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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The Generation Of Resistance
Alonzo Demetrius Ryan Jr.
2019The Generation of Resistance Project is a music education program designed to teach students how to bridge jazz with the contemporary music of today with the inclusion of social activism and outreach in order to prepare the next generation for social-political issues.
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Roots across Continents
Tomer Sadot
2019My project, named "Roots Across Continents”, deals with the exploration of my musical identity and background. I went back to my parents’ and their parents’ origins, Morocco, Poland and Romania which serve as a beacon for Eastern European Jewish music, France which serves as a beacon for Western European classical music and Israel. I researched these musical cultures inte to my and composed/arranged a piece for each. Exploring each of these cultures I deepen my knowledge about my ancestry, learn about the rich musical cultures of my origins and transform that material through my personal scope into musical compositions. This project is the first step of a much longer process of self development and enrichment as a musician and composer.
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The Ancestral Call
Jose Soto
2019The “Ancestral Call” is the name of the project. I think of this project as a movement to supporting the rescue of the Bribri culture in Costa Rica through music inspired by my journey of its spiritual, and philosophical life perspective. Bribris are the first Costa Ricans. They are one of the most prominent indigenous communities in the country, and the majority of them live in the city of Talamanca, in the south of this country. I found that this community didn’t have the word music. The closest word in Bribri to these words is "Tt.́k." This word means talking in the ritual language, and thus Bribris speak with their gods and spirits who live in the underworld (nature) to create a spiritual connection with nature (underworld). The closest resemblance of how "Ttok" can be understood in our society is the act of singing. For this reason, this was a unique experience for me. I decided that my artistic representation of the Bribri culture has to focus on a personal, spiritual, and abstract reinterpretation of what I understood about the Bribri culture translated to music.
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The Wake-Up Call: Sacred music in a Secular World
Grzegorz Wlodarczyk
2019The project "The Wake-Up Call. Sacred Music in a Secular World" is my attempt to answer the questions "Can I reconcile my calling as a musician with my calling as a man of faith? Can these two become one vocation?" The project consists of six compositions based on the early 18th-century church music from my home country Poland called "Gorzkie Zale". This historical source provided melodies that I arranged for a quartet consisting of the piano, the bass, the trumpet, and the percussion. In the recording studio, the band was set up in a circle, which created an intimate, meditative environment and allowed freedom of individual expression while maintaining an element of collective prayer. The goal of the project was to bring awareness of the historical and cultural value of Gorzkie Zale to an international audience, as well as to include my faith in the music I create and to redirect my purpose, from executing the notes towards creating a unified, spiritual experience.
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The Synesthesia chronicle: An exploration of my musical identity
Noé Zagroun
2019My project consisted in composing and recording 5 songs, getting inspiration from non- musical pieces of art (poems and paintings), using my synesthesia. Synesthesia is a neurological condition that creates links between sensorial pathways. For synesthetes -people who have synesthesia, regions of the brain that interpret different types of stimulations cross-activate involuntarily. For some of them, textures might have flavors, timbres might have shapes and letters might have colors associated to them.
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An exploration of west African music and its synthesis with contemporary western musical elements
Nerya Zidon
2019This project is a beginning of a journey born due to my fascination with west African musical and culture. Combining it with my love of different African-American musical styles (Jazz, Gospel, Funk etc) I set out to create a harmonious synthesis of these two worlds, allowing them to coexist and inform one another. I have conducted a deep research which included months of extensive listening to music, reading books and watching documentaries, investing in the ethnomusicology aspect of the research just as much as the musical one. I have pushed myself to the edge of my abilities as a performer, composer, arranger and producer, as I explored a variety of composition & arrangement concepts found in a long list of references and inspiration sources. As I look to the future, I intend to dive even deeper into the various cultures of west Africa, exploring concepts in education and philosophy which are common in the region. After exploring more areas of the region, as well as assembling the required budget in order to bring in west African musicians to record, I intend to release a full-length album, accompanied by a booklet with information about this amazing culture.
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The Bond: Chants of the Political Prisoner
Clarence Tyrone Allen II
2018I set 4 different scenarios/ experiences related to information I gathered on the social/ political climate of the prison systems of the USA. Specifically within minority groups and based on events from the early 1970s in California.
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The Composition Project
Henry Beal
2018This project is a study in the process of music composition. I interviewed six productive composers on their writing processes and learned about their habits, challenges and advice as related to writing music. I then took their ideas and applied them to my own writing and journaled every day about my experience. All of the music I wrote was consciously inspired by these suggestions. I also made a point to share my personal journey in writing music. I wanted to emphasize that the work it takes to become a more creative individual can only by done with a sense of self-knowledge.
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Music Beyond Bars
Cosimo Boni
2018The project is made of music that advocated for the abolition of the prison system.
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Sketches of She
Chloe Louise Brisson
2018Sketches of She is and interdisciplinary body of work that features the collaboration of various female artists.
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The Dominican Journey in the United States: A life story
Vlade Guigni
2018A six-movement series of original compositions based on short stories from my life since I left the Dominican Republic for the US. These compositions represent my first original material ever and it pursues to apply concepts and philosophies learned during my Master's at the BGJI.
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Threads of Being: If all we have is now
Keira Harman
2018Threads of Being is a cultivation of experimental works in the form of poetry, photography, composition, storywriting, sketching; the final product for this presentation being a film of 16 minutes.
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Two Minutes to Midnight
Samuel Hart
2018I composed a four movement suite that was inspired by issues that have come out of tensions in the political and social climates in the world, particularly in the United States. I used the symbol of The Doomsday Clock, which was created by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, as an overarching theme for my suite. This theme being the impeding threat of global nuclear war. In the suite I wanted to highlight the atrocities of war and gun violence through the tone of the music. Each movement was paired with either a painting or photography depicting the powerful imagery of war and gun violence. I used paintings by Goya and Picasso in my first and third movement. My second movement was inspired by photos taken on the day of the school shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School. I used a collection of photos by Wim Wenders for the fourth movement of the suite. The purpose of the suite was to highlight these very powerful issues but also to inspire and unify people. I decided to end the suite on a more positive note to instill the idea of hope in the listener.
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Tasting Notes: Coffee and Music
Aaron Holthus
2018I composed 4 original pieces of music based on 4 different coffees from around the world. I set out to do this to recognize the attention to quality and sustainable craft/business practices in the speciality coffee industry, as the work of modern roasters and baristas inspires me. In this project I explored subjects like cross-modal association and the link between taste and sound as well as the musical traditions of the region the coffee was grown in, all to create new music that was reflective of and paired with a unique flavor and history.
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Bridges
Ori Jacobson
2018The 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
2018For 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
2018The 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
2018The 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
2018My 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
2018Developing 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
2018My 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
2018The 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
2018My 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
2018My 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
2018My 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.