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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Son of Tigris & Amman Music Institute
Layth Al Rubaye
2016The first part of the culminating experience is my first album of original music entitled ‘Son Of Tigris’. This musical suite will feature my original music, which comes from deep within my musical roots and is tied with all the other musical influences I have accumulated over the years, creating a new platform for the violin as well as a cultural and musical bridge between Arabic music and Jazz. The second part of the project is the vision of opening the ‘Amman Music Institute’ where I will bring years of musical training and a love for music education to the Jordanian community, in the hopes that it can unite Jordanian musicians of all genres but mainly work closely with refugees in and around the city and provide them with a chance to explore music and give them hope of leading their own lives.
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Finding my identity through Korean traditional music
GaYoung Bae
2016My culminating experience thesis subject is “finding my identity from Korean traditional music”. I researched about Korean traditional music and Korean Philosophy and I applied those elements into my compositions. I recorded five songs. The first 3 songs are based on Korean traditional music. Specially the third one “OHHO” is based on Korean traditional rhythm and I tried to describe diverse emotional ups and downs from our daily lives. And the rest of two songs are based on a story and poem that I wrote from my imagination. Korean music and philosophy is very related to each other. The music implies life, universe and even nature. I tried to put my life and philosophy into my composition like my ancestor did.
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Borikén 1493: A Rediscovery Of Puerto Rico
Edmar Noé Colón Gierbolini
2016This project, will attempt to raise awareness in the people of Puerto Rico through the use of an interdisciplinary work of art. This work starts from an idea of a musical piece for large orchestra that I began writing in the summer of 2015, which now has been expanded to many different forms and formats within music and other disciplines.
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Eternal Bliss: A suite for septet
Hayden Farrar
2016This project started with the idea of furthering my understanding of the compositional process while searching for harmonies that are not yet common in the modern jazz genre. Eternal Bliss is the culmination of influences from across an array of genres such as but not limited to, Classical, Chamber, Jazz, Cuban and various percussion based music from around the world. The instrumentation is relatively unusual and allowed for me to have the freedom to depict the influences of the piece with greater accuracy than if I had written for more traditional jazz instrumentation. The writing process took place over a three month period where I was constantly editing and revising a handful of core ideas. The recording took place in Mixx One studios in Boston over the course of two days followed by three weeks of post production. The final product will be released online accompanied by an EPK and an official release concert in Toronto, Canada.
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Unusual Improvising Techniques for the Learning Musician
Anthony Fung
2016My first final project will be a recording of an album which is my effort to bring to the fore the soloist side of the Greek Lute (Laouto).
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Andalusian Music And Music from the Maghreb
Noam Israeli
2016The objective of this project is to dive into the Andalusian tradition, and the many other traditions of the Maghreb region. The Maghreb region is in Northwest Africa. It includes Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya. The ultimate goal of this project is to find different ways to fuse elements from these traditions with elements from Jazz, and vice versa.
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SHAPE
Seungho Jang
2016My culminating Experience project, idea from like this ‘what I have my own specific shape as a musically, and personally. And then I look back upon the past of my Berklee life. Since I study at Berklee Global Jazz Institute, it has challenged me to grow and gain experience form new concepts, I formularized to find the ‘Shape’ of myself. From this word ‘Shape’ I have made my own definition of each letter from this word. ‘S’ is for ‘Spiritual’ ‘H’ is for ‘Heart’ ‘A’ is for ‘Ability’ ‘P’ is for ‘Personality’ ‘E’ is for ‘Experience’ And then try to gather my important experiences from my musical journey to each word.
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Discovering myself and being an ambassador
Seungha Lee
2016My Proposed Culminating Experience was creating an album that can introduce the culture of South Korea to the world. I want to be a music ambassador to the people around the world because I believe that South Korea has great philosophy towards all mankind from five thousand years ago. My goal for this project was to create pieces to express my thought towards this competitive society and give a better suggestion for human being to live coexistence.
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Peiying’s Recital
Peiying Li
2016In order to present the results of my studies, to reach my career goal and to spread Chinese culture through my music, my final project is to have a recital where I present my original compositions with Chinese culture elements.
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The World Wanderer
Paul-Eirik Melhus
2016The World Wanderer is a suite of music, accompanied by narration, that depicts the story of a boy driven by an unknown force that leads him through multiple cultural dimensions. His journey gives him the perspective he needs to deal with his own challenges at home. All in all, the complete suite will celebrate these diverse worlds for their musical and cultural beauty, promote cultural curiosity, and investigate storytelling as a form of accompaniment to musical composition. The narrative seeks to highlight real world conflicts and problems through storytelling.
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Eduardo Mercuri Trio
Eduardo Galeano Ferreira Mercuri
2016This project reflects the work and research done during the program length. Most of the concepts studied were performance related such as: voice-leading, jazz repertoire, improvisation, jazz traditions and folk traditions. The final product presented will be a recording of jazz repertoire (non-original) that showcase all the learning process, and can be used as future reference for teaching.
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Eclipse: Of myth, music and finding the way back home
Kesivan Naidoo
2016The premise of my culminating experience rests on the idea of life as a journey throughout which we learn to actualize our gifts. On this journey or the quest for being fully alive, we receive guidance, go through struggles and join forces with others. The process through which we evolve is not straight-forward but rather cyclical. We must ask questions and get lost at times, and the answers we receive are only the next plateau from which new questions emerge. However, with each answer, with each return, we evolve. Many of life’s experiences can be transformed through music. Where fiction and magic, politics and dreams, visions and struggles come together, music can become the lens through which to see the world, clear the path, and convey a message. The plan for this project was to create a super-hero graphic novel with each chapter of the novel to be interpreted by musical compositions and improvisation. My trajectory was to tell a story through music which follows the rites of passage of the main character. Each step he takes represents a stage on his journey and is interpreted musically.
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Capturing Myself
Sunny Eun Sun Park
2016I wanted to capture and share myself with my different kinds of emotions. Like Writing my diary. I liked this concept because there is nothing to fake myself and I can be honest with my meaningful moments. My goal was to present my own musical and human character like presenting my own microcosm to people who are listening to my music. Because I feel grateful when I give people joy, consolation, and encouragement through my words or actions, I wanted to make my music that give a good influence toward healing people. As time goes by while in this process I notice I have so much diverse feelings inside as a human being and as a musician I needed to share my diverse feelings and communicate with people as capturing my self through my composing and performance works. At the same time during this process I wanted to challenge myself through this project to make my musical level higher and also to develop my humanity.
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Original Music Recording
Jorge Perez-Albela
2016My Culminating Experience project is introducing four audio recordings of all original compositions. Throughout this Culminating Experience report I will reflect on the process I went through from the early stages of the project until the final product. I will discuss my plan of action, objectives and how I was able to achieve them and also what wasn’t accomplished during this timeframe. I will also discuss my goals for the near future and the impact this process has created in my life as an artist. Other topics include a reflection on what I consider potential contributions to my profession as a composer, arranger and performer.
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Music, lessons and nature website
Rodrigo Ponce
2016An artist website that showcases my work as a musician and conservationist. A place online where the visitor will gain something as well as be exposed to my music. Including instructional videos, new music recorded during the Master's program at Berklee and interesting and entertaining information on nature. This will allow my career to have a place on the web with all my activities and help me organize my different interests in music and music education.
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Echoes of Nature: How Music Reflects Humans’ Relationship with Nature
Neta Raanan
2016Throughout history, music has always been a tool used to communicate with concepts bigger than the individual. We live in an infinite universe where nature is continuously evolving in mysterious ways. The duality of nature’s fragility and fierceness, it’s miracles of creation and spontaneous destructiveness has long been an inspiration, muse, and even at times intended audience of music and the arts. The goal of my culminating experience is to explore the many ways nature influences our ideas and the way we make music. Also discussed will be several projects in which musicians have used their medium to create social change in the realm of how our society values and protects nature.
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The colorful recipe that makes the world smaller
Marta Roma
2016The world becomes smaller when music connects people; sounds, flavors, languages and makes cultures coexist, opening minds, borders and spirits. We are all part of this small world that yet is enormous. It is rich and full of opportunities that you could live if you are open to learn and to grow. Listening, observing, with honesty, love and respect. Having this spirit would contribute in making this world a place for creativity, bringing people together. Music is our precious vehicle to do so and we should not forget the power we have as artists. This year, at the Institute, has taught me this lesson. My Culminating Experience is the result of all these connections and experiences that live has brought to me, presented in a musical project. I look forward to share my music with the world for the first time.
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Contemporary Studies in Spanish and Flamenco Music
Jagoba Santos Bengoechea
2016My Culminating Experience is divided in two related areas: Research Area and Composition / Performance / Recording Area. I decided to structure the project this way in order to create a balance between the intuitive and the intelectual aspect of making music. This way of combining theory and practice is quite usual in Classical and Jazz music, but is not in Flamenco Music. For the research project I have written a book titled “Contemporary Studies in Spanish and Flamenco Music”. This book has been written during the 2015-2016 academic year at the Berklee Global Jazz Institute, and the research process took me also to New England Conservatory, MIT and Harvard University. For the recording project I composed a 20 minutes concert for guitar and chamber group. The music was mainly composed with the piano and the guitar, for which I used five different tunings; the standard tuning, two Irish tunings and two original tunings of mine.
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Innovation Of Japanese Jazz: Music to represent the 21st century merging traditional Japanese sounds and Jazz"
Mao Sone
2016The goal of this project is to find the ways to use elements of Japanese sound into jazz as a medium (Both in composition and performance) to share the moment with the others even from the other countries.
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An Exploration of the Music of Conlon Nancarrow
Isaac Wilson
2016In this Culminating Experience project, I set out to gain a much greater understanding of Conlon Nancarrow’s unusual compositional language, with the goal of having a recorded document of my interpretation of Nancarrow’s music as an end result. My goal was to synthesize the harmonic, rhythmic, and melodic language of American-born composer Conlon Nancarrow. I set out to record four of his compositions: Study No. 3B, Study No. 10, Study No. 12, and Study No. 20, with the addition of one jazz standard from the Great American Songbook.
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South African Historic Moments (A Journey towards Peace and Unity)
Kabelo Witness Matlou
2016The project will be a live Jazz orchestra performance. The concert will consist of original compositions, influenced by South African history. The music will function as accompaniment to narrated historic events of South Africa. The narration will consist of live speaking, speech, voice over, text reading and conversations. I will also use video interviews and pictures of historic figures and events, accompanied by the live Jazz orchestra. Compositional ideas will be based around the mood and message set by what the narrator is presenting. The music along with the narration will make up a total of 50 minutes performance. Presented to a live audience, or a live studio recording.