Berklee College of Music

The Berklee College of Music is an independent music college in Boston, Massachusetts.

The school has currently ( 2009) approximately 4,000 students and 238 full-time and 291 part-time teachers. The annual fee is about 33,600 U.S. dollars. Berklee has a high share of foreign students; There are about 22.8 %, coming from more than 70 countries.

History

Berklee was founded in 1945 by Lawrence Berk as Schillinger House of Music, named after his teacher Joseph Schillinger. The original purpose of the school was to teach the Schillinger composition system. After an extension of the curriculum of the school in 1954 Berk changed the name to Berklee School of Music after his son Lee Berk and in allusion to the name of the famous University of Berkeley. When the school received its accreditation in 1973, the name was changed to Berklee College of Music. The founder's son and namesake, Lee Berk, but even never studied music.

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

Since the fall semester of 2006, all students must pass an entrance examination to get admission to the school. This is a departure from the principle of open admission of the school, the applied it for many years. The rate of acceptance at the Berklee College amounted in 2009 to about 44 % of nearly 3,200 applicants. The entrance exam may also be taken at partner institutions abroad. For the German -speaking countries this is possible at the Jazz & Rock schools Freiburg.

Courses

The Berklee College offers twelve different courses. These are performance, composition, jazz composition, music production and engineering, film music, Musik-Geschäft/Management, Music Synthesis, Contemporary Writing and Producing, Music Education, Songwriting, Music Therapy and Professional Music.

Some of the teachers or included Gary Burton, Steve Swallow, Joanne Brackeen, James Williams and Esperanza Spalding ( who also studied there ).

Famous Alumni

The school can boast a series of prominent faculty, staff, guest artists and former students. Among them are about ( senior year in parentheses):

Evidence

Schillinger-System James Williams (musician) John Abercrombie (guitarist) Grammy Award Dave Douglas (trumpeter) Singing Stuart Hamm Kizzy McHugh Bass guitar Danilo Pérez Steve Smith (musician) Tommy Smith (saxophonist) BT (musician)
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