Sustaining Notes: From Grammy Award Winner Brazilian Singer Luciana Souza To Berklee Students

Luciana Souza

Edited text of Video Being at home has had me thinking. Thinking about how everything was interrupted. Almost violently, in some cases. If you were a student living in the dorms, you had to very quickly pack your things and…

A Beautiful View from the Berklee Bridge, Flowing with Music, Energy, and Glimpses of a Fruitful Future

A Reflection by Dr. Bill Banfield

I have often felt that, with my art, I could strike a blow against mediocrity. Thumb my nose at power, hate, and injustice. Lift a story that inspires joy. Pull from life a creative melody that guarantees a sigh and wonders about beauty. Build a room where everyone could find a friend. Change the mind of a young person to find a better truth for themselves . . . Wow, that would be a goal to work, live, and die for, happily having tried. Well, after being at Berklee for fifteen years, that is what I feel I can see forthcoming. I say that because this is a school that potentially will change the future due to talent, energy, and the power of music ...

Music in Islamic Philosophy

Peter Adamson

Despite his importance as the first Muslim intellectual to make use of ideas from the Greek philosophical tradition, we don’t know much about the life of al-Kindi. We do know roughly when he lived (the ninth century CE), that he…

Musical Setting of Sara Pirkle Hughes’s “What Hurts”

Neil Olmstead

“What Hurts” is based on a poem by Sara Pirkle Hughes. It is the first piece in a song cycle of five art songs for mezzo soprano and piano that I composed within the last year and recorded this past…

The String Revolution: Beux’s Etude pour violin solo & The Responsibility of the Composer/Performer

Sean Brennan

It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences -Audre Lorde, Our Dead Behind Us: Poems Within the confines of the orchestra, the violin’s role as both a solo instrument…

Against The Odds: an Exploration of Bulgarian Rhythms

Vessela Stoyanova

The overwhelming majority of Bulgarian folk music happens to be in odd meters–typically 5, 7, 9 and 11, with occasional combinations of those creating 13, 15, 17 and larger. Some musicologists have linked these odd meters to the history…

Which Way do the Trade Winds Blow?

Rick McLaughlin

Two Case Studies Examining the Voyage of Jazz to Africa Abstract: Over the past century, American jazz recordings have transformed from the music of New Orleans to at least 13 unique sub-genres. Given the importance of West African music on…

T. Allen LeVines

Ame-no-Uzume-no-Mikoto

When is there not music? ... bursts of morning sun or night shadows in a full moon rising ... thundering spring waterfalls or silent mountain snows in winter ...

Aliya Cycon Project

Interview by Xingyu

Aliya Cycon is an 8th Semester CWP major at Berklee. Her band, Aliya Cycon Project, just released their first album called “We Will Be Light” this past spring. Y—Xingyu Yao A—Aliya Cycon Y: Hi Aliya, Congratulations on your first album…

Preab Meadar – transforming Poetry to Dance

Tadgh Dall Ó hUigín (Blind Taigue Higgins), a professional poet in 16th Century Gaelic Ireland, had seen two patrons suffer ignominy and defeat before he wrote The Lion and Fox for his patron Brian MacGuire in 1588 AD. This poem…