Faculty
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Stan Strickland, Associate Professor
DEPARTMENT : Voice Department"I'm teaching two unusual classes. One is called Musical Independence, which is basically a class for singers to develop some piano self-accompanying skills and to think about putting a song together. Then I have a liberal arts class called Sound, Body, and Performance. It's a very comprehensive class, looking at a holistic approach to performing. We do a lot of hand drumming, movement, meditating, and breathing. It fulfills a science requirement, so there's a lot of reading."
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Jason Anick, Instructor
DEPARTMENT : String Department"When I teach students jazz I always encourage them to learn from other musicians in their ensembles, or give them suggestions for records to listen to and solos to transcribe, or encourage them to play with different instruments. That's how I learned. That's what worked for me. I try not to overwhelm them with harmonic concepts at first but instead help them build a solid foundation and understanding of what the music is all about."
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Anne Peckham, Chair
DEPARTMENT : Voice Department"I want students to know that they can sing in a healthy manner in the style of music that they love. It's not like making cookie-cutter singers where everybody has a certain quality of tone or a certain sound to their voice; you can sound like yourself and still use vocal technique. Technique really has to be habituated so that it's almost invisible to the naked eye. That way, you're watching the singer perform, be expressive, and be him- or herself, while technique is the underpinning that's allowing the singer to sing freely, but with good stamina and good intonation."
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"One of the best classes I ever took here was with Mitch Halpins, his Nonstylistic Improvisation Concepts Ensemble, which was just incredible. It takes the stylistic thing away, so you are sort of stripped down to who you are or what you can offer. You have to be fully present to the other people who are there with you, to enter into this sacred space which has never come before and will never come again. It's just such an amazing concept, but you must be willing to really open yourself up to that, to receive and not just transmit only."
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Darla Hanley, Dean
DEPARTMENT : Professional Education Division"The Professional Education Division at Berklee College of Music includes five departments: music business/management, music education, music therapy, professional music, and the liberal arts. Our students are in all corners of the music industry as entrepreneurs, teachers, therapists, performers, managers, promoters, and more."
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Annette Philip, Instructor
DEPARTMENT : Voice Department"My first love is working with multiple voices, and in India I have a group, over 250 members now, called Artists Unlimited. The whole concept of circle singing is something that is so very powerful. Circle singing is a concept that as far as I know Bobby McFerrin introduced to the world. It's very organic. He assigns a part to the bass singers, and another interlocking part to the sopranos, and something else for the altos, and something else for the tenors, and maybe he would improvise over it. It's a very dynamic form of composition; it's always improvised. One of the students started a circle singing group at Berklee. You have to really surrender to the moment. I think in all music that's what we're trying to encourage our students to do, to surrender and be totally present in the moment. And I feel that circle singing is a very noncompetitive, nonhostile, supportive, healing, and liberating space to just give yourself to and then see what happens."
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"I teach Arranging 2 and Big Band Arranging. When I went to Berklee, I was a very reluctant arranging student. I just didn't think I needed it, and I wanted to become a studio musician. Taking all the other mandatory classes made sense, but arranging didn't. When would I ever arrange? It's funny that now I teach arranging and sell a lot of my arrangements. That's something that I try to instill in my students: You think you know what you want while you're here, but keep your mind open, because you have to be prepared when opportunities come up."
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Rick Peckham, Assistant Chair
DEPARTMENT : Guitar Department"To me the musician's responsibility is not only to get the sound out of your head and to the instrument, but actually into the mind of the listener—and there are a lot of things between your mind and the listener's. You need to know about sound production on your instrument, getting your sound recorded, and making that sound the best it can be."
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Amanda Monaco, Assistant Professor
DEPARTMENT : Guitar Department"Berklee is so comprehensive and up to date with what's really going on in the music business. They tap into that in a way that I think other schools don't. And they're very realistic about what a musician needs to have to be a complete musician as opposed to just a player. The resources are vast, and students are getting a whole music experience, even before declaring a major. They have a foundation."
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Robert Gallegos, Assistant Professor
DEPARTMENT : Ensemble Department- B.M., Berklee College of Music
- Trumpeter
- Freelance musician
- Performances with Ray Charles, the Four Tops, the Temptations, the O'Jays, the Sam Rivers Orchestra, Mariachi Cobre with the Jacksonville Symphony, Giovanni Hidalgo, Ray Barretto, the Eguie Castrillo Latin Big Band, the Kenny Hadley Big Band, the Boston Pops, the U.S. Air Force Liberty Band, and others
- Recordings with the Eguie Castrillo Latin Big Band