Global Jazz

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  The question is the answer

  Joshua Achiron
  2022

  This project set out to find advice for young artists who were about to go into this chaotic world. I wanted to do this because I am one of these young artists about to make this step in my life and I needed guidance from the Berklee faculty. I chose the faculty members I thought would fit best for this project and then recorded interviews with them. I then used the recordings as compositional tools in order to get the words of wisdom to my peers. In conclusion I went through this year looking for answers, and although I would find them I quickly realized that with each answer came a great responsibility for a better question . As I learned about mindset, spirituality and the importance of family I found that learning about them was just half the battle. Now I am going to apply what I've learned and ultimately find better questions through life experiences I have can't wait to meet.

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  The Escape

  Roberto Acosta
  2022

  The Escape is based on a journey by a Cuban Rafter, rowing to America in search of freedom and the pursuit of their dreams. This Rafter happens to be my father. In Cuba, He felt trapped. He felt that he couldn't aspire to much, and he felt that he was wasting away. In 1993 he made the decision to end his chapter of life in Cuba and sought to create a new start for himself, for his future children and grandchildren. The only obstacles were the Cuban Government and 90 miles of open sea. The Escape will inform you of the four waves of exodus pertaining to why Cubans fled and how, an interview from my father on how hard the journey he endured was with music and artworks amplifying his voyage, and lastly ending on the rafters that perished at sea. Their stories ended short. Their dreams of freedom, stolen away.

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  ‘One Mile Away’ - Breaking the wall of expectations through music

  Stefano Battaglia
  2022

  My research starts from a personal journey. Our society creates models of happiness, that sometimes is just ephemeral. This goes to create continue expectations, one after the other, that could keep us away from living in the present and it could lead to stress, anxiety, panic attacks and depression. And personally talking, in a situation of struggle, as the lockdown due to the pandemic, if we just live of expectations, we could lose the orientation. Music could be one of the solutions to this: it could be lived with no expectations, music engages all of the areas of the brain, music stimulates the production of positive hormones, that helps the relaxation of our body. In my research I show how composing music could be a personal solution to the life struggles, and how they could be translated in music, and I also investigate in how music could be transmitted, so as not to lose its beneficial powers: communicating without expectations, and the meditational power or the music that can relax our body and soul. This is a seed for the future and a point of reflections in how music could be transmitted in an alternative way.

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  Reflection of Another Self - Accepting, Understanding & Overcoming Trauma

  Milena Casado Fauquet
  2022

  This project, “Reflection of Another Self”, is an art suite that combines music and poetry and portrays my process of accepting, understanding and overcoming trauma. The purpose of this project is to find ways of freeing ourselves; of understanding who we are and how we want the world to be. Through extensive research on music, poetry, and psychology, as well as diving into problems such as racism, sexism, and inequality in the world, I created an art suite divided into three movements or steps - Acceptance, Understanding & Overcoming. Each movement is composed of two music compositions accompanied by a poem or samples that describe the different feelings and emotions I felt while diving into my personal trauma. My hope is that by portraying my process of self-discovery and self-acceptance, I can help and inspire others to overcome their trauma, the same way the music and poetry have helped me.

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  We Should Care

  Nicholas Chatzitsakos
  2022

  “We Should Care” is a multidisciplinary project that explores the use of music as a tool that will highlight the communal struggles of different oppressed groups throughout the globe. It consists of music written for different socio-political issues. The purpose is to highlight the interconnections between different social justice issues including: racism and white supremacy, imperialism, repressive systems in the context of military dictatorships, patriarchy and sexism, mental health and stigma. Hopefully the listener will look at identity politics through the lens of intersectionality in order to understand the communal struggles, the need to show solidarity to movements outside of their own political identity, and realize that the communal struggle we share is caused from the unequal system our society is based on, that benefits the few. The music is based on the ”Jazz” (Black American Music) genre and draws influences from the blues, avant garde, free jazz, contemporary pop, and classical (western) idioms, reflecting the interconnection of the socio-political issues with different music forms of expression.

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  In Clave: Composing in odd meters from a clave perspective

  Camila Cortina Bello
  2022

  “In Clave - Composing in odd meters from a clave perspective” documents my compositional process during the last six months of the Berklee Global Jazz Master’s Program. I studied the function of “clave” within Cuban music as a backbone of the rhythmic and orchestral organization and then applied similar relationships using odd meters. As result, I wrote four compositions featuring this kind of behaviors: “Sonera” (in 7/4); “Zapateo en 15” (in 15/8 and 5/4); “Buleria de Noviembre” (in 11/4); and “Canción de cuna para despertar a un negrito” (in 13/4 and 12/8). This creative research served me to reflect on my music identity while finding new strategies for future academic applications on this interesting topic.

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  Notes of Houston's Daughters: Narratives of BIPOC Women Artists and Their Contributions to the Houston Arts Community

  Alexandria DeWalt
  2022

  Houston is known for hosting some of America’s most brilliant artists, but somehow BIPOC women are left out of this narrative. My goal is to put BIPOC women back into the narrative through music. This project pays homage to 3 BIPOC women artists of Houston and their influence on both me personally and their influence on Houston’s arts community. Each woman comes from a different art discipline: music, theater, and dance. The women are Helen Sung (music), Eileen J Morris (theater) and Lauren Anderson (dance). The music explores a relationship between music and the art medium that each woman is a part of. Additionally, the goal of the music is to create a relationship between the listener and the woman being honored by bringing them into the narrative of the woman the song is about. This project had several goals: first is to increase the visibility of these women in hopes of inspiring other BIPOC women artists, giving these women credit where credit has been long overdue, and last to express my gratitude to these women and how their lives and art has shaped me into the artist I am. My ultimate hope is that by honoring these women, other women feel validated in the space they deserve to take up, especially those who have felt otherwise.

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  The EWI Academy

  Morgan Guerin
  2022

  This project is an online and in-person educational course centered around the EWI (Electronic Wind Instrument), called The EWI Academy. This project is significant for me because the EWI isn’t that popular of an instrument (compared to a Saxophone, Flute, or Clarinet), and I feel like the instrument has so much to offer musically. This idea came together because there are not many resources surrounding the topic of wind synthesis. I wanted to create a platform for people to come together, learn, and immerse themselves in the world of wind synthesis. The course will include plenty of lesson videos, self-produced backing tracks, interviews, and tons of demonstrations and insight, allowing the students to understand the importance and potential of the EWI fully. In the future, I will develop an in-person camp that will bring people together from all over the world. There are many misconceptions surrounding the topic of wind synthesizers that can sometimes draw people away from the subject in general, but with The EWI Academy, I hope to introduce a new world of possibilities that can hopefully excite the students as much as it excites me.

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  Rebirth: The Wounded Healer

  Yujung Jung
  2022

  My project is about the therapeutic role of music in supporting suicide survivors, and it is based on my healing process after the suicide of a loved one. The purpose is, through my music and artistic collaboration, to reinforce healing by opening my story to others, to support those who are in grief by this motive, and to let them know that they are not alone. Also, through this project, I would like to break the silence about suicide and stand up to the stigma that surrounds suicide and mental illness. I composed and recorded six pieces as one suite. Each piece is related to different stages of my healing process. I have explored comprovisation. Comprovisation means composing in the moment. This has been my first experience of application of what I have learned at the Global Jazz Institute. I used also blues, tetra chords, through composing, lyrics, Illustration, improvisation, in the context of Jazz, and a poem by Walt Whitman.

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  True Collaborative Music

  DoYeon Kim
  2022

  I have had many opportunities to collaborate with western-trained musicians over my last eight years living in Boston. Coming from a Korean traditional music background, I believe that exchange between different musical traditions can create deep synergistic music with unique possibilities. The purpose of my thesis project is to explore this space, and develop methods for playing global music that move beyond the “fusion” paradigm, which often results in selective and contrived combinations of different musical traditions. With this in mind, I developed an approach for collaboration between Korean traditional instruments and contemporary composition that focuses on rhythm, melody, and harmony. Specific outcomes include: (1) ways to avoid playing third intervals (major and minor) in chord voicings, which enables a harmonic space compatible with the note ornamentations and microtones essential to the Korean tradition; and (2) a combination of time signature and polyrhythms that approximate the Korean breathing cycle concept for western musicians. Generally speaking, this work serves as an example template for collaborative world music.

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  Catabolic Collapse

  Nishchal Manjunath
  2022

  My project ‘Catabolic Collapse’ investigates the theory and causes for the potential collapse of western society and democracy, within the next two decades. The central idea of catabolic collapse, is that a dynamic system (such as globalized society) must require an ever-increasing supply of resources to sustain it’s growth. If the system was ever to outgrow the availability of resources, growth would begin to slow, eventually stop, and begin a process of collapse. The system must also be resilient to crises, which it has shown that it often isn’t, proved time and time again by market volatility and more recently a bottle neck in the global supply chain. These crises can lead to conflicts and political aggressions related to the need for access to resources, for example fossil fuels, water, food security, or land mass. Climate change in the meantime, is predicted to place enormous stress on the procurement of all of these resources, and while the demand for these resources only increase as the human population continually grows, and all parts of the system having huge emissions footprints, the only possibly outcome for our current societal trajectory is a huge decline in living standards by the mid century (2050). The only way of salvaging this situation, comes from very urgent societal transformation, initiated by rapid grassroots action. The government establishments of the world and the fossil fuel industry at large have been proven to have had immense mutual support, and currently cannot be completely trusted to tackle the immense scale of the problem, as doing so would be completely anti-capitalistic. The reason why the industry puts up such resistance to changing their business model, such as the creation of climate-denial think tanks like the Cato Institute or NIPCC, is because seriously tackling climate change on a united front is a complete 180 reversal of their entire existence to society. The movement for action on climate change asks the question of the fossil fuel industries relevance to future society, and hence their position as the power brokers of the world. Only through a united front of average citizens do we stand a chance of seeing any change to our system, one which is currently designed to bring about the end of an era of human technological power.

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  Empty Caverns: DC Social/political effects on the music

  Geraldo Marshall
  2022

  My culminating experience project is a 5 song tribute to the many people and places that shaped Washington DC’s unique musical identity. Each song is dedicated to a location or person that is significant to the city’s musical history. Initially, I wanted to discuss the effects of black American music on Washington DC’s political and social culture. However, over the course of my research it became clear that I was discussing the effect of the political and social structures on the music. Themes of development, protest, liberation, courage, grief and struggle are expressed through the music. I talked to educators, musicians, historians, advocates for the arts and residents of the city during my research to help develop a holistic sense of how the city’s music scene had changed from the 1950’s to now. The project was inspired by the continued closing of jazz clubs such as Bohemian Caverns, SOTTO, and Twins Jazz. Venues I had aspired to headline that closed due to increased property values and taxes. I’m hoping the project will serve as a reminder to the world of how culturally rich the city of DC is despite the many challenges faced by artists.

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  Matria

  Carlos Raúl Molina Hernández
  2022

  Matria is the name of project, that intends through indigenous Ecuadorian folklore and jazz, to explore the importance of recognizing oneself in the source, in the mother. The idea of accepting myself within a medium as competitive as music, and understanding that only by honoring my history, I could generate sincere artistic pieces, linked to my perspective as an individual and even discovering myself within jazz as a fresh voice, which does not try to rescue any tradition but to rescue myself from the uncertainty of knowing who I am.

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  Home is a River

  Taraneh Mousavi
  2022

  My CE project “Home Is a River” is a recording project exploring the metamorphosis of home and belonging in the aftermath of immigration, consisting of four pieces: 1. Home Is a River 2. Conversations under Water 3. Land of a Thousand and One Smiles 4. The Sea is Calling Together, these pieces form a personal/collective narrative, based on interviews I had with five Iranian artists in the diaspora and my own personal experience. 9 years ago, to pursue my passion for music and singing, I “chose” to leave my country Iran. Throughout these years, I have often wondered: “How is leaving a “choice” if staying entails you having to silence or suppress a part of yourself? Is staying a “choice” if it compromises your freedom? And where or what is my home, if I don’t fit into the one I was given?” The title of this project is my latest answer to these questions, explored through research, poetry, storytelling, and music. I originally intended this project to be a story about the Iranian artists in the diaspora, as I often found myself frustrated with the misrepresentation and the negatively loaded narrative about my homeland in the western media. However, the result turned out to be a story relevant to all the nomadic people in the hyper-globalized world we live in today. Doing the research for this project, I spoke five Iranian artists and these beautiful souls shared their life stories with me. We discussed the concept of home and belonging, and I started finding similarities between the stories. This fascinated me. These interviews and my personal story became the primary source for the structure of the narrative and inspired me to craft the poetry for this project. I chose water as the main element of my project, as I found the “Home of the Immigrant” to be a fluid state of the heart and the mind, constantly flowing, just like a river; During my creative research I found “gravity” in belonging, and I noticed that water reacted differently to gravity. These “fluid” thoughts resonated with me intensively, and it naturally flowed into the music. The music that flourished out of this concept is a fusion of everything that I carry with me to this day; my Persian roots, jazz, and contemporary music, all coming together through a strange gravity.

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  Exploring Gaming through the "Jazz-tet"

  Kenthaney Redmond
  2022

  The goal of this project is to explore the use of music in video games and how music can be used to enhance common gaming mechanics such as low health, item collection, and progression indicators. This is not intended to be a full “music game” like Guitar Hero or Parappa the Rapper; rather, the intent is to find the medium between music as a background element and music as the main mechanic. With that goal in mind I used Unity to create a few small games and took examples from some current games to compare how these mechanics are currently handled musically and provide examples of how they might be enhanced. Additionally, I employed the use of a jazz sextet because I believe the improvisational elements of jazz would be essential. Furthermore, generally small jazz ensembles aren’t used in game music so I wish to explore that as well. During this process I learned a few things about why the current design of game music and sound effects work well. Sometimes my changes were very subtle and the effectiveness was questionable. However, I found places where the design was changed that I think could be useful to the industry overall.

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  Dialogues: Composing music through the intersection of flamenco music and post-impressionistic European composers

  Isaac Romagosa
  2022

  This project aims to develop a different approach to the flamenco music composition based on the mix and integration of different concepts and ideas from European post-impressionstic composers like Lili Boulanger, Olivier Messiaen or Béla Bartók. Flamenco and classical and contemporary music have had a huge influence on me all my musical academic years and I wanted to explore the possibilities that the fusion of these two worlds could provide. First I started by analyzing the seven modes of limited transposition by Olivier Messiaen and some of the work by Lili Boulanger, pieces such as ""D’un Matin de Printemps” (1917) or “D’un vieux jardin” (1914). I discovered that some of Messiaen’s modes, specially the 3rd and 4th mode, share similarities with the Phrygian Spanish Scale, scale that is used to give the flamenco flavour or color, as it contains the same kind of intervallic pattern but 3 times, generating a 3 tonic system that allows to move in major thirds. Lili’s Pedal concept also served as a drone idea sometimes used in flamenco music. I picked 3 different flamenco palos (flamenco sub-styles): Buleria de Cadiz, Buleria de Jerez and Tientos and applied some of this ideas to create 4 different tunes.

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  Atagahi the Enchanted Lake: Musical Storytelling and Human's Relationship with Nature

  Andre Sudol
  2022

  My culminating experience project explores and emphasizes music as a vehicle for storytelling. The project features a 20 minute long composition for a 5 piece chamber ensemble plus jazz quartet that follows the narration of a Cherokee folktale “Atagahi,” which both evokes a sense of wonder, mystery, and respect towards nature, and warns us what might happen if we abandon this respect. The narration simply guides the listeners’ imaginations in the right direction, allowing the music to do a majority of the storytelling. Music has the ability to evoke a nuanced sense of setting, atmosphere, and character, and can immerse any listener in an abstract, but uniquely vivid journey. Using narration as an accompaniment to the music will allow this storytelling capability of music to be fully realized, as the narration will simply guide the listener, providing a bit of concrete imagery to the abstract musical story. The unique instrumentation reflects the oral nature of folktales; the chamber ensemble can play complex, arranged passages, and the jazz quartet can replicate the improvisational aspects of oral storytelling. I hope that this project will help to reintroduce music as a storytelling medium and make challenging music more digestible to modern audiences.

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  Past and Future, Never Present

  David Suleiman
  2022

  The purpose of my project is to dismantle stigmas and raise awareness around mental health struggles. As a recovering addict who’s now 10 years sober, I’ve had my share of mental health issues, the biggest one being crippling anxiety along with other issues at play. Mental health awareness hasn’t caught up yet in relationship to the collective rapid health decline, specially, post- covid. My goal is to bring visibility to this community from a personal point of view. By bringing the topic into light we would make a significant advance on these issues. Thorough research will strengthen the points I’m trying to convey with my compositions. If the conversation is not de-stigmatized, as you would talk about Type II diabetes, misinformation and ignorance could continue doing a lot of harm. People need to know its ok not to be ok as well as actively trying to understand our emotions better and seek help when needed. Whenever we write music that addresses a social and/or political issue we are opening the door for future business endeavors and collaborations. We don't really know the extent of these stigmas impact, but I'm willing to spend my life figuring it out.

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  Path to Freedom

  Eunji You
  2022

  The title of my culminating experience project is “Path to Freedom” I wanted to explore how music has contributed to my journey both as a musician and person. I wanted to convey on a deeper level how my time in the US and how music throughout my life has shaped my current self and future self. I chose to delve into four specific different topics that are important to me personally; topics that that have allowed me to grow into the person I am today. These specific topics are, “Equality, Street Harassment, Identity and lastly Freedom.” The ultimate aim of my culminating experience is to express all my personal experiences, everything I’ve learned, and the values and social issues that I believe through music. And to be able to do so applying all the musical and life knowledge skills I’ve learned from my time at Global Jazz.

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  Climate Apocalypse: Human Impact on the Environment’s Equilibrium

  Davide Cerreta
  2021

  This Culminating Experience paper explores the causes of mankind’s actions on the environment. Through original compositions and poems inspired by scientific research, the artist intends to bring awareness to the listener. Through his music, the artist describes four possible catastrophic scenarios that we might encounter in the near future. The music is presented visually with sand art and animation videos. This paper also examines the causes and the possible solutions for the environmental problem.

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  Music for Creative Learning

  Emiel De Jaegher
  2021

  The current global environment demands an arts education that uses music to make children go beyond acquiring science and math skills, and embraces their full imaginative potential to think creatively. My mission is to use music as an interconnective medium for creative learning and cultural immersion in early education. My educational approach, called Music for Creative Learning, uses music as a medium for creative learning, featuring cumulative working modules catered to children ages four through twelve in schools and music programs across the United States. Children work at their own pace and form their own learning before moving on. I developed this because we don’t have systems currently that account for the fact that every learner process information differently. I also wanted this approach to simulate cognitive development, foster creativity, and develop global civics. I wrote four compositions in English, Spanish, French and Greek to represent how a child completes this curriculum, step by step, like a playthrough. Each piece combines academic subjects with musical sounds, tools, and rhythms, using interconnective learning and the sound before symbol method.

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  Amb l'Herència com a Essència: Legacy and Gender Justice through Global Jazz and Interconnected Education

  Mar Fayos Oliver
  2021

  This master's thesis explores the topics of legacy, identity, and gender justice through Global jazz musical compositions and interconnected education. After conducting scholarly research on the political, social, and cultural history of Catalonia and Spain during the 20th century and connecting it with the works and contributions of Catalan and Spanish female social activists and female composers of the period, the author presents five new musical pieces. The compositions emanate from Global jazz aesthetics blended with reminiscences of Catalan and Spanish choral music, protest song, tradition, and folklore. The resulting musical works showcase the stories of three generations of the author's female ancestors, illustrated with informative video footage. The research conducted, together with the music presented, are used as a framework to develop the curriculum of a new non-profit educational program called Global Jazz For Change. The initiative aims to work with women at risk of exclusion in Catalonia, and later internationally, to foster self-expression through the creation of new Global jazz music with identity. The program's ultimate goal is to empower the participants to create awareness and become agents of change towards gender justice in their communities.

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  Music and Abolition - Creating a world without policing: Music’s role in imagination, experimentation, and collectivity

  Lily Finnegan
  2021

  Music and Abolition explores music’s role in imagination, experimentation, and collectivity in creating a world without policing. Through abolition violent systems that maintain hierarchy will be replaced with sustainable, non violent systems. Total liberation will only come if the police are abolished. No amount of reform can change them when the root is tied into colonialism. In order to do this imagination and dreams are key in envisioning the world we want to see. For this project I used five books as the basis for my research: “We do this Til We Free us” by Mariame Kaba, “Carceral Capitalism” by Jackie Wang, “Are Prisons Obsolete?” by Angela Davis, “Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination” by Robin D. G. Kelley, and “The End of Policing” by Alex S. Vitale. Through music we can explore these ideas with experimentation and collectivity. The music for this project was written in a way that fostered non hierarchical band structures and free improvisation.

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  Chilean Folkloric Rhythms and Global Jazz: The rescue of Chilean rhythms in extinction

  Sebastian Fuentes
  2021

  There are extinct or nearly extinct dances and rhythms in Chile. This CE Project consists of the creation of six compositions that mix rhythms of Chilean traditional music that are disappearing with global jazz, with the goal of rescuing these traditional rhythms and safeguard the culture and history of Chile. Many of these rhythms were part of the folklore in Chile during the 19th century. There were previous attempts to revitalize these rhythms especially with the research of Chilean folklorists during the 1950s and the compositions made by Chilean artists in the context of three music styles called Neofolclore, La Nueva Canción, and El Canto Nuevo, during the 1960s and early 1970s. These attempts were undermined by the censorship during the Agusto Pinochet’s dictatorship between 1973 and 1990. Many of the artists who composed this music were persecuted, kidnaped, tortured, exiled, or even executed during the dictatorship.

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  A Bridge to the Past: The Origins and Evolution of Black American Music

  Matt Gershun
  2021

  This project celebrates the history of Jazz, the evolution of Black American Music, and its West African and Caribbean origins. Using the art of traditional storytelling, each chapter weaves historical narration together with live-in-studio performances of an original score. This project aims to present the history of Jazz in an accessible way that will hopefully awaken a curiosity in audiences of all ages and inspire viewers to learn more on their own.