By Rob Hochschild
Berklee.edu Editor
April 2001

	Photo by Liz Linder

When Mike Herklots was seven years old, he decided to study karate. He became a black belt at 10. During his junior year at Berklee, the drummer wanted a weekly jazz gig. He walked into a restaurant a few blocks from campus, one that had never presented live music, and convinced them to feature his quartet every Thursday. And in April 2001, seven semesters after scoring 2's and 3's in his Berklee ensemble ratings, he landed the highest possible assessment: "straight eights," an improvement akin to climbing a musical Mt. Everest.

"Anything I do, I tend to take hold of," Herklots says. "I have to just go for it until I reach some sort of goal, and I have goals for everything. For karate, I trained for eight hours a day for three years. When I first got to Berklee, I practiced 6, 7, 8 hours a day."

His Berklee studies nearly complete, Herklots has cut down his practice time considerably, but he has become such an in-demand musician he is playing constantly anyway, whether for paying gigs around New England, or for recitals and recording sessions at Berklee. Still, he says even those playing opportunities are part of his studies.

"The more you play in front of people, when you're reacting to their enjoyment, to me, that's the best kind of practice," Herklots, a Performance major, said. "It's not just playing for me and playing for the band. When playing out there for people, everyone has to respond in a split second to whatever's happening. When the audience feels it has a connection to what's going on, it's rewarding for them."

One Berklee ensemble Herklots performed with for a full year, the Urban Outreach Ensemble, gave him opportunities not only to play in front of people, but to go on the road every week, performing at public schools throughout the Boston area. The 13-piece band performs "hardcore swing," tackling charts performed by bands led by Maynard Ferguson and Buddy Rich.

Urban Outreach and the other Berklee ensembles Herklots has joined reflect his love of jazz. He has played with the Miles Davis and Horace Silver ensembles and Back Bay Brass, a big band that tackles complex contemporary charts written by jazz composers such as Thad Jones and Bob Brookmeyer.

Photo by Liz Linder
Mike's All-Time Top Five Albums • Of Kindred Souls – Roy Hargrove • Spirit of the Moment: Live at the Village Vanguard – Joshua Redman • My Shining Hour – Roy Haynes • Souled Out – Tower of Power • Viaggio Italiano – Andrea Bocelli

You might say that Herklots's choosing to play drums in big bands is a case of working in the family business; his grandfather played in swing bands for years. But his father, a rock drummer, used songs by Neil Diamond, the Beatles, and the Beach Boys to give the younger Herklots his first lessons when he was 10.

"I learned playing drums to Neil Diamond's 'Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show' and 'Sweet Caroline,'" Herklots said. "He had me play along with the records. First he would play, then I would play."

While acknowledging the value of those early lessons, Herklots says his one-on-one studies years later with several Berklee Percussion Department teachers took his playing to higher and higher levels. After Bob Tamagni helped guide Herklots through the challenges of the first semester, he says Casey Scheurell taught him how to analyze drum styles and develop his own style. John Ramsay worked with him on developing independence, which is the ability to maintain various rhythms with different limbs that is so critical for drummers, and Jon Hazilla refined his playing by focusing on specific techniques and choices he was making as a drummer.

"Every week (Hazilla and I) found a new element of my playing that was lacking," Herklots says. "My ride (cymbal) pattern wasn't as solid as it should have been. Now it's probably the most important thing when I play, and people comment on it all the time."

Herklots's strategy to study with as many drummers as possible stems from a plan to get as much as he can out of his Berklee years. He sees Berklee as a place not only to study music but to learn how to survive in the music business.

"To me, if you can make it at Berklee, you're going to make it in the industry, not to say you're going to be signed to Blue Note and sell a million records," he says. "But you have everything here. Competition, cliques, politics, all the fair and unfair that's in the industry. It exists here, which is great. If you can make it here and take it here, that at least shows that you have the drive and the motivation to do it."