On this page, you can find the Culminating Experience (CE) Projects for all graduate students from the Berklee College of Music master’s program Global Jazz from 2015 – present. Click on any title for more information and access to the full paper and other deliverables (if available).
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Embraced by the Flowing Water: Oud as a Queer Ontology
Bahar Badieitabar
2025Embraced by the Flowing Water: Oud as a Queer Ontology, is a multi- composition, research-based artistic exploration that imagines the oud as a fluid, shape- shifting identity, and queer body. Drawing from Sara Ahmed’s Queer Phenomenology, which explores how bodies orient and reorient in space, the project examines the oud’s historical disappearance from Iran, its transformation, and its evolving role in creative and jazz music. Through original compositions, critical research, arrangements, and collaborative performances, the project repositions the oud as both a soloist and a rhythm section instrument. Each piece engages with themes of memory, disorientation, migration, and identity. This project contributes to the oud’s growing presence in creative and jazz music while also initiating a pedagogical effort to transcribe and arrange early Iranian classical music repertoire, expanding the instrument’s future possibilities.
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Marimba: Echoes of the Jungle's Heartbeat
Samuel Cerra
2025This project emerged from a moment of introspection and self-discovery that strengthened my vision of unity and gave me a renewed sense of purpose. Its significance extends beyond my career, touching on my artistry and personal identity—driven by a deep need to reconnect with my cultural roots. It became a means to challenge long-standing stereotypes and the feeling of shame often associated with folkloric traditions, particularly the dialect and music of my region in Southern Italy and the traditional music of the Colombian Pacific coast. I dedicated my entire master’s program to exploring music, language, and instruments—such as the marimba de chonta—that are often overlooked in academic contexts. By placing these cultural narratives in dialogue, the project seeks to create new common grounds, encourage stylistic innovation, and build a repertoire rooted in both cultural preservation and creative evolution. It also offers an alternative to traditions that have been marginalized or fossilized by historical and social discrimination. This experience deeply reshaped my artistic vision, learning process, and worldview. It marked the beginning of a lifelong journey of growth, grounded in curiosity and empathy. Above all, It serves as both a personal and collective call to action for musicians to use their art in the service of global understanding and transformation.
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Ghost Stories: Towards a Surrealist, Black Feminist Body Politic
Devon Gates
2025Drawing from Black feminist and radical thinkers including Audre Lorde, David Drake, Nikki Giovanni, bell hooks, Toni Morrison, and Octavia Butler, this project explores themes of embodiment and liberation, through the lens of a "ghost perspective", asking: how can the catharsis of dealing with feeling “unalive” as Black bodies actually help one feel more embodied, less alone, and better able to live authentically?
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No Land's Man
Matt Greenwood
2025No Land’s Man is a full-length album and artistic exploration of cultural identity, heritage, and musical synthesis. Born and raised in Zimbabwe but of European descent, I navigate the tension of not fully identifying with either African or Western culture. This project merges traditional Zimbabwean mbira music and African percussion with contemporary jazz composition and improvisation, seeking to create a new musical language rooted in reverence and authenticity. Rather than presenting a traditional or superficial fusion, I aimed to integrate African sounds as essential compositional elements while reflecting my personal experience of cultural ambiguity. The process involved the construction of a custom chromatic mbira to extend the instrument’s harmonic possibilities. The resulting nine-track album marks the beginning of a lifelong journey to foster musical dialogue between traditions and communities and has been transformative both artistically and personally.
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Haiti, and the sense of being!
Esli Durano Honore
2025This project, Haiti, and the Sense of Being, explores Haitian identity through the intersection of music and traditional cuisine. By composing five original pieces inspired by iconic Haitian dishes like Soup Joumou, Dlo Fre, Pikliz, Fresko ak Pistach, and Legim.I used food as a metaphor to address themes of freedom, struggle, resilience, and unity. Initially intended as a celebration of culture, the project organically evolved into a deeper reflection on social injustices and historical memory, connecting musical storytelling with lived experience. Drawing from compositional techniques learned at Berklee Global Jazz Institute and rooted in Haitian rhythms, each piece fuses traditional and contemporary styles in ways that express complex narratives. Through this process, I not only embraced my cultural roots but discovered music’s power to inspire awareness and healing. The overwhelmingly positive response revealed the potential of the project to spark dialogue across generations. Looking ahead, I plan to expand this work into an immersive concert-album experience and cultural outreach tour. This project redefined my approach to music-making, affirming its role as a vessel for truth, identity, and transformation.
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Confronting Negativity: Self-Directed Recovery through the Utilization of Music
Yoona Kim
2025This Culminating Experience project, "Confronting Negativity: Self-Directed Recovery through the Utilization of Music," explores how music can facilitate healing from physical injury, racial trauma, and emotional distress. Combining traditional Korean music and global jazz practices, I employed the ajaeng and jazz idioms to compose and perform original works. The project stemmed from personal and systemic challenges I experienced as a musician, particularly overuse injury and racial discrimination. As an Asian artist in the United States, I encountered both explicit and subtle racism, which significantly impacted my emotional well-being and creative voice. To support my recovery, I incorporated physical therapy, Alexander Technique training, and daily meditation. These practices helped restore physical function and supported emotional resilience while enhancing musical sensitivity. I developed four original compositions as central reflections of this journey: “The World Where I Want to Live In” conveys hope and cultural identity; “Illusion Kaleidoscope” explores meditative perception; “Intelli Coocoo” critiques covert racism; and “Honk & Riffs” reclaims public space through sound. This project contributes to global jazz and music therapy by proposing a holistic model of self-directed recovery and musical activism. It reaffirms music’s power as a tool for healing, cultural expression, and community engagement.
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Of History and Hope: Envisioning a Safer Future for Our Children
Anya Menk
2025“America has become so accustomed to mass shootings that we’ve developed a routine. There’s the shock, the horror, the memorials, the grief. But for those who survive such horrific attacks, little about life is routine anymore” (Bale, 2024). Since the Columbine shooting in 1999, 390,000 students have experienced gun violence at school (Sandy Hook Promise). School shootings are defined as any event where “a gun is fired, brandished (pointed at a person with intent), or a bullet hits school property, regardless of the number of victims, day, time or reason” (K-12 School Shooting Database). Guns are the leading cause of death for American children and teens, with an average of seven young people dying from guns every day (Sandy Hook Promise). This includes suicides, accidental homicides and intentional homicides. The level of grief, despair and anger felt by people affected by school shootings is incomprehensible. It is simply not possible to grasp the emotional and physical toll that is felt by a parent who has lived through the unimaginable. I had a discussion over the phone with an anonymous parent who lost their young daughter in a school shooting when I first began this project. I will never forget this phone call. Just two minutes of conversation with a person whom I just met shook me to my core. I explained the mission of the project and asked if they would like me to compose a song in memory of their daughter. They said the following phrase that completely broke me: “I am trying my hardest to get back to a normal life. I don’t want songs in memory of her, because I am trying to forget.” Of History and Hope: Envisioning a Safer Future for Our Children, my culminating experience project as part of the Master’s program at the Berklee Global Jazz Institute, seeks to provide some semblance of relief for individuals who have experienced pain one cannot begin to fathom. In an effort to normalize jazz music as a tool to address some of the pressing issues in society, Of History and Hope incorporates in-depth-research and first-hand experience to raise awareness to the issue of school shootings and how we can prevent them. Most importantly, this project provides music for Chris Cordova, a friend personally impacted by the Uvalde school shooting on May 24th, 2022.
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The Enigma of Misunderstood Minds
Estefania Núñez Villamandos
2025The Enigma of Misunderstood Minds is a musical project that explores schizophrenia through original compositions inspired by the lives of my two uncles. Blending classical music, Afro-Cuban traditions, and Global Jazz, the project seeks to translate the emotional and psychological landscapes of schizophrenia into sound, while challenging stigma and encouraging empathy. Each piece functions as a sonic portrait, drawing from Berklee Global Jazz Institute concepts such as zero gravity, windows, and comprovisation to create a space where structure and improvisation coexist. Voice, rhythm, and layered textures work together to evoke the fragmented yet rich inner world of misunderstood minds. Looking ahead, the project envisions an interdisciplinary expansion, collaborating with dancers, filmmakers, and visual artists, and exploring its potential within therapeutic and community-based settings, where art and mental health intersect Ultimately, this work has deepened my belief in music as a tool for healing, advocacy, and connection.
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Rising from the Roots: A Call for Empowerment in My Home Country, Slovakia
Mária Pembery
2025In her Culminating Experience Rising from the Roots, Slovak flutist, singer, and composer Mária Reháková fused Slovak folk music with Global Jazz to explore national identity, cultural resilience, and music as a tool for social change. The project involved in-depth research into Slovak folklore and the contemporary political context, compositional development using jazz techniques such as rhythmic layering, zero gravity, and comprovisation, and collaboration with a diverse ensemble of improvising musicians. Visual artworks created in partnership with Slovak painter Pavol Rehák accompanied the project, contributing to its multidisciplinary character. The work resulted in five original compositions, a studio recording, and a public presentation combining music and visual storytelling. It demonstrated how traditional music can be reimagined through a global jazz language, offering a new model for culturally rooted, socially engaged jazz. The project also led to significant personal transformation, deepening the artist’s understanding of Slovak heritage and the healing potential of music. It now lays the foundation for future educational initiatives that will guide young Slovak musicians to explore their cultural identity through creative expression and contemporary global forms.
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Sunflower of Europe: The Resilience of Ukrainian Nature through the Prism of Music, Art, and Poetry
Klara Poznachowska
2025Sunflower of Europe: The Resilience of Ukrainian Nature through the Prism of Music, Art, and Poetry is a multimedia composition project that explores Ukrainian identity, resistance, and cultural survival in the face of war. Drawing on jazz composition, Ukrainian folk music, visual media, and the poetry of Taras Shevchenko, the project reflects a personal journey shaped by the artist’s half-Ukrainian heritage and emotional response to the ongoing conflict. Through original compositions, improvisation, and curated imagery, the work expresses both collective trauma and enduring hope, positioning art as a vessel for memory, empathy, and healing. Bridging disciplines, it aims to foster intercultural understanding while honoring the strength of a nation and the quiet resilience passed down through generations.
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Sounds of Borderlands: Music and Identity in the tri-border region of Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina
Ricardo Ramírez Díaz
2025This reflection paper explores the culminating experience project Music and Identity: Sounds of a Multicultural Life, a suite of original compositions inspired by the cultural hybridity of the triple border between Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina. Drawing on personal narrative, regional history, and global jazz idioms, the project examines themes of identity, memory, resilience, and social justice. Each composition reflects a specific aspect of life in the borderlands, ranging from the trauma of the War of the Triple Alliance to the everyday blending of languages, rhythms, and traditions. This paper discusses the project’s development, outcomes, and the creative revisions required throughout the process. It also outlines possible future directions, including interdisciplinary expansion and community engagement. Ultimately, the project contributes to contemporary music education by challenging dominant jazz paradigms and advocating for culturally grounded, inclusive artistic practices. The experience profoundly impacted the student, fostering artistic growth, intercultural fluency, and a renewed sense of purpose as a musician, educator, and storyteller.
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Strings of Identity: The convergence of Choro and Global Jazz in the 10-String Mandolin
Ian Reis Coury
2025This project explores the innovative combination of Brazilian Choro and Global Jazz through the 10-string mandolin, reflecting my personal and musical identity while opening new sonic dimensions for the instrument. Motivated by a desire to expand approaches in Choro and mandolin with the creative freedom of Jazz, I composed seven original pieces that blend Choro’s melodic tradition with Global Jazz concepts, including Tetrachords, Zero Gravity, Comprovisation, and Fear Training. The research explores the mandolin’s polyphonic potential, new harmonic pathways, and rhythmic complexity, proposing a fresh approach to interpreting and performing the instrument. A meaningful experience at the Panama Jazz Festival reinforced my understanding of music as a tool for social impact, cultural exchange, and education, inspiring the project’s commitment to these dimensions. Additionally, the project addresses Choro’s historically male-dominated tradition by advocating for inclusion, mentorship, and gender equity in musical spaces. This work contributes to the field by offering new techniques, creative models, and educational resources that encourage dialogue, empathy, and collaboration, showing how tradition can be honored while inviting innovation to build a more connected and socially conscious musical community.
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Echoes of the Unspoken: A Musical Exploration of Women's Struggles Beyond Structural Inequality, and the Intangible Dimensions of Oppression
Elizabeth Sinn
2025The following culminating experience project, Echoes of the Unspoken: A Musical Exploration of Women's Struggles Beyond Structural Inequality, and the Intangible Dimensions of Oppression, aims to bring awareness to the complex and lesser-discussed ways in which the patriarchy poisons our lives, in hopes of sparking conversation, inspiring and healing women, and inviting self-reflection in men. Each of my six compositions focuses on a different layer of experience-such as defying gender roles, shedding light on the Madonna-whore complex, and living with the long-term, intangible effects of abuse.
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Renegotiating Our Relationship With Technology
Connor Sturge
2025Both as an exploration of the symbiosis between jazz and electronic music, as well as a way to renegotiate our relationship with technology, I put together a group of six musicians that controls the effects on eachother’s instruments. Seeing how technology has a tight grasp on us and our lives, I decided to use it as a tool to promote connection and collective exploration. Therefore, the musical aspects of this project combine the limitless sounds, textures, and possibilities of electronic music with the freedom, improvisation, and deep-listening that are essential to jazz. This is accomplished through the use of MIDI controllers that turn on and off multiple effects within Ableton, which are tied to each musician’s instrument. This unique system forces each musician to listen and connect deeper with one another. On one hand, controlling someone else’s effects pushes that person to act based on what best-serves the musician and music in every moment. On the other hand, having their effects controlled by someone else requires them to either adapt to or ignore whatever effects are triggered. Regardless of the choices made, each musician has to be in the moment and connecting with one another on a deeper level. Instead of technology using us while causing separation and isolation, this project utilizes technology as a tool that fosters creativity and human connection.
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The View From Here: A Journey Through Politics, Empathy, and Change
Peter Sumner
2025The View From Here: A Journey Through Politics, Empathy, and Change is an instrumental jazz project born from my emotional response to recent political and cultural events in the United States. Through four original compositions, I processed my evolving thoughts on topics like wealth inequality, war profiteering, the rise of fascism, and systemic cruelty. Each piece represents a different point in my journey—from initial anger and disillusionment to research, protest, reflection, and cautious hope. While the music is instrumental, the emotions and narratives behind each piece are deeply personal, rooted in my own shifting worldview. My goal was to use music as a tool to encourage critical thinking, awareness, and empathy in a time where those values feel increasingly scarce. This project is both an artistic expression and a personal reckoning—one I hope can spark thought and connection in others.
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Anagenesis: Becoming Cypriot
Dimitris Terpizis
2025Anagenesis: Becoming Cypriot is a five-movement music suite that represents my artistic and personal journey of reconstructing identity through music. Drawing from Cypriot traditional melodies and rhythms, global jazz vocabulary, and storytelling, the project explores themes of cultural memory, trauma, and transformation. Each movement reflects a pivotal stage of my life: from childhood innocence to national division, military service, intercultural discovery, and ultimately, reconciliation with my heritage. The compositions incorporate unconventional instrumentation, Northwest African rhythmic influences, and traditional Cypriot elements within a global jazz framework. Through this project, I seek to challenge static notions of identity and instead present it as something fluid, layered, and evolving. This work aims not only to reconnect me with my own roots, but also to create a space for healing and the reconstruction of identity, especially within the context of divided and complex societies like Cyprus. Anagenesis is an artistic proposal for how music can serve as both personal therapy and a bridge toward social cohesion. Ultimately, I hope to inspire and encourage others to accept and recompose their identity, just as I reconstructed who I am through music.
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Devenir: Sounds Across Borderlines
Alan Villanueva
2025This project explores the rearticulation of identity between Mexican musical heritage and jazz as a global phenomenon. It investigates overlooked historical ties—particularly the influence of the 8th Cavalry Mexican Military Band in New Orleans—to challenge dominant narratives and construct a decolonial counterpoint that highlights inclusion, hybridity, and cultural resonance. Through historical research, composition, and personal reflection, the project integrates traditional Mexican music into a global jazz framework. It also brings to light the impact of Mexican figures such as Juventino Rosas, Florencio Ramos, and Lorenzo Tio on early jazz development. These insights inform a series of original compositions that engage in dialogue between past and present, tradition and transformation. The work further explores intersections between Mexican traditions and global jazz, drawing from cumbia, canto cardenche, bolero, and son huasteco. Rooted in artistic introspection, the project reclaims space for marginalized musical identities. It challenges vertical cultural dynamics and proposes a bilateral relationship of mutual influence. Devenir emerges as both a personal journey and a creative proposal for cultural diplomacy—redrawing sonic cartographies where memory, migration, and belonging converge.
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From silence to voice, From fragmentation to self-invention My Personal journey through a creative process of self consciousness and identity
Yifei Zhou
2025This Culminating Experience (CE) project explores the intersection of songwriting, identity, and self-compassion from the perspective of an Asian woman artist. Inspired by my personal journey and observations of gendered representation in media, the project responds to the subtle yet pervasive psychological effects of societal conditioning—especially on women’s self-worth, emotional expression, and inner life. Rather than focusing on romantic narratives often portrayed in dominant media, this work centers the relationship with the self, using songwriting as a method of healing, empowerment, and reclamation. Through a series of original compositions—Wondering, Sound of Your Aliveness, Voices I Made Of, and Eye of the Dark—I explore themes of emotional vulnerability, fragmentation, and growth. These pieces incorporate jazz harmony, pop song forms, and BGJI concepts such as tetrachords, windows, zero gravity, and the three-tonic system. Each song is both a personal reflection and a compositional experiment: challenging conventional forms, integrating spoken word, and traversing emotional landscapes of grief, detachment, and self-invention. Accompanied by drawings and lyrical narratives, this project becomes an artistic map of transformation—tracing a path from silence to voice, from emotional disorientation to clarity. While this journey is still ongoing, it reflects an urgent need to question internalized models of love, identity, and womanhood, and to imagine new ways of being rooted in emotional truth and creative freedom.
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Musical Movements - Capoeira Through the Lens of Global Jazz
Gabriel Cartocci Maia
2024My Culminating Experience project consists in writing and arranging music inspired by the body movements of Capoeira, a Afro-Brazilian art form that integrates dancing, fighting, playing percussion instruments and singing. In order to navigate this artistic endeavor, I set to bring to practice the lessons I acquired in my global jazz studies and I wrote 4 compositions that sought to explore musically the depth of the movements of this art form. This was my way of shedding light to this very rich tradition that is so important culturally and historically and I had the honor to get to know it very intimately and that was so important to me on a personal level, since I practiced it for more than ten years. I used my experience in playing capoeira to orient my music writing. This project aimed to instigate creativity through the innovative practice of a new multidisciplinary art form - Capoeira & Global Jazz, and it sought to straighten a Pan-African way of approaching the history of the Americas, connecting Jazz and Capoeira, different art forms that have so much history in common.
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Cycle of a Woman - A Look into the female life experience explored through 4 themes: Creation, Control, Survival and Joy.
Holly Channell
2024Dissecting the disparities of women from my personal life experience through four themes: Cycle of Creation, Cycle of Control, Cycle of Survival, and the Cycle of Joy. I chose to focus on these themes because they were experiences that had a great impact on my life as I lived through them, and still live through them. I wanted to highlight them with the knowledge that this could raise awareness to what women go through on a personal level. Each theme represents a different cycle of womanhood representing the ability to create, the control government and society holds on our bodies, the choice to fight for our freedoms and not just survive, and still experiencing a lot of joy in our lives as we choose to live. To execute this I wrote and recorded the music and then filmed a 20 minute short film to highlight these themes. Not only have I acquired better compositional and band leading skills, but I also discovered my ability as a producer and as a leader for these types of projects. I plan to expand this project, and lead more throughout my life.
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Crooked Swing:Finding Community at the Crossroads of Balkan Folk Dance and Global Jazz
Julian Drumwright
2024Crooked Swing is about my journey as a jazz drummer becoming a part of the international folk dancing community in the Boston area and discovering how music can be used as a tool to foster stronger and more connected communities. There are many lessons we can learn from Balkan folk dance traditions outside of its odd meters, including what I believe to be the ultimate purpose of making music.
Crooked Swing is made up of four compositions, each focusing on a different aspect of my journey. “Taking Flight” is based on a Bulgarian rhythm called Gankino and aims to inspire the feeling of flying that I experience dancing to that rhythm. “Connection” was inspired by my feeling of connectedness with everyone in the room during slower dances. “First Steps” is based on the process of learning a dance, with a free improvisation resolving into a written melody, mimicking the “aha” moment of figuring out a dance. Finally, “Veronica” is a ballad dedicated to my fiancée who introduced me to Balkan music.
Folk dancing has taught me that if we all played together, sang together, and danced together, the world would be a better and more connected place.
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Hope is a Song in a Weary Throat
Jacob Fleenor
2024This study applies the work of Danilo Pérez and The Danilo Pérez Foundation, to the rural south using folk music and traditions as a means for education and advocacy. By utilizing folk music to teach and reinforce ideas that are recurrent in the history of rural communities across the Americas like labor organization, civil rights, and land stewardship, these communities can educate and advocate for themselves in the face of persistent struggle. Using the work of Pauli Murray as a guide for my own community, this project explores how an organization inspired by the Danilo Pérez Foundation could place music as an important tool for solving a wide variety of the issues we face in the south, in the Americas, and in the world.
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An exploration on Afro-Puerto Rican Rhythms through the lens of Global Jazz “Introducing The Afro-Caribbean Narrative Into The Conservative French Jazz Education. “
Guilhem Fourty
2024My CE project is an exploration of Afro-Puerto Rican Rhythms through the lens of Global Jazz. Three years ago, I became deeply inspired and drawn to a music rooted in the Afro-Puerto Rican musical traditions, so, spending this year at the Global Jazz Institute researching and studying those rhythms was a way for me to deepen my understanding of it while finding connections with my roots as a French jazz musician. For this project, I had a great part of the research done during this year studying at the Berklee Global Jazz Institute, but also before, while traveling to Puerto Rico and exploring its musical tradition.
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TRADITION AND GENDER
Alejandra Gomez
2024Tradition and Gender: A story about rhythm, symbols and women. This presentation is about Candombe cultural experience in Uruguay from a female perspective. The content comes from the research done during the past year and the interaction and conversations with women that have been raised and are part of the core of Candombe tradition. I explored Global Jazz concepts and put them in dialogue with the influences and inspiration I got from this tradition. There is a difference that must be pointed out: within being a woman it is not the same to be latina, indigenous, black or white, afro latina, etc. Because I want to address the difference I wrote this music and try to evoke the sense of unity rather than division. A call to make ourselves strong coming together.
