Global Jazz

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  Bridges

  Ori Jacobson
  2018

  The project I was working on this year is named “Bridges” and it was focused on using Arabic music elements in jazz. This was done by enforcing jazz and European classical music theories over arabic scales (Maqams) and using arabic sounds in harmonic and melodic context while improvising and composing in jazz. Furthermore, I incorporated additional Arabic music concepts into jazz playing such as ornaments, improvisation concepts and microtones. Besides being a practical and technical research, this project also had a personal side to it; I grew up in Israel in a mixed culture where half of my family are German and half Egyptian so I tried to find this balance through a musical journey in search of my own unique voice and identity as a jazz musician. The title “Bridges” came from that idea of creating a bridge between this two identities I grew up in.

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  Unforced Rhythm of Grace

  Jasmine Kayser
  2018

  For the culminating experience my proposed area of study is to unlock the “unforced rhythms of grace.” I will be discovering and identifying the significance of rhythm to human beings. More specifically, I will be studying in depth the research of psychologists and neuroscientist’s expert in this field such as John Krakauer, Greg Cootsona, John Lamb and Mihaly Csikszentmihayi. I want to better understand the aspects of a musical experience, the importance of emotions and communications, being mediated by the human mirror neuron system. In this case I plan to cumulate my own philosophy on the impact of rhythm both musically and socially. This will then express the importance of a musician’s role in social change to improve our society.

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  Tribute to Thelonious Monk: My dear Thelonious

  Yumi Kim
  2018

  The purpose of this project is to dedicate Thelonious Monk based on my compositions and arrangements inspired by him.

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  Polish Folk Jazz Dances

  Sebastian Kuchczyński
  2018

  The goal of my final project was to create fresh unique music based on my different experiences including Polish National Dances. My plan was not to create music that will sound like polish folk but to compose music that will be included particular elements from polish music and sounds fresh referring to my other inspirations but still in some points similar to traditional polish folk music. In the same time, I did not want to create music which will be representative of my country. It wasn’t plan to make impression of Poland. It was plan to compose music with skillfully using particular elements come from music from my own country selected by me and and rearranged and hidden in the middle of the songs.

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  Rhythm and Language: Explorations in Conversation

  Chase Kuesel
  2018

  My project is an exploration of how getting to know people on a conversational level can influence my music and my understanding of the world around me. I interviewed four drummers who grew up in life circumstances that varied greatly from my own. I then used those conversations as inspiration to write a duo piece to play with each drummer. These compositions drew on various aspects of the conversations: shared inspirations, specific musical ideas, and the rhythmic quality of speech itself. I then used some of the duo compositions as a basis to produce two works for quartet, adding melody and harmony to the rhythms I wrote. This process was transformative: it helped me to address and work through my introverted and privileged identity, and it reaffirmed music's importance as a transcultural, borderless space where we can work through differences to produce something meaningful with one another.

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  Mind Games

  Aidan Lombard
  2018

  Developing my Culminating Experience certainly challenged me as a trumpet player, improvisor, composer and bandleader. But most importantly, it forced me to honestly evaluate who I am as a person currently, who I want to be, and how I want my music to represent that/ what I want it to do for others. Over the course of this year it became clear to me that virtually everyone I know is dealing with crippling insecurity at all times. It sounds silly, but insecurity and shame is such a personal experience, and that insecurity informs peoples’ behavior in vastly different ways, so it is rarely discussed honestly, therefore it can be difficult to see and understand. I found comfort in the realization that what I have been dealing with is completely human and natural, but I also began to notice how personal insecurity fuels prejudice, assumptions, and misunderstanding. Most importantly, I saw how insecurity inhibits honest communication, which is at the diplomacy. I believe that this insecurity that we all share is the driving force of our thoughts, principles and actions, and I wanted my project to be an honest portrayal of how I am dealing with mine. More simply, wanted it to be and open confession of the fact that I have insecurities, in the hopes that it would become clear to everybody that we all do.

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  Color Me Joy

  Farayi Malek
  2018

  My culminating experience project, entitled “Color Me Joy” was a concept album and performance project of seven compositions in which each song addressed a different issue that young women, especially women of color have to struggle through and overcome. The purpose of this project was to look beyond the terms racism and sexism, and address the underlying issues within both subjects, such as identity, body image issues, sexual assault and harassment, the fetishization and objectification of women of color, and how all of these issues negatively affect mental health. I wanted to write music that was uplifting, empowering and joyful, but also reflective, cathartic, and healing. I wanted to discuss the intersectionality of being female and a person of color, and the silencing that so many women like myself feel and have been fighting against for hundreds of years. To enhance this goal further, I wrote spoken word poetry for each composition to be presented between songs along with free improvisation. I wrote this material from the perspective of a biracial woman living in America, because that is what I am, but I wanted all women, especially women of color to be able to relate to this project in some way.

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  Dreams in Motion: Community Through Music Performance Initiative

  Sean Pentland
  2018

  The objective of this project was to create music reflective of the process of overcoming addiction and mental illness, raise awareness of music's capacity to empower and heal those in recovery, and to establish a performance series where those attributes can be employed, providing spiritual nourishment and psycho-social integration for all present. The music includes compositional devices to express the searching, reaching, and yearning for resolution and spiritual wholeness that one in recovery experiences. The performance series will take place in various settings, the first of which is a composers' workshop to deepen contact between local creative musicians and the people of their community.

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  Phos Project- Refugee and migrant journeys of hope

  Eirini Tornesaki
  2018

  My project is a tribute to my great grandparents who were refugees. It also reflects on current crises and the issue of discrimination against immigrants and refugees.

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  The Power Of Sound & Vibrations

  Lior Tzemach
  2018

  My project was very challenging on a lot of levels, taking concepts from the past, the ancient world, concepts that are not exactly musical but involve sound and make a clear connection to today’s world using technology and production techniques as a vehicle for these ideas to bloom. I wanted to take a few symbols from ancient cultures – The Flower of Live, and the Staff of Asclepius. These shapes appear in many different parts of the world with no clear evidence that they are connected. It was my opportunity to showcase the connection. In the end I finished recording a whole album combining 3 long pieces : +,0,- that resembles the motion of a Sine Wave, purest form of sound in nature. Because I wanted to feature so many artists I had to use some recording skills and make everyone play on top of each other on a separate recording and align that later (overdubs). Although my intention was to create a very organic feeling like everyone is at the same room, I had to make some adjustments on a technical level.

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  Explorations Through Writing For Strings and Jazz

  Margaux Vranken
  2018

  My project was to write four new pieces of music for a large jazz ensemble including singers, horns, a typical jazz piano trio and a string quartet. I had the intention to analyze the classical repertoire of string quartets. I have been writing for strings since my first year of Masters at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels (Belgium). I am more and more passionate about writing and arranging, so this is the reason why I wanted to dig deep into the string writing process.

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  New Songs of Resistance

  Jason Yeager
  2018

  My culminating experience project, New Songs of Resistance, consists of four chamber- jazz arrangements of politically salient and historically significant songs from the nueva canción and related Latin American musical and social movements. The project also includes three original compositions of my own addressing contemporary issues. The final work consisted of these seven recordings, plus three solo piano interludes, scores, and a multimedia presentation. The presentation outlines the history of nueva canción, the principal artists whose work I studied, and samples of the scores and recorded works to illustrate compositional tools, orchestration choices, and performance techniques used therein. I selected the four nueva canción songs—“Gracias a la vida” (Violeta Parra), “Aquí me quedo” (Victor Jara), “Cinco siglos igual” (León Gieco), and “Apesar de voce” (Chico Buarque)—based on extensive listening and research, choosing pieces by songwriters who were historically significant, and whose music touched me most deeply. I also considered the songs’ contrasting musical elements in the context of an album as criteria for their selection. In addition, I highlight particular Latin American folk rhythms and styles, such as cueca, merengue venezolano, and chacarera, which I studied and practiced during the year in the context of learning and adapting this repertoire.

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  Bright Colors on A Dark Canvas

  Naseem Alatrash
  2017

  This paper is a reflection paper on my culminating experience project. It summarizes the project. I will discuss how the project aligned with my expectations and how it didn’t. How I had to revise the project to meet the expectation. I will also discus future plans for the project and how to further develop it. I will discuss how the project contributes to the field and how the project impacted me.

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  Making a Performance Therapeutic Through Improvised Compositions

  Arvid Andersson
  2017

  A performance is therapeutic when two or more people have a common experience that involves emotional regulation. I plan to visit a couple of different music therapists in the Boston area. While there, I will conduct interviews about, improvisation, emotional regulation and effective repertoire. For my second visit with the group I will compose music that I will perform together with the participants. Each song will become a small game, where some information is given but many elements are open for improvisation. By involving communities that usually are not engaged by music, my project has the potential to reach further. Afterwards, I will arrange and record the ideas captured in the session for a band from Berklee. The CD will be a business card, promoting me as an artist as well as a teacher, and give an example of the findings of this project.

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  Contra ' Verses: Jazz with the intersectionality of race and politics

  Nzinga Banks
  2017

  This project is both a musical performance and an original album idea. My intention is to explore the trope of creating contrafacts from jazz standards (i.e. Tin Pan Alley, Great American Songbook). Inspired by the contrafacts I was required to submit of: “All the Things You Are,” “Inner Urge,” and Footprints”; which I submitted as: “All the Things Emmett Till Could have Been,” “Inner Outer Africa” and “Harriet Tubman’s Feet” respectively. My contrafacts both play on the wording of the standard and allude to a historical and racial significance replete with contradiction. They have relevance to both American history and current socio-political unrest in this country. The notion of relevance is essential here. I want to create jazz that is engaging and entertaining to my generation, and without relevance that becomes impossible.

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  The Sounds of a Starr

  Lee Fish
  2017

  For my final culminating experience project, I am planning to arrange and record the wonderful compositions of my mother and Berklee graduate, Lori Starr. Sadly, about three and a half years ago she passed away but left an incredible legacy for me to carry on. Starting in high school, she was an extremely hard working musician who performed, taught, and then took on the job as a full-time mom while continuing to pursue her passion for composing. I remember very clearly hearing her visions for arrangements and instrumentation. Recording her original music was always her dream, but because of her competing responsibilities it never became reality.

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  CE Project

  Alix Goffic
  2017

  I would like to create a new musical concept linked with social and environmental values to raise awareness in my home place. It will be a tool to promote French Guiana. The long term idea is to be a able to travel and perform the music and share the social and environmental messages thru it. I will also get in touch with fellow cinematographer, choreographer, painters... to extend the movement to a much global experience.

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  Old and New Spirituals

  Gregory George Groover Jr.
  2017

  For my Culminating Experience I want to make a recording that features arrangements of Negro Spirituals as well as my own original compositions that are inspired by these Spirituals.

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  Freedom of the Wilderness

  Jared Henderson
  2017

  Freedom of the Wilderness is a 5 movement piece that I created in collaboration with choreographer Jayne Paley and videographer Ashli Bickford. The piece features 10 musicians and 4 dancers and is presented as a short film. The message behind the project is to promote awareness for environmental conservation. Each movement is inspired by a different landscape from my hometown in Sisters, Oregon.

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  Music and Dance in Culture (The Global Groovements)

  Eunjeong Hwang
  2017

  By researching on finding correlations between music and dance in many different cultures, I would like to present both formats, a documentary and a performance/flash mob.

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  Music with film

  Seulgi Hwang
  2017

  My intention regarding the culminating experience/final project is to compose, perform, and record an album with original music that will be based on different and very important musical influences that made an impression on me during my childhood and adolescence.

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  The Kalesma Project (The Calling)

  Vasileios Kostas
  2017

  My artistic project is an offering to revitalize into a contemporary context, the little-known, yet passionate and relevant , bhakti poetry from the Indian Subcontinent. Etymologically the word bhakti has atleast two levels to its meaning. The root bhaj means to share, to participate, to belong to. It also means, a state of being in ‘loving-devotion’, ‘absorption in love’, and ‘a spontaneous expression of love’.

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  The Anthropocene

  Isaac Levien
  2017

  My project will be in two parts. The first part will be a composition based around the idea of the "anthropocene" and how humanity has affected and lives alongside the natural world around us looking at our past, our present and our future through music. The second part will be a business proposal for a non-profit artist collective that consumers will gain access to through proof of making a positive environmental change.

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  Music of the Great Lakes

  Andrew McAnsh
  2017

  My vision is to compose a 5 - part suite entitled "Music of the Great Lakes" where each lake hosts a different tribe.

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  Free Spirits

  Lesley Mok
  2017

  Much of my experience in Global the past three years has challenged me to think about the union of multiples roles as performer, composer, educator, social activist, and therapist into one. For my culminating project, I want to explore the work of Mary Lou Williams, Abbey Lincoln, Alice Coltrane, and Denise Levertov. These women all have overcome enormous adversity and made significant contributions through their work as artists.