I may be biased but I do think Berklee is the best music school. I have friends that attended USC, CalARTS, Juilliard, New England Conservatory etc....and I just realized that we talk about music, work, and life all the time but we’ve not talked about that green period when we were students. How attending our particular music school shaped us.
We may all agree that music school was intense and if you make it out alive and don’t drop out, you feel like you’ve survived some sort of battle.
The Berklee community strongly makes a stance that music can save the world. Music unites people and it’s a way that people express themselves that you don’t need a translator to appreciate one another. Music also grows people to have a sensitive heart.
The school not only teaches performance, composition, and music history but also music business, sound engineering, and music therapy. The President of Berklee, Roger Brown, is so committed to music changing the world that he’s done so much to lift the school and it’s students, I wonder if other school presidents are as impressive. He’s retiring next year but he has a way of being a spectacular comet. I’m sure he’ll be up to more incredible things before he fades off. His works before coming to the school we’re mostly philanthropy projects to educate the poor, feed the hungry, and help families in crisis. It’s no surprise that he raised the scholarship fund exponentially to support upperclassmen students with good grades to remain at school with music school tuition nearly fully covered. If a student needs help, they simply need to ask. How many school presidents feel it is terrible for a student to feel stressed out over debt burdens? Music for the world is important and making sure his students get launched is his priority.
Can you imagine how different people would be if they’ve had music education? Our president, police officers, teachers?
Kevin Eubanks brought that question to us as our keynote speaker. He shared his Berklee student stories, his time on the Jay Leno show, and his visit performing for the troops in Afghanistan. His bottom line was that studying music shapes a human being so poignantly that it ought to be a core study available at all schools. Music demands and creates a specific energy from people that cannot be produced elsewhere. He’s an introvert. “Hermit” was his word for himself. He said if it wasn’t for music, he wouldn’t have connected to others and the world as well as he did.
Maybe music can help bring us closer to world peace.
Take music lessons for at least a year. You will be transformed and the world be feel less dreary.
I know from the conversations I have with my students, that they are growing to be fine human beings that I am proud to know. They hear details from trained ears. They choose their emotions to express themselves and they forgive themselves when things don’t come out the way they meant and they try again.
Don’t we all just want to express ourselves as beautifully as possible and be heard and appreciated?
JNET
