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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Atagahi the Enchanted Lake: Musical Storytelling and Human's Relationship with Nature
Andre Sudol
2022My 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
2022The 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
2022The 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
2021This 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
2021The 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
2021This 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
2021Music 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
2021There 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
2021This 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.
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A Bird, A Landscape, the Sun, My Mother, Whichever Branch: The Poetry of Samuel Feijóo - Creativity and Identity in Motion
Ricardo Guerra
2021“A Bird, A Landscape, the Sun, My Mother, Whichever Branch: The Poetry of Samuel Feijóo - Creativity and Identity in Motion”, explores the intersections of poetry and music, language and improvisation, and the processes of translation between English and Spanish and between words and music. By translating four poems by Cuban artist and writer Samuel Feijóo from Spanish to English and setting these texts to music, Ricardo Guerra hopes to gain a deeper understanding for his own identity as a Cuban American immigrant and the duality this identity comes with in both language and music. By merging these translations with music that encompassed both Cuban folklore and contemporary improvisation within Black American music, Guerra seeks to represent bilingualism in speech and music as one work of art - a reflection of a bi-cultural mind, background, and community.
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Rediscovering Chilean Culture
Juan Jaramillo Zúñiga
2021The idea for my project started with a deep questioning of my roots as a Chilean musician. I’ve always been interested in the music and culture of my country. One of the aspects of my project was to further research the by government manipulated changes to the culture, especially the systemic oppression of the culture of African descendants. These forced changes have produced different versions of how our history was developed which sometimes clash with each other, not only in music, but also in other aspects of our culture and identity. There have even been versions of our history that deny the whole existence of both African cultural influence and the Afro- descendant community. For these reasons I decided to do a deep research about the origins of Chilean music and its history particularly about two different styles called “Cueca” and “Túmbe”. A profound understanding of these music styles was crucial to my project, not only the musical codes but also how the lyrics work and how this music relates to the dance. All these aspects were fundamental for putting together my project, in terms of the compositions and putting together the presentation where I exposed some of these historic and political issues.
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4 for Four: My Four Seasons for Jazz Quartet
Soojung Lee
2021The project was to present the four seasons I have been through, dealing with the Sewol Ferry disaster, the sinking of a ship that caused massive casualties, and Jung-in case, a child’s death as a result of abuse, and the process of overcoming Corona Blue. I chose chord-less quartet. This configuration, excluding polyphonic instruments, looks like a spacious space, but in fact, there is a lot of communication in it. When listening to Don Cherry’s Old And New Dreams with Dewey Redman, Charlie Haden and Ed Blackwell, I come to the realization that in the end, they become a mass and a film, and an attitude of listening is necessary for good communication. I blended with the counterpoint, an element of my favorite music genre, classical, and a chord-less quartet, a composition of four monophonic instruments. I referenced a lot of works by my favorite composers, and Bach's invention works were very good examples. The counterpoint he used keeps the main melody memorable even after the song ends due to the repetitive minority motif. When two or more motifs were played separately or simultaneously with the left and right hands, I took two saxophones as the center of exchange.
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Between Two Worlds
Giorgos Lernis
2021My culminating experience project “Between Two Worlds” was inspired by the on-going stereotyping against immigrants, based on their origins, religions and skin color. As a Cypriot immigrant myself residing in the United States for the past 22 years, I have personally experienced stereotyping and can recall several unpleasant experiences. Even though I have not experienced stereotyping or racism to the extent that other communities keep experiencing, because of my own experiences I am able to relate to this issue.
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The Bridge: A Musical Synthesis Between BIPOC Writers And Diasporic Music
Liany Mateo
2021My culminating experience project, The Bridge, is a musical synthesis between writers of African Descent and diasporic music. I studied the writing of 5 different women: Amina Gautier, Maya Angelou, Ijeoma Umebinyuo, Toni Morrison, and Donna Kate Rushin. I treated the music of each writer differently, connecting the music directly to either their writings or personal history. The project was completed in the form of 5 compositions and a twenty-minute lecture-style presentation.
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Music and Blindness: Blind. So What?
Ciara Moser
2021The thesis deals with music and blindness and the special skills that people who are blind, or have a disability, develop in order to accomplish living life in this "non disabled" world. The five topics compensating senses, sixth sense or proprioception, memory, confidence, and trust were selected through research, exchange of experience with other blind musicians and consultation with my teachers and faculty at Berklee. I composed five pieces of music about these topics that relate to both my life as a blind musician and daily life as a blind musician in general.
The goals of the culminating experience project are to break through the many misconceptions and stereotypes that exist about blind people and people with disabilities, and to pass on and empower the message that everyone in society should be equally treated and should have the same opportunities. In addition, the project shall inspire sighted people to explore a new point of view to life and music. Lastly, the project should encourage blind people or people with other disabilities to find their way.
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The Journey of Growing: My Life Story through Music
Misaki Nakamichi
2021My culminating experience project is to make a recording that is expressing certain experiences that have happened in my life. The music is an expression of experiences from my upbringing, my musical identity, and any events that have deeply inspired me. As Mr. Joe Lovano told me “Jazz is self-expression”, I pursued how to express my feelings and to be able to create a message with my music. I identified which events, experiences, and time periods in my life and what specific emotions, feelings, sensations, and moments have given me. I worked on learning how to express them in my music. For example, memories from my childhood, the gratitude to people who have influenced me, nostalgia for my hometown being away from Japan, meetings and partings, and the hopeful vision of my future. I created five songs and an improvisational solo piece. Each song has a theme for different time periods of my life and is based on my experiences and emotions.
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Hear Me Speak
Naomi Nakanishi
2021Hear Me Speak is a multidisciplinary, sonic portrait consisting of five original poems and compositions each drawing from my personal experiences as a queer, femme, and Asian-American musician. It is accompanied with a short film by videographer, Olivia Blaisdell, whose work focuses on the queer community of color in Boston. Hear Me Speak examines America’s Anti-Asian Immigration Policies and Eastern Asia’s traditional patriarchal system, both of which facilitated an aggressive culture of stereotyping and racialized sexism towards the Asian diaspora. It is an artistic statement that redefines how musicians dismantle monolithic, racial stereotypes against Asian Americans with the intent to radicalize the femme identity outside the construct of “whiteness,” thus creating more visibility for all women of color and BIPOC artists.
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Metamorphosis
Hanna Noh
2021My project is a work of self-discovery and metamorphosis. Throughout my life, I have been mostly reactionary. I honestly haven’t thought very deeply about my identity as a musician and human being and about all the communities and musical traditions that have led me on this path. This project is a type of self-discovery and introspection for me to connect with my multi-dimensional past and has helped lead me to where I am at now: My project delves into the life of non-else than myself. It is a work of self-discovery and metamorphosis. Throughout my life, I have been mostly reactionary. I haven’t thought deeply about my identity as a musician and human being. I haven’t thought deeply about all the communities and musical traditions that have led me on this path. This project is a type of self-discovery and introspection for me to connect with my multi-dimensional past. This project has helped me deepen my understanding of myself, my background, and what I care about — Through music, I can change the world. I can unite cultures, I can heal broken hearts. Yes, through music I can become an agent of positive change.
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Our Neighbors Without Shelter
Paul Pandit
2021“Our Neighbors Without Shelter” combines my original compositions, video, and audio clips from interviews to share the stories of people who are houseless and raises awareness about the issues they face. The five compositions I wrote are based off the responses I got to five questions I asked when interviewing houseless people over the past year. For the video, I edited each song to around two minutes and included interview clips in the music and as transitions, to create a narrative. The video I shot, both of people being interviewed and other scenes, serve to support the music and people’s voices. The other objective of my presentation was to educate people on services that exist in Boston to help the houseless community, and to emphasize what more needs to be done to end houselessness. I researched different initiatives the city of Boston is taking to end houselessness in partnership with non-profit organizations. My extra committee member, Dwayne Brown, is the volunteer services coordinator for the Boston Public Health Commission Homeless Services. He provided me with a deeper understanding of the issues facing the houseless community, and what the city of Boston is doing to help. The long-term goal of my project is to create a music outreach program for the houseless community. I hope to bring regular live music to shelters, soup kitchens, and/or transitional housing as a form of therapy for people who are going through all the difficulties surrounding houselessness.
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Invisible Women: Homelessness and The Dehumanization of Modern Society
Anastassiya Petrova
2021The present culminating experience is a combination of research on the theme of homelessness, humanity, empowerment through music, and using music as a means of raising awareness of social issues and creating monetary support of humanitarian goals.
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TRAVELER’s SYMPHONY: Bridging musical worlds in search of a new personal aesthetic
Paride Pignotti
2021The main purpose of this work was to realize a research of some musical elements typical of particular genres, aimed at discovering a new aesthetic and musical identity, through the writing of original pieces. This journey through the various musical styles has been conducted mainly following my personal musical and life influences, starting from Italy, the nation where I was born and which was the first to have influenced me musically and humanly, up to my last experience in Senegal and America. The main aim was to find and discover new sounds that can bring together totally different and apparently distant expressive worlds. My goal was to analyse and compose music with elements that mix European impressionistic music (Debussy, Ravel, Scriabin) with Italian Music (Puccini aria’s Opera Melody) with Mandingo music originating from Mali, Guinea and Senegal, through the lens of the jazz Harmonic tradition. Some of the compositions has been designed for a classical string quartet combined with a jazz quartet composed of piano, double bass, drums and guitar. A variety of research has been conducted in order to helped me expand my knowledge in the musical and artistic field.
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Personal Journey Towards Freedom
Daniel Szczepanski
2021This project is about my personal journey through different stages, and how these stages affected me as musician and a human. I will be presenting different aspects of collectivity and how does it evolved in last century. Presentation is consisting of my original compositions, their music examples, scores, interviews , historic background, tradition in music and significance of mentorship. Each part will be describing different elements of music and it's own purpose.
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What You See from Here
Noam Tanzer
2021My project, “What You See From Here” is a four-part suite that discusses different issues and topics revolving around Israel and Palestine. It is the story of the region I was born and raised in, and it is my expression and call to action for new generations to start asking questions, and to seek communication and interest in listening to one another. With musical influences ranging from Shostakovich to Brad Mehldau, the instruments involved are piano, acoustic bass, electric bass, drums, Moroccan percussion, a string quartet, tenor saxophone, and flugelhorn.
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This Is Art School
Aretha Tillotson
2021My Culminating Experience project entitled This Is Art School, examines the experiences of intersectional women who have attended Canadian art institutions in post secondary institutions. I interview five different women from different parts of Canada who work in different mediums of artistic expression; trombone, piano, voice, painting, while I contribute my upright bass playing. After each interview, I write a musical portrait based on the discussion I have with each woman, and she contributes her skill to the piece. The final result of this presentation is an in-depth look into the conditions oppressed groups face in institutions, with each woman bringing to light a new subject: female representation in institutions, the physical and emotional stress lived in an institutional environment, oppression manifested through gendered instruments, and the continuation of colonial oppression. Through clips of the video interviews, and a sample of the pieces recorded, audiences are able to experience a snapshot into the lives of these artists during their post-secondary studies in Canada.
