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Berklee College of Music

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Berklee College of Music, founded in 1945, is an independent music college in Boston, Massachusetts. It has an enrollment of approximately 3,900 students and a 2004 faculty of approximately 430. Berklee offers a fully accredited four-year baccalaureate degree or diploma.

History

Berklee was founded by Lawrence Berk and was originally named Schillinger House of Music, after his teacher Joseph Schillinger. The original purpose of the school was to highlight the Schillinger System of musical harmony and composition. After expansion of the school's curriculum in 1954, Berk changed the name to Berklee School of Music after his son Lee Berk and as a reference to the famous University of California, Berkeley (even today, the two schools are often confused with each other or thought to be related). When the school received its accreditation, the name was changed to Berklee College of Music in 1973. Lee Berk never formally studied music, instead focusing on Business and Real Estate Law; however, his daughter Lucy Berk is an alumna of the college.

At the time of its founding, almost all music schools focused primarily on classical music. The original mission of Berklee was to provide formal training in jazz, rock, and other contemporary music not available at other music schools.

Admission requirements for applicants include a minimum two years of formal music study on their primary instrument and/or significant practical experience in musical performance, a diploma from an accredited secondary school with satisfactory marks in college-preparatory courses, and, for degree candidates only, satisfactory scores on either the SAT, ACT, or TOEFL (for international students). In 2007, a live audition was added as an admission requirement. This is a change from the school's open-admittance policy it used for many years. Berklee's acceptance rate for prospective students is now 32%.

Athletics

Since Berklee is a music school, athletics are not a focus of campus life. If students want to play sports, they can sign up for NCAA Division III athletics at Emerson College due to Berklee's membership in the Professional Arts Consortium. Students are also offered discounted or no-cost memberships at some nearby fitness centers, like the Boston Kung Fu Tai Chi institute and the Tennis and Racquet club, as part of Berklee's LiveWell program.

In February 2006, several students got together and organized the Berklee Ice Cats, an ice hockey team named after former Massachusetts team, the Worcester Ice Cats, that is Berklee's first official athletic institution. The Ice Cats first competed in the New England Senior Hockey League in the 2006–2007 season. It will begin its first official intercollegiate season in the American Collegiate Hockey Association (ACHA) in 2007-2008. The team practices in Cambridge. Berklee's debut into the world of intercollegiate sports was on September 16, 2006, against Emerson College for the inaugural Boylston Cup, emerging victorious.

In 2007, the Ice Cats signed on former Boston Bruin and two-time All-Star John McKenzie as head coach.

Demographics and statistics

Berklee has a large percentage of undergraduate students from outside the U.S.—23 percent—representing more than 70 countries. Women compose 26.9 percent of the student body. Domestic minority enrollment is African-American, 6.8 percent; Latino, 6.5 percent; Asian-American, 3.3 percent. The five countries that supply the largest percentage of foreign students to Berklee are Japan, Korea, Canada, Mexico, and the United Kingdom. The school's current president, Roger H. Brown, was inaugurated in 2004.

Berklee offers three full time semesters per year: Fall, Spring, and Summer. The Fall and Spring semesters are 16 weeks in length, whereas the Summer semester is compacted into 12 weeks.

There are 230 acoustic pianos and more than 1,000 guitar principals at Berklee. The average class size is 11. The holdings of the college's Stan Getz Media Center and Library include more than 20,000 recordings, 20,000 books, 17,000 musical scores, and 6,000 lead sheets.

Facilities

  • 17 buildings in Boston's Back Bay neighborhood
  • 3 dormitories in the Back Bay and Fenway-Kenmore neighborhoods
  • A practice and rehearsal building in Boston's Allston-Brighton neighborhood
  • 1 Internet radio station: The BIRN - Berklee Internet Radio Network. Four channels of music, special events, interviews, concerts, clinics, and alumni music. http://thebirn.com

Majors

Alumni

Some Alumni of the college are notable figures in the music industry. Some notable artists that have studied at Berklee include producer Quincy Jones, pianists Bruce Hornsby, Keith Jarrett, and Diana Krall, guitarists John Petrucci, Steve Vai, Kevin Eubanks and John Mayer, songwriters Aimee Mann and Melissa Etheridge, film scorers Alan Silvestri and Howard Shore, jazz saxophonist Branford Marsalis, danish producer and jazz drummer Thomas Blachman and techno artist "BT" (Brian Transeau). Trey Parker, the co-creator of the animated series South Park, attended Berklee with an interest in film scoring, but transferred to University of Colorado to complete his degree. Juan Luis Guerra, famous merengue/bachata singer from the Dominican Republic is also an alum. He is arguably one of the most famous and most popular merengue singers in the world. Wang Lee Hom, a very successful Asian singer, attended a semester at Berklee in the Professional Music program to further his studies.

Some people in the music industry have been awarded honorary doctorates from Berklee, including songwriter Melissa Etheridge, singer Chaka Khan, and the inventor of the Moog synthesizer, Robert Moog. Bluegrass legend Ricky Skaggs will be awarded an honorary doctorate on March 18, 2008, during a performance at the Grand Ole Opry.

References

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