Berklee College of Music
Encyclopedia : B : BE : BER : Berklee College of Music
Berklee College of Music, founded in 1945, is an independent music college in Boston, Massachusetts with many prominent faculty, staff, alumni, and visiting artists. It has an enrollment of approximately 3,800 students and a faculty of approximately 430 (as of 2004). Berklee offers a fully accredited four-year baccalaureate degree or diploma. Degree program tuition is approximately $20,350 for the fall through spring academic year (as of 2004).
Berklee College of Music is not to be confused with the University of California's Berkeley campus.
History
Berklee was founded by Lawrence Berk and was originally named Schillinger House of Music, after his teacher Joseph Schillinger. The original purpose of the school was to teach the Schillinger System of musical harmony and composition. After expansion of the school's curriculum in 1954, Berk changed the name to Berklee School of Music after his son Lee Berk and as a pun on the name of the famous University of California, Berkeley (students often have a hard time explaining to people that Berklee and UC-Berkeley are two unrelated schools). When the school received its accreditation, the name was changed to Berklee College of Music in 1973. Lee Berk never formally studied music, instead focusing on Business and Real Estate Law, however his daughter Lucy Berk is an alumna of the college.
At the time of its founding, almost all music schools focused primarily on classical music. The original mission of Berklee was to provide formal training in jazz, rock, and other contemporary music not available at other music schools.
As of the 2006 Fall semester, all students will be required to audition to gain entrance to the school. This is a change from the school's open-admittance policy it used for many years. Berklee's acceptance rate is now approximately 42%.
In February 2006, the college's first official athletic team was formed. Several students got together and formed a hockey team. The Berklee hockey team is expected to play in the New England Senior Hockey League in the 2006-2007 season, and in the American Collegiate Hockey Association (ACHA) in 2007-2008. The team practices in Rockland, MA and West Roxbury, MA.
Demographics and statistics
Berklee has the largest percentage of undergraduate students from outside the U.S.—26 percent—representing more than 70 countries. Women comprise 24.6 percent of the student body. Domestic minority enrollment is African-American, 6.4 percent; Hispanic, 5.5 percent; Asian-American, 4.1 percent. The five countries that supply the largest percentage of foreign students to Berklee are Japan, Korea, Germany, Switzerland, and Brazil. The school's current president, Roger H. Brown, was inaugurated in 2004.Berklee offers three full time semesters per year: Fall, Spring, and an accelerated twelve week summer program. (Compared to the regular sixteen weeks for Fall and Spring.)
There are 230 acoustic pianos and more than 1,000 guitar principals at Berklee. The average class size is 11. The holdings of the college's Stan Getz Media Center and Library include more than 11,500 recordings, 20,000 books, 17,000 musical scores, and 6,000 lead sheets.
Facilities
- 17 buildings in Boston's Back Bay neighborhood
- A practice & rehearsal building in Boston's Allston-Brighton neighborhood
Majors
- Performance
- Composition
- Jazz Composition
- [Music Production & Engineering]
- Film Scoring
- Music Business/Management
- [Music Synthesis]
- Contemporary Writing & Production
- Music Education
- Songwriting
- Music Therapy
- Professional Music
Notable alumni
See also
External link
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