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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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.
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Turning Within: Interlacing Jungian Psychology with the Creative Process to Heal Transgenerational Trauma
Nadia Washington
2021Turning Within is a project that explores the idea of interlacing Jungian psychology with the creative process. The suite of music utilized tools such as Active Imagination, Word Association, analysis of archetypes, and symbols to confront and process Trans-Generational Trauma within the Collective Unconscious. The musical element incorporated was tetrachord theory taught by The Artistic Director of Berklee Global Jazz Institute, Danilo Perez. The outcome of incorporating Jungian psychology with composition includes creating a sonic art piece that integrates visual and expressive art forms such as graphic scores, voice acting, and sound design. The intention is to create an immersive aural experience that is therapeutic for the composer and the audience and leads the composer towards a path to individuation within their personal and creative life. With further study and research, the goal is to create a technique to share with other creatives seeking personal and artistic growth.
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Nature’s Melody
Suwon Yim
2021When I was young, I had many opportunities to visit and hike in the forest and mountains with my parents but when I got older most of the places I’ve been have disappeared and reconstructed to apartments, buildings and other form of facilities. This made me to think more about the nature and started to get interest in the environmental issues. Ever since I started music my interest always leaned towards containing messages in my compositions, so I wanted to express my thoughts through this wonderful medium. As music can be a good form of giving awareness, I want to educate how Global Warming can give a negative impact on earth to the youths. This will be accomplished by writing lyrics on composition. Since global warming is major problem around the world, I want to tell the people that every small action will be helpful to the earth. Moreover, many countries have different methods and thoughts to the global warming issue but since I am in Korea, I want to deliver my music to the youth through social media and educate with music.
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Reparations – An Exploration of Musical Narratives in an Australian Context
Stephen Byth
2020This project entailed the composition, recording and production of 8 pieces of music centred around addressing social issues in my home country of Australia through the use of musical narratives. These issues included Australia’s mistreatment of Indigenous Australians and inaction in combating environmental degradation and climate change. Throughout my research in these two areas, the intersectionality of these issues became more clear to me as I delved deeper into the history behind their manifestation in Australia. Throughout my research and composition process, I drew inspiration from a wide range of Australian artistic works including music, literature, photography and visual art, with the goal of creating an interconnected body of work that served the ultimate purpose of inspiring positive social change with regards to systemic racism and environmental degradation in Australia, as well as contributing to the global fight against these forces.
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The Journey of the Venezuelan Cuatro
Carlos Capacho
2020The Journey of Venezuelan Cuatro is the representation of my research based on my life experience as gratitude been able to bring the tradition into the academic perspective and developing a new path for the future.
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A Note To My Mentors
Anton Derevyanko
2020Public music education faces one of its most challenging eras yet. School administrators and local/federal governments make cuts to music budgets nationwide. This state of public music education is even more worrisome due to COVID-19, which contributes to the loss of educators jobs, programs, and livelihoods. Through a series of musical compositions and interviews, “A Note To My Mentors” comments on the state of music education. It explores the importance of having a music program, and the overall importance and advantageous impact that music has on young children, throughout their lives. Through interviews with figures of the Massachusetts educational community, the creative collaboration aims to highlight the importance of mentors and teachers, who have a tremendous impact on the worldview of a young, impressionable student. The findings and results shone a light on the difficulties of the job of a music teacher or administrator, but also the trials and tribulations a teacher faces. There is also an element of triumph and gratification when successfully changing the life of a student for the better. Music education is undoubtedly crucial to the development of children in the United States (and everywhere), and teachers hold the power to shape their future.
