps for the Chinese students in her classes and in other departments. Berklee currently has more than 1,200 students from China, making them the largest cohort among the international student population.

“The moment I stepped into my department, I got many questions [from colleagues] about the challenges Chinese students face in communicating and attempting to write English lyrics,” says Li. “So I’ve been giving presentations about the Chinese education system and music market at department meetings to explain the cultural and musical differences. One example is that Chinese students won’t raise their hands to ask a question in class—even when the teacher asks if there are any questions. They would rather speak with the teacher individually afterwards.” Li often advises faculty colleagues from other departments and has spoken at the Berklee Teachers on Teaching development sessions.

For non-native speakers, writing songs in English is a formidable challenge. Songwriters take poetic license with language and employ familiar metaphors, symbols, and double entendres. This presents a steep learning curve for those arriving in a new country and speaking a new language. Many international students, however, plan to enter the marketplace in their home country after graduating. Both Li and RODNEY ALEJANDRO, chair of the Songwriting Department, could see that they needed to help these students understand how to apply what they learned at Berklee back home. They came up with an idea to begin tackling the problem. The first step was to make songwriting courses more useful for Chinese students.

“Sherry and I worked together to develop a course called Songwriting in Mandarin,” says Alejandro. “She took the 40 B E R K L E E TO D AY S/S 24

RODNEY ALEJANDRO, CHAIR OF SONGWRITING DEPARTMENT

SHERRY LI AT TEDX YOUTH AT GRANVILLE ISLAND IN JUNE 2021

skills she learned when she was a student, combined them with what our department is teaching, and made adaptations for students planning to return to work in China.” Li adds that learning how to write in Mandarin is essential for those who want to enter the Chinese market as artists or songwriters. “Before this class, they had nowhere to sharpen their Chinese lyricism,” she says.

Li brings broad experience to the courses she teaches in music production and topline songwriting. She honed her studio skills earning her Berklee degree as an electronic production and design major, after having experienced early success as a songwriter. As a teen living in Canada, the ambitious Li had built a following back in China, gaining widespread notice for her songwriting. “I started making music when I was 15,” she recalls, “and began blogging about my efforts to become a professional musician.

At the time, a career in music was a highly unusual route to take, and I captured the interest of many Chinese netizens.”

At 17, Li was invited to fly to China to

participate in an event with top Chinese music industry professionals. There she met the a&r representative for singer LuHan—then the Chinese analogue to Justin Bieber. Impressed with Li’s songs, the rep invited her to pitch material for the artist’s upcoming album. LuHan cut one of Li’s songs, which became a single that was picked up by Disney for the Chinese promotional campaign for the movie Kung Fu Panda 3.

In 2018, the year Li graduated from Berklee, she founded a production company with YAO WANG, now an assistant professor in the Screen Scoring Department. “We were both passionate about the intersection of art and new technology,” Li says. “We formed ictus Audio to explore music’s many possibilities in new mediums such as virtual reality, interactive experiences, and immersive installations.”

The Vancouver, Canada–based company, which employs 11 people, also has a commercial music service. Li says this service started after a Berklee classmate connected her with a talented filmmak-

er whom she began collaborating with.

“Our artistic works caught the eyes of major brands and production houses, which kick-started our commercial scoring services,” she explains. What started out as artistic exploration grew to the point where Li now works on campaigns for major clients such as Mercedes Benz, Porsche, Vogue, and others.

Li enjoys sharing her experiences in the music industry with those in her classroom. “I love teaching,” she adds, “and whenever I can, I bring in students to work on my industry projects. I’ve been able to connect those with completed works to a&r people. Some students are selling their songs, which makes me very happy.” ictus Audio also hosts an online music academy that teaches jazz harmony, improvisation, and songwriting directed toward Chinese high school students.

“These resources are not available in the cities where some of these students live,” Li says. “Classical music training is abundant in China, but creative, contemporary music instruction, not so much.

We help the students get ready for their Berklee auditions, and about 40 of them have come here.”

Li says that she feels she owes a debt of gratitude to Berklee because it’s where she developed her skills, made contacts, and began her career.

Alejandro has a clear vision of how Li can give back to the college as a whole.

“Sherry will be part of a panel for a faculty development group that is addressing the needs of all of Berklee’s international students who learned English as an additional language,” he says. “She’s pointing out some issues that will help us make sure that students planning to return to their home countries will have a better idea of how to use the tool set they got here at Berklee.”

Li’s future looks bright in both education and the industry. She’s working on growing her business, becoming a more effective educator, and helping young artists navigate the ai revolution. She says she’s looking forward to these challenges. At this point, she has fulfilled many of the dreams she had at 15. “Now I’m into the great unknown,” she says.

Faculty Notes B E R K L E E B O STO N

CECIL ADDERLEY, chair of the Music Education Department, was named the president of the National Association for Music Education. His term starts in June and ends in February 2026.

Assistant Professor VIVIENNE AERTS is the host of the podcast ViviTalks, which celebrates the 100 talented female musicians from her album Typuhthâng.

Professor PRINCE CHARLES ALEXANDER and his family established the Prince Charles Alexander Scholarship fund for a music production and engineering student with demonstrated knowledge of, and commitment to, music of the African diaspora.

Professor JOHN BABOIAN presented the clinic Solo Guitar: Performance, Arranging & Accompaniment at the Jazz Education Network conference in New Orleans. It included material from Baboian’s Berklee Online course of the same name.

AphroChic magazine to discuss his latest musical release, Untitled, Vol. 1.

Professor JOE BENNETT is the resident musicologist at BBC Radio 5 Live in the U.K., where he analyzes classic tracks for songwriting and production techniques.

RHODA BERNARD, managing director of the Berklee Institute for Accessible Arts Education and assistant chair of the Music Education Department, received the Irene Buck Service to Arts Education Award from Arts|Learning.

Associate Professor PAT BIANCHI released his ninth album as a leader, Three, which received 4½ stars in DownBeat. It features Bianchi (Hammond B3 organ), Troy Roberts (sax), and Colin Stranahan (drums).

Professor FERNANDO BRANDÃO was the executive producer of the Dani and Debora Gurgel Quartet (DDG4) residency and concert at Berklee. He also

5 Assistant Professor LUKE

BLACKBURN is a 2024 recipient of a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He also plays bassoon in the Boston Opera Collaborative’s performances of Peter Brook’s version of Bizet’s Le tragédie de Carmen.

Assistant Professor THAVIUS BECK created content for Moog (a Mariana tutorial), Bitwig (a 5.1 overview course), and Ableton (an Ableton Live 12 course), and was featured on the cover of

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performed at Harvard Epworth Church as part of the Celebrity Series.

Professor SARAH BRINDELL is a cowriter and background singer on “Higher Education,” a song featuring Ivan Neville on the album Higher Education. She also continues to perform her originals regularly at the Beehive in Boston.

Assistant Professor CRISTI CATT sings on the soundtrack for The Walk, a documentary about a puppet that walks from Syria to other countries to heighten awareness of the global refugee crisis. The film was scored by DUKE BOJADZIEV P.D. ’01.

Professor BETH DENISCH’s song “Yanvalou” was recorded by the Prague Radio Orchestra, conducted by Professor JULIUS WILLIAMS. It was inspired by Katherine Dunham, a pioneering dance anthropologist and leader in bringing African culture to the American public.

3 Professor GREG GLANCEY

released an album of originals, Ashes to Impulses, and was a featured artist at the 2024 Outside the Box new music festival.

Associate Professor MARKO DJORDJEVIC ‘93, MATTHEW GARRISON ‘92, and OLE MATHISEN B.M. ‘88 form the Take Off Collective, which performed at the inaugural Sweet Summer Sun Music Festival in Greece and at the Bang on a Can’s Long Play festival in New York City.

Professor JUDITH EISSENBERG performed as a member of the Lydian String Quartet on the new album Mind Like Water by composer Yu-Hui Chang.

Professor MARTI EPSTEIN’s motet “Prayer” was performed by Emmanuel Music; her chamber work “Troubled Queen” was performed by the Callithumpian Ensemble at Boston’s Symphony Hall; and her ensemble work “In Praise of Broken Clocks” was performed by Sound Icon at Boston Conservatory.

Associate Professor MARIA FINKELMEIER made CODAworx’s 2023 Creative Revolutionaries list, which features 25 individ-

5 Assistant Professor AKRAM HADDAD orchestrated, conducted,

and led the music with the New York Arabic Orchestra for the Ubisoft game Assassin’s Creed Mirage; contributed compositions to the film Yes Repeat No; and arranged the song “Toyour” for the Red Sea Film Festival.

1 Professor DARLA HANLEY presented at the Association for Music in International Schools Music Educators’ Conference in Croatia; the Midwest Clinic International Band, Orchestra and Music Conference in Chicago; and the Texas Music Educators Association Clinic/ Convention in San Antonio. uals at the forefront of what CODAworx, a hub for the commissioned art economy, calls the “artistic-activist revolution.”

Professor TOMO FUJITA played a sold-out show at the Bitter End in New York City. It featured Associate Professor OZ NOY (guitar), Will Lee (bass), and Shawn Pelton (drums). He also played to more than 800 people over two nights at Blue Note China in Shanghai.

Professor LASZLO GARDONY played two sold-out shows at Scullers Jazz Club: one with his quartet—DON BRADEN (sax/ flute); YORON ISRAEL (drums), chair of Berklee’s Percussion Department; and Associate Professor JOHN LOCKWOOD (bass)— and the other with Israel’s High Standards sextet.

Professor BRUCE GERTZ’s song “Waltz 1/19” was a finalist in both the International Acoustic Music Awards competition and the USA Songwriting Competition in the instrumental jazz categories.

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Professor RICH GREENBLATT performed three concerts at Café Mercedes Jazz in Valencia, Spain.

Assistant Professor SUSAN HAGEN toured New England playing Serge Koussevitzky’s double bass with British bassist David Heyes in celebration of the 150th anniversary of Koussevitzky’s birth.

Professor HERMAN HAMPTON created a scholarship and support program in honor of the late Elijah McClain, a 23-year-old violinist and massage therapist.

He also has string players from University of Massachusetts at Lowell perform at the Humane Society of Lowell for animals awaiting adoption.

Assistant Professor JAMIE LYNN HART launched a digital course for singers, How to Warm Up Your Voice. She was also interviewed

by The Guardian as a guest expert, discussing the concept of “cursive singing.”

Associate Professor JOSEPH HUGHES signed to work with Gobsmack Studio in New York City to

3 Associate Professor

PETER JONATAN collaborated

with the Grammy-winning Metropole Orkest on his debut album, Psalms Symphony.

turn his award-winning memoir The Smuggler’s Apprentice into a longform narrative series podcast, under the working title The Last Smuggler.

Italian songwriting with jazz, and features Berklee faculty and alumni.

MIKE MASON, chair of the Africana Studies Department, was interviewed by the Lincoln Center podcast Art Class and will present this summer at the National Association for Negro Musicians Conference in Los Angeles, discussing Berklee’s Africana Studies degree program.

Professor HEY RIM JEON received a Global Leadership Award from SHE EXIST Magazine. The award ceremony, in New York, celebrated leaders from various professions. An article about her musical journey from Korea to the States was included in SHE EXIST’s summer issue.

Associate Professor GIORGI MIKADZE released the album Face to Face: Georgian Songbook, Vol. 1 to rave reviews by The Independent, Jazz Weekly, All About Jazz, and other publications.

Professor TEODROS KIROS interviewed superstar Yara Shahidi for African Ascent international as well as Patricia Danillo for Excellence, which is the new name of African Ascent International.

Assistant Professor EZRA KRUZICH has been pursuing a Ph.D. in neurobiology at Boston Univer-

1 Professor ANDREA JOHNSON’s

case study called “Snoop Dogg Takes Death Row to the Metaverse and Beyond with an NFT Label” was published by Sage Publications.

sity; performing across Boston with his band, EZZY; and teaching anatomy and physiology at Berklee.

Assistant Professor STEVE LANGONE released a book on Hudson Music titled The Snare Drummer’s Real Book and has been performing with RON BOSSE B.M. ’93 and Grammy-winning keyboardist JEFF LORBER ’71.

1 Professor SCARLET KEYS gave the TEDx talk “What’s in a Song?” and is releasing a book about hope and wellness called What If It All Goes Right: Practicing Hope in the Hardest Times, which she wrote after going through treatment for cancer.

JOE LOVANO is a founding member of Berklee’s Global Jazz Institute and has been the Gary Burton Chair in Jazz Performance since 2001.

Assistant Professor STEFANO MARCHESE and Professor ANDREA PEJROLO released Scanzonati, their debut album that blends

Assistant Professor ISABEAU MILLER coproduced the acclaimed Broadway musical How to Dance in Ohio, which features a cast of several autistic actors portraying autistic characters.

It was nominated for a GLAAD award.

Professor LAMARCUS MILLER created and planned the 2023 State of Music in Media Conference and the 50th Anniversary of Hip-Hop for the Guild of Music Supervisors. He was also head music supervisor on the upcoming documentary about Jim Henson, creator of the Muppets.

sold-out shows in San Diego, received a prestigious Jazz Road Creative Residencies Grant, and started a fundraiser at GoFundMe for the Ize Trio.

Professor JOE MULHOLLAND played piano and keyboard in a pair of concerts by the Orchestra on the Hill, in Ipswich, MA. The composers collaborated with local visual artists and storytellers to create multimedia works for chamber orchestras.

MATTHEW NICHOLL, dean of the Professional Writing and Music Technology Division, released Still Life with Voices (Casa Limón), an album of vocal and instrumental pieces featuring several Berklee faculty members and alumni.

Professor ANDREA PEJROLO released the single “A Place for You to Call Home,” which features VICTOR MENDOZA ’81 (vibraphone), Assistant Professor LIHI HARUVI (saxophone), GARRY DIAL

5 Assistant Professor JULIE

KINSCHECK is cowriting and recording contemporary Christian songs to be released with producer Neal Merrick Blackwood.

Associate Professor YOKO MIWA performed in the Ahmad Jamal Memorial in New York City at Lincoln Center in the Appel Room with Calvin Keys (guitar) and Peter Washington (bass). Jamal’s daughter cited Miwa as one of her father’s favorite pianists.

Assistant professors CHASE MORRIN and NASEEM ALATRASH, along with GEORGE LERNIS B.M. ’05, M.M. ’21, comprise the Ize Trio, which released the album The Global Suites. The trio performed two

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(piano), and MAURICIO ZOTTARELLI B.M. ’02 (drums).

Assistant Professor OLIVIA PÉREZ-COLLELLMIR was the music director of a Berklee student ensemble that performed at celebrations surrounding the Latin Grammys as a part of a tribute to Paco de Lucía.

The album BTR that JONATHAN PERKINS, assistant chair of the Songwriting Department, wrote for went platinum, and the Chainsmokers’ single “Young,” which he did programming for, went gold.

Associate Professor JES PERRY, the interim assistant chair of the Professional Music Department, released “That’s What Christmas Is.” Guitarist, producer, and educator STEVE FEKETE B.M. ’96 cowrote and produced the song.

Associate Professor JUSTIN RHODES was a producer on Killer Mike’s Grammy-winning album Michael.

His film King of Dallas was released in early 2024. His album, 4 Letter Word, with his group Lisa Simpson, and his book, These Dreams Ain’t Free, are scheduled to be released this year.

ANNETTE PHILIP, artistic director of the Berklee India Exchange, was nominated for an Izzie (Isadora Duncan Dance Award) for her original music in Pehchaan (Identity) by Ishami Dance Company, exploring South Asian identities through culture, gender, sexuality, and immigrant journeys.

Professor MIMI RABSON served as the director for the Rockland County Music Educators Association’s jazz string orchestra in February. Sixty high school string players learned tunes by ear and had the opportunity to improvise.

Associate Professor RISHABH RAJAN released an EP, Cigarettes in Cinema.

Professor RON REID received the Sunshine Award for his contribu-

tions to Caribbean music culture and education.

Professor ALEX RODRIGUEZ recorded and mixed a big band jazz album that was produced and composed by Professor FERNANDO HUERGO, and featured several Berklee faculty. He also recorded and mixed the fall 2023 Berklee Singers Showcase dedicated to Madonna.

Professor NED ROSENBLATT’s Advanced Vocal Jazz Ensemble received an Outstanding Performance Award from the DownBeat Student Music Awards and performed at the 2024 American Choral Directors Association Eastern Region Conference.

Assistant Professor DOMINIC SAHAGUN created the music, lyrics, and book for the show The Muskrats, starring Tony winner Lena Hall and Tony nominee Constantine Maroulis. He has written five plays in the past two years.

Assistant Professor JUSTIN SHERIFF joined the Music Production and Engineering Department, teaching classes in independent recording and production. “Ashes,” a song he recorded, mixed, and mastered, went RIAA-certified gold.

Professor MARK SIMOS was an invited presenter at the AI, Music, and Creativity International Symposium at Hong Kong University in March. Professor Simos presented two talks via video: “AI Song Contests: Perspectives of a Songwriter, Judge, and Facilitator,” and “Navigating the Emerging AI/Songwriting Landscape with the Songwriter’s Compass.”

Instructor ADAI SONG released two EPs in December: one in English, Sex Scene Songs, and the other in Chinese, Mom, I’m 30.

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1 Associate Professor ANGELA

FARR SCHILLER is chairing the 2024 American Society of Theatre Research national conference in Seattle; coedited the second volume of The Methuen Trans Drama Book of Trans Plays; and was in a national promo for Clothes Story on TBS/TNT.

Professor JERI SYKES’s orchestrations for the original rock opera Born to Do This won the 2023 BroadwayWorld Boston Award for Best Orchestra Performance.

Associate Professor NICHOLAS URIE wrote arrangements for recordings by the double bassist James Oesi and guitarist Oscar Jerome, and arrangements for the Metropole Orkest show Games in Concert: The Score and Avond van de Filmmuziek program.

KAREN WACKS received the title of professor emeritus of music therapy in recognition of her long, distinguished career teaching in the Music Therapy Department.

She helped the department develop a strong foundation shortly after its inception.

DAVID WALLACE, chair of the

String Department; associate professors HELEN SHERRAH-DAVIES and JEREMY HARMAN; Professor MIMI RABSON; and David Clark performed at the Museum of Fine Arts’ Art in Tune event in Boston.

The quintet performed original compositions and arrangements on the museum’s collection of NS Design instruments.

Professor JASON ANICK, supported by a Faculty Recording Grant, will release Sanctuary.

Associate Professor GINA ZDANOWICZ and Assistant Professor SPENCER BAMBRICK collaborated on the music, sound design, and audio implementation for Eternights, a PlayStation game.

Professor VICTOR WALLIS’s essay “Toward a Radical Popular Culture: Political and Musical Reflections” appears in the 2023 Smithsonian publication Culture Throughlines: Values, Visions and Transformation: African American Music, American Culture, and Society, edited by retired professor WILLIAM BANFIELD.

Professor NANCY ZELTSMAN released the album Purple Music and played on “Poconos” by Professor Leo Blanco and “Prelude 3” by Howard Skempton.

Associate Professor JASON YEAGER music-directed Julie Benko’s sold-out Mardi Gras show at Birdland Jazz Club and performed solo at Carnegie Hall.

This October, he and Associate

Assistant Professor ALEXANDER CROSETT released a solo piano album, American Excursions.

B O STO N C O N S E RVATO RY AT B E R K L E E

Instructor FELICIA GAVILANES received a Grammy nomination

5 Assistant Professor ZAHILI GONZALEZ ZAMORA performed with

her Afro-Cuban jazz ensemble at the Celebrity Series of Boston’s Neighborhood Arts concert series. On Jazz International Day, GBH Music and JazzBoston presented a concert of her music at GBH Studios.

1 Assistant Professor CHRISTOPHER SIERRA performed with the Lyric Opera of Chicago in Der fliegende Holländer and Aida; sang Bach’s Coffee Cantata at the Boston Conservatory Artist in Action Chamber Series; and presented his culturally responsive teaching research at the College Music Society National Conference. for Best Opera Recording for her performance in John Corigliano’s The Lord of Cries. It was her third role with Odyssey Opera and her second recording with Boston Modern Orchestra Project.

Professor BRUCE HANGEN is celebrating his 25th anniversary season as artistic director and conductor of the Vista Philharmonic Orchestra at the Groton Hill Music Center. He also guest-conducted the Florida Orchestra in performances of Holiday Pops concerts.

Assistant Professor VIMBAYI KAZIBONI won the 2024 Alice M. Ditson Fund Conductor’s Award, which recognizes conductors who have a distinguished record of performing and championing contemporary American music.

ISAÍ JESS MUÑOZ, interim dean of music, was elected president of the National Opera Association.

Instructor EMILY SIAR won first place at the 48th National Association of Teachers of Singing Artist Awards competition in January.

Assistant Professor ALICE YAMADA wrote the article “Quand l’exigence s’invite sur scène: le cas du musical Chicago,” and published in the French translation journal Traduire.

B E R K L E E VA L E N C I A

Instructor JOSHUA WHEATLEY has been performing with the SongAh Chae Trio in London and across Spain. The group—composed of Wheatley (drums), SONGAH CHAE P.D. ’12, M.M. ’20

(piano), and SAMUEL KERI B.M. ’21, M.M. ’22 (bass)—released the album In the Beginning in January.

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CHUCK ESPINOZA

EMILY MCGUIRE B.F.A. ’18

of Glendale, CA, found a new love for international dance, including belly dance, and has joined the Los Angeles Ballet Academy, teaching students of all ages.

News from Our Alumni Community

Pulse 3 RICCARDO PEROTTI ’87 of

Weston, FL, released the song “Legión contra legión” in honor of those who have given their lives in the war in Ukraine.

Alum Notes reggae, blues, and roots in his singer-songwriter album, Tears from Stone. It features STEVE GILLIGAN ’77 on bass.

1957 RIK TINORY of Cohasset, MA, is the CEO of Rik Tinory Productions, with credits including Aerosmith and many more.

1982 ETHAN M. ANESHANSLEY B.M. of North Charleston, SC, has been a full-time educator as well as a GB cover band performer for the past 23 years.

1970 ARCHER A. “TONY” JORDAN of Alexandria, VA, began managing the Bob Gibson Big Band, also known as the Thursday Night Sight Reading Band, after Bob Gibson stepped down in 2022.

1974 JACK JACKSON B.M. of Anchorage, AK, wrote Jazz Harmony Express, a comprehensive, 196-page, college-level training book published by JacksPress. com.

JONATHAN DAVID SELIGMAN of Westminster, MD, released the album Consequential Terrain, which includes a collection of originals, Thelonious Monk tunes, and standards.

1975 MIKE STERN of New York City won first prize in the jazz category at the 28th Annual USA Songwriting Competition.

1976 HENRY DANIEL of Vancouver, Can-

ada, is a cofounder of the SFU Black Caucus, an organization supporting and celebrating the Black community at Simon Fraser University and promoting fairness and inclusivity.

JACK DEPIETRO of Red Hook, NY,

released his memoir, Life Behind Bars, about how he became a jazz impresario, club owner, and drummer, and played with some of the legends of the jazz world.

48 B E R K L E E TO D AY S/S 24

1 LANCE BRYANT ’83 of Cedar Grove, NJ, formed the band Lance Bryant & Shout! in 2022.

The LB Big Band is in its second year of residency at Clement’s Place, a venue run by Rutgers University’s Institute of Jazz Studies.

ROBERT ROSS B.M. of Tucson, AZ, shuttered the Auditory Perception Laboratory, a New York recording studio he founded 23 years ago, and relocated to Tucson to focus on playing bass.

NORMAN “SKIP” SPRATT of Berlin, NJ, has been an educator and freelance performer (saxophone and woodwinds) for over 30 years, collaborating with artists like TONY BENNETT ’74H, NATALIE COLE ’95H, and Johnny Mathis.

J. KIMO WILLIAMS B.M. of Shepherdstown, WV, released the album His Magnus Opus: Red Summer 1919. This progressive-rock jazz opera album features VINNIE COLAIUTA ’75 and MIKE STERN ’75.

PAUL HOYLE of Miami, FL, had his songs appear on The Horror of Dolores Roach (Amazon Prime Video), Gordita Chronicles (Max), and BARDO (Netflix).

1980

1984

VALERIE STACK DODGE B.F.A. of South Dennis, MA, performed in Joseph Vitale’s new play, Sunset Park, at the Theater Project in New Jersey.

DANIEL INDART B.M. of Los Angeles is the founder and CEO of Indart Music and Latin Music Specialists. He licensed a new version of Rubén Blades’ song “Pedro Navaja” for the film The Flash.

1981 CRAIG MALCOR of West Hills, CA,

accomplished his dream of discovering the jazz he had always aspired to write and play, and released his debut album, Between Sounds.

KENNY SELCER B.M. of Carlisle, MA, released an eclectic mix of

1983

1985 MARK FURST B.M. of Pawcatuck, CT, is a Trusted Partner Network–accredited site assessor, offering security audits and consultancy to the media and entertainment industry. TPN is owned by the Motion Picture Association.

JOE MARDIN B.M. of New York City released an album of blues-influenced garage pop originals, Inside Outsider, in April.

A month prior, he released the album’s first video music on the birthday of his father, ARIF MARDIN ’61, ’85H. SCOTT SITES B.F.A. of Palm Springs, CA, has been producing television comedies for almost 20 years. He is currently producing the award-winning show Abbott Elementary.

1986 CHARLES CARLINI B.M. of New York City organized two festivals in the city, the New York Jazz Piano Festival in January and the Guitar Masters Festival in April.

BETO HALE of Woodland Hills, CA, won first prize in the Latin category at the 28th Annual USA Songwriting Competition.

JOHN MAILLOUX B.M. of Westport, MA, is celebrating the 25th anniversary of his recording studio, Bongo Beach Productions.

Over his career, he has earned two Grammy nominations for engineering and production.

1987 CHRISTIAN DIGIROLAMO of Mattituck, NY, is the owner of Two for the Show Media and is the public relations specialist for CINDY BLACKMAN SANTANA ’80, J.R. ROBINSON ’75, SAM NEWSOME B.M. ’89, and others.

SUMMER GARY SILVERMAN B.M.

of Fitzwilliam, NH, is a certified nurse practitioner at Trailside Health and plays horn and viola in the Keene Chamber Orchestra, Fitchburg State University’s Concert Band, and more.

JOSEPH ANTHONY DEROSE B.M. ’98 of San Jose, CA, has

3

been an educator for over 25 years, is a drum mentor at the Rhythm Academy, and is a member of the jazz fusion group Joe DeRose and Amici II.

JONATHAN SMITH B.M. of New York City is wrapping up his second year touring as a music director and conductor for the musical Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations.

IL, was a producer and pianist on the album Hindsight by the Milwaukee-based group the Affinity Trio.

1988

ANOUSCHKA PEARLMAN of Cambridge, MA, was a finalist in the jazz category at the 28th Annual USA Songwriting Competition.

DAWN CARROLL of Medford, MA,

created a 15-song soundtrack inspired by the story of Mary Cardwell Dawson, a Black cultural hero and founding director of the National Negro Opera Company.

MIKE DOBKOWSKI (A.K.A. KARTTIKEYA) B.M. of Princeton, NJ, re-

corded, mixed, and coproduced the Cold Soil Drifters’ album Shanks Pony.

1989 KIYO TAKIYAMA of Tokyo, Japan,

arranged and recorded instrumentals for a children’s album that includes English and French adaptations of Japanese nursery rhymes.

1990 TROY RICHARDSON B.M. of Encino, CA, released the album Mucho Gusto with his band TruckerBomb. On the release day, TruckerBomb opened for Black Oak Arkansas at the legendary Hollywood nightclub Whisky a Go Go. DONALD SUNDAL JR. of Miramar Beach, FL, was nominated for a Grammy as a recording engineer and background vocalist on Sam Bush’s album Radio John: Songs of John Hartford. Sundal has a band, Boukou Groove, and owns Neptone Recording Studio.

1991 PAMELA YORK B.M. of Grayslake,

1993

giate High School & Academy, where he is the band teacher.

DAVE WOOD B.M. of Sherman Oaks, CA, has played guitar for Andra Day, Dua Lipa, Jessie J, and many other artists. He also coarranged Day’s version of “Come Together” for the Formula 1 opening ceremony in Las Vegas.

1996

LISA S. DONAHEY WARREN P.D.M.

LAWRENCE A. DELUCA JR. B.M. of Sahuarita, AZ, completed his third musical, Specific Overtures, about the LGBTQ experience during WWII. The musical was selected for the Dramatists Guild’s Southwest Region Footlights Reading Series.

1995

MARTA KARASSAWA of São Paulo, Brazil, released her first single, “Cama de Gato,” which is on her quintet’s album, Tempo Bom.

1994 THERESA INES COELHO P.D.M. of

Lynn, MA, was a finalist in the jazz category at the 28th Annual USA Songwriting Competition. of Van Nuys, CA, released her fourth album, Dream Me Home for Christmas, in November.

STEVE TAYLOR B.M. of Lake Orion, MI, won a Detroit Music Award for his song “Raining on Christmas” with his band, the Steve Taylor Three. He also won Teacher of the Year at Everest Colle-

STEVE TAYLOR of Newton Grove, NC, released his single “Nothing Special,” which spent three weeks on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary chart, peaking at no. 23.

5 AMY ENGELHARDT ’90 of Los Angeles premiered her album IMPACT at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August. She wrote, produced, and performed the solo storytelling piece featuring her original music.

CHRIS FALSKOW B.M. of Delta, Canada, played bass on four songs on Donn Garrett’s album Retouched: Classics by the Masters.

1999

2000 MARCO CAVINA B.M. of Opera,

will be released this spring.

DAVID LOCKWOOD B.M. ’80, M.M. ‘00 of Plymouth, NH, has been

traveling with a baby grand piano on a trailer and performing at random venues he finds.

DANIEL ZEGADA QUIROGA (A.K.A. ZEGADEX) B.M. of La Paz, Bolivia, is

the leader of the Vacas Jazz Quartet, Kimza Bop, and four jazz trios.

2001 MATTHEW CAHOON B.M. of Oceanside, CA, with ETHAN MATTHEWS B.M. ’02, released the dark electronic track “Seduce Me” with the group Everpresent.

ANDREW KOSS B.M. of Manchester Center, NY, won first prize in the Best Pop category at the 28th Annual USA Songwriting Competition.

DIMITRI LANDRAIN B.M. of New York City released a trio album, Astor’s Place, featuring Kim Robertson (bass) and Keith Balla (drums). The project features nine original compositions inspired by various Latin styles.

ELIAS RINGQUIST of Stockholm, Sweden, wrote the song “天から の手紙,” which was featured in the Japanese stage show Johnny’s World Next Stage in Tokyo.

2002

Italy, was commissioned to transcribe the music of world-renowned acoustic guitarist Gilles Le Bigot. The transcriptions were released with Le Bigot’s new album, Bale.

PETER DELLA CROCE B.M. of Kula, HI, works at Seabury Hall, a private school in Maui. He is also the principal percussionist with the Maui Pops Orchestra and lead drummer for the Isle of Maui Pipe Band.

CLEM FUNG B.M. of Hong Kong, China, cofounded the band RubberBand, which completed its first tour of European, Asian, and American cities. Its album Juntos

2003 UZIEL COLÓN B.M. of Van Nuys, CA, released the EP The 80’z, featuring a reimagination of popular

49

B E R K L E E TO D AY S/S 24

Pulse 7 NOLAN WARDEN ’02 of

West Lafayette, IN, is a full-time lecturer at Purdue University with appointments in the Spanish and music departments.

’80s songs through Latin jazz.

MARTY SILVERSTONE of Studio City, CA, was promoted to president of global sync at Primary Wave Music, overseeing the sync licensing department while driving sync strategy and opportunities for the company’s catalogs.

2004 AARON GREENE B.M. of West Bloomfield, MI, released the debut single “Beast Mode” with the group Beasts & Machines. He also published a guitar practice guide titled Guided Minded: Powerful Habits to Level Up Your Guitar Skills.

DANNY SULLIVAN B.M. of San Francisco, CA, works with the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus, whose mission is to create change and inspire activism through music. He helps with planning and performs on piano.

2005 PHILLIP HILL IV B.M. of Alpharetta,

GA, is a partner at Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani, a top law firm with over 1,200 attorneys and offices in all 50 states.

5 SHANTELL OGDEN B.M. of

Nashville, TN, released the new

country/Americana EP Love All In and toured the U.K. to support its launch. Ogden also created a boutique music supervision and sync company called SOSync.

2006 NATHAN ROSBOROUGH B.M. of Beacon, NY, won a Grammy in 2022 as mastering engineer for Viola Davis’s audiobook, Finding Me.

2007 JACOB HERTZOG B.M. of Fayetteville, AR, was a recipient of the 2023 Jazz Road Creative Residency Grant from the South Arts Organization, funded by the Carnegie Mellon and Doris Duke Foundation. His project will be recording a concerto.

AARON JACKSON B.F.A. of New York City cowrote and costarred in the musical/comedy film Dicks: The Musical, directed

by Larry Charles and featuring Megan Thee Stallion, Megan Mullally, Nathan Lane, and others.

2008 CHELSEY ARCE B.F.A. of New York City was the associate choreographer for the Broadway productions of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and the associate movement director for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

EDOUARD BRENNEISEN B.M. of Studio City, CA, won a Hollywood Music in Media Award in the Best Score for a Video Game category for his work on New World: Rise of the Angry Earth.

MAXIMO FLINT-MORGAN B.M. of Syracuse, NY, was appointed the director of financial aid at Le

50 B E R K L E E TO D AY S/S 24

Moyne College.

CARLY SAKOLOVE B.F.A. of Brooklyn, NY, played Rosie in the 25th anniversary North American tour of Mamma Mia! She was also featured on Netflix’s The Watcher.

2009 KATHRYN BAAR B.M. of West Hollywood, CA, released the debut LP Diving into the Arms of the Divine with the band SPELLES. It features haunting, cinematic, and soulful music.

AARON CHEROF B.M. of Bothell,

WA, composed the soundtrack for the 2023 update for Minecraft: Trails & Tales as well as the soundtrack for Cobalt Core.

ISTVAN CSEH M.M. of Érd, Hungary, composed the ceremonial music for the 2023 World Athletics Championships and the ceremonial music for the 2022 FINA World Championships.

CHRISTIAN SIMONETTA (NÉE EBERLEIN) B.M. of Boston, MA, released

his first career retrospective of original indie pop music, Wormholes: 20 Years of Chris Eberlein.

2010

GABRIELA MARTINA B.M. of Amsterdam, Netherlands, was featured in DownBeat in October for her album Homage to Grämlis.

She plans to release her next album, STATES, this spring.

TAVONNA MILLER B.M. of Brooklyn, NY, is teaching a songwriting class that focuses on basic commercial writing skills in the Music Technology and Entrepreneurship program at Long Island University Post.

ROSANA “ROSK” SASHIDA B.M. of

Condesa, Mexico, has owned

the Rock Lab, a musical instrument boutique in Mexico City, for 10 years. Her 2023 album, Art Collective, has so far received 250,000 plays on Spotify.

BRUNO VALVERDE B.M. of San Ildefonso, Spain, has been a music producer for over a decade for well-known artists such as Ricky Martin, Becky G, C. Tangana, and more. He also cofounded the app The Hit! RASA VITKAUSKAITE B.M. ’08, M.M. ’10 of Acton, MA, released the

solo piano album A Concert Piano Christmas at Boston Symphony Hall, recorded by four-time Grammy Award–winner Brad Michel.

2011 CHRISTINE HUBBARD (A.K.A. XTINE ELISE) B.M. of Stamford, CT, re-

leased her debut children’s album, Toddler Songs (That Don’t Suck), accompanied by activity packets, video content, and hardcover animated lyric books.

FELICITY MAZUR-PARK B.M. of Euless, TX, won the 2024 American Guild of Organists Student Commissioning Project, along with organist David Preston. She is also a new board member for the International Alliance for Women in Music.

TREVOR WALKER B.M. of Astoria, NY, recorded drums with glampunk band the Manimals and released two singles, “Detonate” and “Modern Muse.” MATT GRAFF B.M. ’07 engineered the drums and BENJAMIN SCHRIER B.M. ’20 produced, engineered, and mixed the singles.

2012 EMILY ARROW B.M. of Los Angeles signed a deal with Platoon Records for the children’s album

The Value of Connection

ADRIAN ARREDONDO, AMANTE STUDIOS

Talent plus tenacity led Lu Cárdenas to her management job at TikTok. BY HANNAH CALLAWAY

As a global music program manager at TikTok, LYSA “LU” CÁRDENAS B.M. ’17 elevates artists and their work on one of the world’s most popular and most controversial social media platforms.

It’s the perfect setting to pair her passions for music and technology, as the app and its more than 1 billion active monthly users are a major driver of music streaming and charting within the music industry.

Though the Arizona native grew up writing, singing, and recording music, she decided to pursue a music business/ management major in college. “I realized I had always been the best at the business side of music,” she recalls. “It came really naturally to me.”

Through an elective international music licensing course, she traveled to the Netherlands as part of a student exchange program.

Intrigued by the music industry she discovered in Amsterdam, after returning home she booked a return trip to try to meet with industry leaders and scout for job leads.

At music production agency MassiveMusic, Cárdenas happened to step into an elevator with founder and CEO Hans Brouwer. After a brief conversation, Brouwer told her he was impressed with her tenacity. They stepped off the elevator to attend separate meetings, but

he soon interrupted hers, telling her he was on the line with the New York office and they needed someone exactly like her.

After graduation, Cárdenas joined MassiveMusic as a business development associate.

It was a great place to get her foot in the door, but less than a year later another happenstance offered a new opportunity. She reconnected with Lauren Wirtzer Seawood, then-president of UnitedMasters, when they both returned to Berklee to speak on panels during Career Jam, where they had met a few years prior. Cárdenas became Wirtzer Seawood’s executive assistant and later moved into strategic partnerships. An early project was with American Eagle Outfitters, a brand that aligned well with pop and country music but was an unusual fit for UnitedMasters’ concentration on hip-hop. “I had the opportunity to prove myself by finding and signing new artists to bring to that brand deal,” recalls Cárdenas, who went on to manage partnerships with ESPN, the NBA, Cash App, and more.

This work segued into her current job at TikTok, where she has been at the forefront of new creative endeavors. Cárdenas and her colleagues launched #Rompiendo—a program that highlights Latin music and artists.

Alumni Spotlight Lysa “Lu” Cárdenas

It started as a feature on the app’s Sounds page and grew into a mainstay, with in-person programming and a show on SiriusXM. Last year, she was project manager for TikTok’s In the Mix live music event, which celebrates artists from many genres and has attracted more than 33 million viewers. She was involved in decision-making at every level, including scouting the venue, helping to develop the show’s format, selecting artists, and making choices about ticketing, marketing, and budgeting.

Cárdenas and the global music team carefully watch music trends and artist release calendars to map out

their next strategies, constantly searching for new and inventive ways to support artists on the app. Recently, the team partnered with Grammy Award–winning artist Shakira to promote her latest album, Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran.

Cárdenas’ work is fastpaced and ever-changing. And she wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I’ve been fortunate that these career experiences have all come about through relationship-building, and have grown organically,” she says. “I can move with the current and see where things take me.”

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Pulse 7 SERENA EADES ‘14 of

Vancouver, Canada, toured internationally until 2020 with the band Delhli2Dublin.

She’s also worked on scores for Netflix, Hallmark, and Lifetime networks. In 2019, she opened her own music school.

Sing-Along with Emily Arrow, featuring ERIC LEVA ’14 on the song “Zoomba Zoo.” CASEY DEVINE B.M. of Austin, TX, scored the feature film American Spirit, starring Yasmeen Fletcher and Cooper Roth. This is Devine’s second score with director Christopher Yates.

BRITT MAHRER B.M. of Denver, CO, created Soapbox Therapy, Denver’s overwhelmingly popular two-hour comedy piano show that combines music and psychology.

MATT PHENIX B.M. of Tamworth, NH, is director of audio branding at Elias Audio Branding, a division of Universal Music. He also oversaw production of the 2022 FIFA World Cup theme, the Liberty Mutual audio logo, and more.

2013 STEWART FORGEY B.M. of Ventu-

ra, CA, recorded his first solo album and self-produced it in Dan Horne’s Los Angeles studio.

It combines classic analog recording techniques with modern production.

HOTAE ALEXANDER JANG B.M. of Glendale, CA, was an engineer and musician on Beyoncé’s album Renaissance, which was nominated for Album of the Year and won for Best Dance/Electronic Music Album at the 65th Grammy Awards.

JUSTIN SCHORNSTEIN B.M. of Culver City, CA, wrote over 100 minutes of music for the Antarctica realm of SeaWorld’s theme park in Abu Dhabi. He also worked on the film Mass Ave, now on Max.

ed into the first stages of the formation program with the Order of St. Augustine after completing a Ph.D. in musicology at Brandeis University.

MARCO PERFETTI P.D.M. of Brooklyn, NY, was a finalist in the dance/electronica category at the 28th Annual USA Songwriting Competition.

2015 NELSON BETTENCOURT M.F.A. of London, England, plays Babkak in the British and Irish tour of Disney’s Aladdin. He also retrained as an auxiliary nurse during the pandemic and contributed to the National Health Service at St. Mary’s Hospital.

NORA ALEJANDRA GONZALEZ HERRERA B.M. of Chihuahua, Mexico,

was nominated for a Latin Grammy in 2021 for Best Mariachi/ Ranchero Album and Best Regional Song.

ROSE KANJ B.M. of Brooklyn, NY, is

5 CARLA PATULLO M.M. ’13 of Los Angeles released So She Howls in August. It features Grammynominated vocal ensemble Tonality, the Scorchio Quartet, and Grammy-winning musician Lili Haydn, and won a Grammy in February for Best New Age, Ambient, or Chant Album.

“Slipping Away,” in September.

This song was born during his time at Berklee. pursuing her M.F.A. in acting at the Actors Studio Drama School.

ERIC VON FRICKEN B.M. of Mechanicville, NY, has more than 600,000 followers on his Instagram account and more than 150,000 followers on Spotify. He’s received over 15,000 orders of his sheet music.

2016 ANDRÉS PENELLA B.M. of Mexico City, Mexico, was an orchestrator on Disney’s The Last Warrior; a music editor on Netflix’s I Am Vanessa Guillén; and an orchestrator, conductor, and additional music composer on BuzzFeed Studio’s The Black Demon.

2017 ERNIE BIRD B.M. of Astoria, NY, is a

composer, writer, and actor who oversees music and materials at Theatrical Rights Worldwide. And he’s a composer/lyricist at the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop and guest composer at Columbia University.

CLEMENT DUCHENE of Paris, France, reconnected with several alumni, including MIRELLA COSTA B.M. ’18, and other musicians to arrange and produce a filmed live recording session in one of Paris’s biggest studios.

STEPHANIE JAMES B.M. of Peabody, MA, released her sophomore EP, Down, in September. Collaborators include several Berklee alumni.

MARIE MARTINE BÉDARD B.P.S. of Sainte-Adèle, Canada, created Le Projet Hippocampe (The Hippocampus Project), which combines technological art and popular song and is supported by the Canadian Council for the Arts.

GEOFFREY CARTER B.M. of Lenox, MA, opened the school BeatNest, a creative space where kids can learn about beat-making, experiment with synths, and gain experience with music technology.

NADAV HEZI B.M. of Glendale, CA, coproduces and performs in Emergence: Things Are Not As They Seem, an off-Broadway performance of music, spoken word, and psychedelia, led by artist Patrick Olson.

SETH D. MILLS B.M. of Englewood, NJ, is a music teacher at Bach to Rock in River Edge, NJ.

2019 ALEKSI GODARD of Paris, France, has two RIAA Gold Certifications for his work on “Wild Side” by Normani and Cardi B, and “City of Gods” by Alicia Keys, Fivio Foreign, and Kanye West. He’s an engineer at N.Y.C.’s Hit Factory.

SOFIKO KERESELIDZE M.A. of Tbilisi, Georgia, is the founder and host of the Creative Minds Speaking podcast.

2014

2018

BJORN SHEN B.M. of Beijing, China, is working on 大风吹, produced

by Bill Kong (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). He also composed for 繁城之下 (Ripe Town), a top show in China.

ERIC JAMES HOLLANDER B.M. of Park Ridge, IL, has been accept-

ALAN BALANDRA B.M. of Burbank, CA, released his newest song,

WENYI YUAN B.M. of Shanghai, China, is the cofounder of

52 B E R K L E E TO D AY S/S 24

DAMOYEE’s Ever-Growing World

SHANE MCCORMICK

The recent alumna’s has built a TikTok account that’s racked up millions of likes, all while releasing songs and scoring a Cartoon Network show. BY JENNIFER H. MCINERNEY

From soundtracks to live tracks, DAMOYEE JANAI NEROES B.M. ’23, a multitalented multi-instrumentalist from Dallas, Texas, practices music-making on every level. Known professionally as DAMOYEE, she scored the Cartoon Network’s new show Jessica’s Big Little World, and her TikTok channel, where she posts videos of her building songs live, recently eclipsed 3 million likes.

DAMOYEE began studying music privately at the age of 2, starting with piano, music theory, and composition. Over the years, she’s added keyboards, synthesizers, acoustic and electric guitar, electric bass, ukulele,

dulcimer, melodica, clarinet, cajón, djembe, glockenspiel, bongos, kalimba, and other instruments to her repertoire. When she was 13, she released her first studio recording, a fivetrack EP called Thankful, which she followed at age 16 with a 12-track studio album, From the Bottom of My Heart, and The Whole Truth at 19.

For all of these recordings, she composed the music, wrote the lyrics, and performed the instrumentation and vocals.

Building on her writing and recording experience, DAMOYEE attended Berklee on a full-tuition scholarship, setting her sights on film scoring. “Someone

Alumni Spotlight DAMOYEE

from the Berklee Film Scoring Department came to my high school in 2015,” she recalls.

“After the presentation, I knew Berklee was the college I wanted to go to.”

While still a student, DAMOYEE scored the 2022 horror movie Coming Back for You, along with a handful of independent short films. Putting her scoring degree into practice, she’s since composed music for the inaugural season of the 2023 Cartoon Network series Jessica’s Big Little World.

“The goal for me was to compose some relaxed synth-pop, ’80s-ish-inspired nostalgia to make viewers feel like kids again,” she says. “I had so much fun working on Jessica’s Big Little World. It’s a really great show!”

Her ongoing TikTok success took off in the early days of the pandemic lockdown.

Faced with the prospect of zero live performances for the foreseeable future, DAMOYEE pivoted and refocused her attention on virtual performances, presenting more than 30 shows across various online platforms. Her TikTok account, which grew to more than 200,000 followers, was one of 100 selected from among more than 5,000 to take part in TikTok for Black Creatives, a three-month educational program for content creators.

Her latest hit is her weekly show, Loopcore Live. “I play and layer a bunch of instruments, sing original songs in different parts, and perform arranged covers using a looping machine as part of my setup.”

Among the many highlights of her musical career thus far, DAMOYEE received a Paderewski Medal for piano-playing and music theory from the American College of Musicians and was named a Webby Honoree by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. She has performed at such legendary venues as the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival 50th Anniversary, the Governors Ball Music Festival in New York City, the main stage at the House of Blues in Dallas, and the Hotel Cafe in Hollywood.

DAMOYEE recently wrapped a series of recording collaborations with Berklee students, and unveiled a new song, “little liar,” along with an accompanying music video. Her latest Berklee collab is called “BICY (Boy I’m Craving You),” a ballad she coproduced with ANNIE ELISE DICKINSON ’22. In the months to come, DAMOYEE plans to release additional songs and head out on tour.

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Final Cadence

LEE ELIOT BERK of Phoenix, AZ, died October 21. He was 81. Son of Berklee founder Lawrence Berk and namesake of the college, Berk served as Berklee’s vice president from 1971 to 1979 and became the college’s second president in 1979, succeeding his father. He held that post for 25 years, retiring in 2004.

During his time in Berklee’s leadership, Berk oversaw the development of the Berklee Performance Center and established Berklee City Music and the Berklee International Network. He was also a member of the group that founded Boston Arts Academy, the city’s first high school for the visual and performing arts. Berk leaves his wife of 48 years, Susan; daughters, Nancy and Lucy; and several grandchildren.

KEVIN MICHAEL of Dudley, MA, died November 16. He was 58.

Michael was the director of lab operations in Information Technology Services. He joined Berklee in 2001 as a lab monitor in the Professional Writing Division. Michael leaves his mother, Gail; father and his father’s wife, David and Rusty; brother, Karl; and sister, Lori.

MIKE IHDE B.M. ’72 of Milton, MA, died December 5. He was 76.

Ihde taught guitar at Berklee for 45 years, serving as a fac-

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Dasheng Entertainment Group.

2020 RYAN CLURE of Woburn, MA, was a finalist in the rock category at the 28th Annual USA Songwriting Competition.

LINA COOPER B.M. (A.K.A. POLINA BONDARENKO) of Kyiv, Ukraine,

ulty member and for a time as assistant chair of the Guitar Department, and retiring in 2017.

He played with steel guitarist Buddy Emmons, performed with Joan Baez, and gave lessons to Aerosmith’s Joe Perry. He also played guitar in the theme song for Home Again with Bob Vila and authored several influential music books.

was a finalist in the rock category at the 28th Annual USA Songwriting Competition.

TOM PLSEK of Woburn, MA, died February 12. He was 76. Plsek joined the faculty at Berklee in 1972 and later served as a department chair for more than 40 years, first leading the Trombone/Low Brass Department, then the consolidated Brass Department, until his retirement.

Plsek focused on recruiting world-class faculty to build a stylistically diverse department.

He leaves his wife, Professor Stephany Tiernan, chair emerita of the Piano Department; son, Ian; brother, Rob; and grandchild.

ANDREW MAXFIELD M.M. of Provo, UT, had his piece What About the Duck, a sequel to Sergei Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, premiered at the Utah Symphony. He has been commissioned by Utah Opera and won the King’s Singers New Music Prize.

PAUL SCHMELING of South Easton, MA, died February 15. He was 85. Schmeling joined the faculty at Berklee in 1961, while still a student. He went on to chair the Piano Department for 40 years.

In 2002, he developed Berklee Online’s first online course, Music Theory 101, and taught for Berklee Online until just two months before his death.

Schmeling leaves his wife, Jacqueline; sons, Douglas and Daniel; and granddaughter.

KIM LOGAN B.P.S. of New London, NH, released the single “Evil” on her label, Swamp Thing Records.

This is her first release since the 2020 LP Shadow Work, which she made with her band, the Silhouettes.

5 SONGAH CHAE M.M. ’20 of

Incheon, South Korea, released the new album In the Beginning with the SongAh Chae Trio featuring SAMUEL KERI B.M. ’21, M.M. ’22 on bass and JOSHUA WHEATLEY B.M. ’16, M.M. ’17 on drums.

PHIL FARNSWORTH (LEFT)/COURTESY OF ADRIAN ANANTAWAN (RIGHT)

JOHN ANDREWS of Berlin, MA, died October 11. He was 96. A proud alumnus of Schillinger House (the institution that would become Berklee), he attended the school on the GI Bill after serving in the military during World War II. Andrews was a professional musician, playing both guitar and bass in several bands. He also taught at the Pampalone School of Music and John R. Andrews Studio.

Coda (CONTINUED FROM P. 56)

ments to play a virtual musical instrument.

This work led me to found the Music Inclusion Program that helps young children with disabilities play in an orchestral setting after school. At Berklee, I lead the Music Inclusion Ensemble, where students with disabilities, and their peers who support disability causes, play music together—we just held its debut concert in April. There are also the ongoing, incredible efforts of my colleagues like RHODA BERNARD (Berklee Institute for Accessible Arts Education) and JAE EDELSTEIN (Accessibility Resources for Students), who inspire me every day, creating more inclusive classroom spaces for all.

As Berklee continues to support accessibility causes, we are envisioning a better future for arts and culture and making progress on answering the essential questions of what it means to live equitably, generously, and beautifully in this world.

ROBERT SCOTT WALLACE B.M. of Los Angeles provided additional music and assisted on the film scores for Landscape with Invisible Hand, The Burial, and Breaking. He is also working on a Disney+ series.

2021 KWAKU SARPONG ADU-GYAMFI M.A.

of Los Angeles leads social media and content strategy for Iconic Artists Group’s roster, which includes Cher, the Beach Boys, Nat King Cole, and others.

AHMAD ALJARRAH M.M. of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, writes Saudi common rhythms and teaches students how to play Saudi polyrhythms independently on drums.

2022 CHEN LIU B.M. of Guangzhou, China, is songwriter and lyricist for the Chinese TV show Love Under the Full Moon.

1 SAM RUFF M.M. ’21 of North

Hollywood, CA, is the drummer for the 2024 tour of The Life and Music of George Michael. He is also touring with The Simon & Garfunkel Story.

BRITTANY MCCORRISTON B.M. of Milwaukee, WI, is a music publication editor. She published her first book of arrangements, Piano Songs for the Very Beginner, available on Amazon and HalLeonard.com.

of Music and Arts in Boston; over 70 percent of students have earned ABRSM certificates and many compete and perform internationally.

DILLAN SCHMITZ B.A. of Calgary, Canada, is an award-winning composer and sound designer working on the games Dark Age Dinos, Romanticized Dreams of a Post-Apocalyptic Cowpoke, and Crazy Kung Fu VR, and the film Mixed Signals.

HENG-YAO CHENG B.M. of Redondo Beach, CA, does audio post-production for movies and films, and manages up-and-coming artists.

MAYA KARLI TAYLOR B.M. of Los Angeles wrote and released the song “Never Get with Them,” produced and arranged by Maxamillion Haunt and Nick Lewert.

LIGIA NGO VAN B.M. of Brighton,

MA, cofounded the Apollo School

2023

ZHANG DONGLIANG M.A. of Madrid, Spain, launched Chapter 2 Entertainment, which offers artists market entry strategies and booking services.

JUNG HYUN KIM B.M. of Seoul, South Korea, founded the company Artive Sound, which works on music and special effects for games, TV shows, films, escape rooms, and more.

ADRIAN ANANTAWAN AS A CHILD WITH ONE OF HIS FIRST MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS

ADRIAN ANANTAWAN IS AN ASSISTANT PROFESSOR IN THE STRING DEPARTMENT.

55

B E R K L E E TO D AY S/S 24

Coda

Working to Make Music More Accessible to All

A D R I A N A N A N TA W A N A S S I TA N T P R O F E S S O R

I was born with a congenital defect and have lived my entire life without the use of my right hand. When I was nine years old, our music teacher informed us that we would be playing the recorder for next year’s music class—an instrument I was inherently unable to play. Disability was not only a social label that was implicitly attached to my character; it was also a ceiling placed over my physical and cognitive development by my environment—in this case, a combination of the class budget, the attitude of this particular teacher, and the tool she wanted us all to use to play music.

My parents and I considered the possibilities for alternatives. I chose the violin, not necessarily because of its practicality but because it made the most beautiful sound I had heard. With the help of biomedical engineers in Toronto, I was able to hold my bow with

an adaptive device known as a “spatula.”

Through this piece of plaster and aluminum, I was able to connect with and understand the world in a deeper, richer way.

As a classical musician, I believe that we are not necessarily stewards of the past but cultural practitioners and changemakers who push the boundaries of technique and expression. We also work to address key social problems of our time so that careers like mine are not seen as exceptional but as possible for all. The world is changing in terms of the possibilities available to musicians with disabilities, and new technologies allow them to play music even though they may not be able to physically pick up an instrument. For instance, I spearheaded a project in Canada that enabled a musician to play chamber music with his peers by using only his head move- (CONTINUED ON P. 55)

56 B E R K L E E TO D AY S/S 24

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