{"id":126,"date":"2008-09-29T11:10:25","date_gmt":"2008-09-29T15:10:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp\/2008\/09\/berklee_college_a_jazz_educati\/"},"modified":"2011-04-28T16:34:23","modified_gmt":"2011-04-28T20:34:23","slug":"berklee_college_a_jazz_educati","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/2008\/09\/berklee_college_a_jazz_educati.html","title":{"rendered":"Berklee College, Boston: a jazz education mecca"},"content":{"rendered":"

Young people flock to Berklee College<\/a> in Boston expecting practical education in the most under-capitalized of arts: jazz and related forms of contemporary popular music. With some 4000 enrollees pursuing\u00c2\u00a0BA programs in composition, film scoring, production and engineering,\u00c2\u00a0music business\/management, songwriting, performance, etc., Berklee is by far the largest of 160 institutions in the U.S. and another dozen internationally\u00c2\u00a0offering degrees and\/or certificates in jazz studies, as detailed in the current (October) issue of Down Beat.<\/p>\n

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Berklee is a lively place that has involved notable musicians as faculty<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0and produced an impressive number of famed alumni<\/a>. Being in the thick of it, though, you’re bound to wonder: What’s the point of this jazz education?<\/p>\n
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During my long day at Berklee last week I addressed smart students and faculty in five separate meetings on topics of reviewing, interviewing, biography, travel writing and “effective communication.” The attentions of those I faced as well as the palpable creative energies in the streets and classrooms of the burgeoning urban campus did happily encourage your humble culture vulture. And yet I also worry: What do these bright kids think they’ll do with their costly educations? Can the world employ several thousand grads every year whose skills focus on the instigation of sound? The greatest of jazz’s greats — Morton, Armstrong, Bechet, Dodds, Beiderbecke, Hines, Ellington, Basie, Hawkins, Young, Benny Carter, Holiday, Goodman, Parker, Gillespie, Monk and the rest — didn’t go to school but worked at jazz from an early age. Do programs like Berklee’s prolong adolescence, indulge self-absorbtion, or train youth to become productive citizens and professionals?\u00c2\u00a0<\/div>\n
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I was visiting as a guest of the Liberal Arts department, hosted\u00c2\u00a0by\u00c2\u00a0Fred Bouchard<\/a>, the school’s\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0principal teacher of writing and a published connoisseur of wine, food, birding and technology as well as music, so I enjoyed the royal treatment. But aside from the upbeat buzz and evident well-designed comfort of the many newly renovated practice rooms, what impressed me most was the sense of hands-on work being done everywhere — by musicians playing music, yes, but also by musicians turning their minds to literary matters:\u00c2\u00a0<\/div>\n
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