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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Sounds of Philadelphia: Exploring a City’s Musical Lineage Through Creative and Spontaneous Composition
Julian Mittenberger
2023My culminating experience project seeks to delineate and explore aspects of Philadelphia’s musical history, through research analysis and music composition. With the research, I argue for Philadelphia as an important home for innovators in Black American Music, due to its location as a destination point in the Great Migration. After studying the formation of the Philly Soul sound of the early 1970’s, I composed a 3-part suite based off the classic hit song “TSOP.” I recorded the suite with a sextet, featuring Philadelphia vocalist Kayla Arthur on the last track. For my fourth piece, I paired some video clips from a documentary about Philly tap dance, with a tap and drums duet I recorded with Ian Berg. To conclude my presentation, I proposed some future explorations such as performing the music in the Jazz Gallery in New York City, as well as reviving a free-of-cost educational program in Philadelphia in which I studied as a high-schooler. The project was helpful for myself and others, and in the future I just want to be more careful about sharing the contributions of Philadelphia’s Black musicians, and clarify my own role as an ambassador of the music.
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Multidimensionalism: a journey through my worldview and creative process
Steven Montecucco
2023I spent the year creating a multimedia mosaic mind map by creating as much content as possible along the same message and goals, then using the content as raw material to paint a picture of the way my mind works and how I view the world. The primary message of the project is that when we as artists allow ourselves to view music as a magical force and unite in collective creative action, we open doorways into new powerful ways of seeing the world that enable us to create in more empowered and inspiring ways and imbue our works with the power to make powerful positive changes in our communities and the world. The content I created for the project includes 7 albums of music, 3 short books of experimental prose, a philosophical system comprised of 15 symbols, blueprints for a hybrid institute and an accompanying foundation, and a video blending all the content into a 3 part presentation.
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Perpeñí - Building Bridges through Roma music, Stories and cultural connections
Ángela Varo Moreno
2023Perpeñí is a culminating experience project that delves into the Roma journey through music. With my personal influences from Global Jazz, Flamenco, and Mediterranean music, the project focuses on transcribing and re-imagining oral tradition songs from diverse Roma communities worldwide. Starting with Cale or Gitanos from Andalusia in Spain, Rromani people from Hungary and Romania, Romi people from Serbia and the original travelers, the Kalbeliya people from India. The main objective is to preserve and honor the rich heritage of the Roma people while sharing their stories with a wider audience.
Under the project name "Perpeñí," the aim is to create a bridge that connects different cultures and celebrates the interconnectedness of musical traditions. Through active engagement with Roma communities and extensive research, the project explores how the Roma travel interconnects not only the people, culture, and heritage but also the music itself.
As a Global Jazz Musician, I actively collaborated with musicians from various backgrounds to arrange and perform these oral tradition songs. Perpeñí serves as a personal tool for generational healing, embracing the Roma heritage, the Roma people, and their stories from all corners of the world.
The ultimate goal of Perpeñí is to contribute to the preservation and appreciation of the Roma culture while fostering understanding and appreciation among diverse audiences through the universal language of music.
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The Journey
Shadrack Oppong
2023This abstract summarizes a culminating experience project titled "The Journey - Global Jazz in Context: Exploring my Journey from Africa (Ghana) to America." The project delves into the author's personal and professional journey from Ghana to the United States, with a focus on their experiences as a musician and the influence of their time at Berklee College of Music. Despite societal limitations and financial constraints in Ghana, the author pursued their passion for music and eventually enrolled in a music program at Berklee. Their goal is to establish an institution that provides music education and resources for young musicians in Africa, addressing the limitations they face. The project incorporates music composition to convey the author's migration story, highlighting the power of diversity and cultural differences. The author's musical compositions reflect their roots and aspirations, incorporating elements from different genres and cultural backgrounds. The project concludes with reflections on the author's growth and the fusion of their education in psychology and music. The Global Jazz Institute at Berklee played a crucial role in inspiring and guiding the author's musical writing, which aligns with their long-term goals. Through this project, the author discovers the potential of global jazz in bridging their African and American identities, contributing to their growth as a versatile musician.
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LifeSongs
Lucas Phillips
2023"LifeSongs: Scoring the stories of survivors of homicide victims" is a project merging journalism and music to provide healing through storytelling. Drawing on my experience as a breaking news reporter at the Boston Globe, as a survivor of homicide, and of course as a musician and composer, I conducted interviews with individuals who lost a family member to violence and wrote original music to accompany audio excerpts from those interviews. The project seeks new approaches to storytelling through music and offers new avenues for musicians and journalists to engage more deeply with community, share important stories of trauma with emotional complexity, and bring healing through their work. The project culminated in four songs accompanied by original video, and offers unique perspectives on cyclical violence, murder, grief, loss, and community.
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Alone in a Crowded Room
Jonathan Shillingford
2023“Alone in a Crowded Room” is a story about a young black man navigating through the dangerous yet beautiful landscape of America. Searching for his own path in a foreign land he seeks answers for who/what he is and he who/what wants to be. This story is conveyed through music, poetry, photography, philosophy all informed by the works of black artists. Some of these artists and philosophers include: Roy Hargrove, W.E.B Dubois, Ralph Ellison, Nikki Giovanni and Gil Scott-Heron
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Distortions of Love in the Digital Age
Louis Stringer
2023This culminating experience project documents the process of composing music for a film centered around the themes of pornography, addiction, and the evolution of love as a commodity. It aimed to investigate the potential damaging effects of pornography on consumers and their psychology, as well as the relationship between online sexual content and addiction. Through interviews with individuals engaged in 12-Step recovery programs, the interviewees share their experiences and the complexities surrounding this topic. The project discusses the importance of addressing these themes in music, providing a space for reflection, dialogue, and increased awareness. The compositions, a mix of; electronic tracks, pieces for string quartet, upright bass, drums, and alto saxophone, are analyzed in relation to the project's objectives. The incorporation of quotes from interviewees alongside each composition aims to give voice to those impacted by the subject matter. Ultimately, the paper highlights the potential for music to stimulate conversation, promote empathy, and foster social change regarding the commodification of love in the 21st century.
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Bridging the Gulf of Paria
Luke Walker
2023Bridging the Gulf of Paria is a cross-cultural music composition and performance project exploring the nuances of the past, present and future relationship between the neighboring countries of Trinidad and Tobago and Venezuela through historical and personal lenses. It resulted in six compositions, four of which emphasize the shared history of the two countries and the remaining two explore how these connections manifest in the composer’s mixed Trinidadian and Venezuelan heritage and dreams for the future. The music aims to help reinstate the Venezuelan identity as a core facet of Trinidadian society by highlighting the common origin of the two countries and raising awareness of the contribution of Venezuelan immigrants on two core elements of Trinidadian culture: calypso music and kalinda (stick fighting). Similarly, the effect that Trinidadian immigrants had on the local culture of El Callao in Venezuela proves that the influence runs both ways. Key musical elements employed are instrumentation (juxtaposition of the steelpan and the Venezuelan cuatro) and improvisation.
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Within the Garden We Planted: Four Stories About Four Women
Katie Webster
2023The purpose of my project is to compose four pieces of music with a multi-disciplinary approach, either in collaboration with or interpolation of some element of visual art or poetry. Each of these pieces are in dedication to one of four women activists throughout history. This project helped me not only to develop skills as a player and composer, but to bring awareness to 4 important historical figures. I also went on a journey, exploring feminism through a historical and geographical lens greater than myself. Firstly, I learned about these activists: Elizabeth Mumbet Freeman, The Jane Collective, Wangari Maathai, and Berta Cáceres. Then I found art that was created in dedication to these people, or created a connection with another piece of art. I wrote music inspired by the visuals and imagery, while trying to create a piece to honor each person. During this process, I found that interdisciplinary art has the potential to be an incredibly strong vehicle for fostering community, by engaging with multiple dimensions of human experience. I see this project as a blueprint for further feminist collaboration across many denominations and platforms, and also a way that I can begin to see my role as a musician in the fight for intersectional feminist liberation.
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The question is the answer
Joshua Achiron
2022This 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
2022The 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
2022My 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
2022This 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
2022Houston 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
2022This 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
2022My 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
2022I 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
2022My 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
2022My 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
2022Matria 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
2022My 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
2022The 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
2022This 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.