Berklee today is the official alumni publication of Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. It is a forum for contemporary music and musicians.
Issue link: http://berkleetoday.epubxp.com/i/180042
Despite that shortcoming, Mendoza was overwhelmed by her talent. "When I asked her to sing for me, I was completely mesmerized," he recalls. "I felt I couldn't exclude someone like her." Not only did Doraiswamy's classmates soon clamor to collaborate with her but producer Javier Limón also recorded with her and flm scoring director Laura Karpman used her voice on a movie score. "Laura told me that we had a gold mine with some of these students," Mendoza says. Mendoza encourages his students to broaden their horizons by experimenting with musicians from diverse lands and musical styles. "President Brown refers to this place as a musical laboratory, and that's just what it is," Mendoza says. "The students are pushing the boundaries. If someone comes here as a great bebop player, we might point them toward famenco, Arabic, or Balkan music. [Students have] told me that they never could have grown in this way at home because they didn't have friends to play these styles with. In addition to what we teach them, they teach each other a lot." Mendoza wants students at Valencia to be artistically restless, constantly searching, and confdent about trying new things. A case in point is Patricia Ramón, who came from Argentina to the campus. A gifted singer and pianist, Ramón found herself artistically in Valencia according to Mendoza. "She didn't want to just be a tango singer," Mendoza emphasizes. "She felt she'd already done that. She was working on her songwriting, and then one day she showed up with a didgeridoo. This wasn't a frivolous choice; she's serious about learning the instrument." Ramón played her didgeridoo with the all-female student improvisational group Zaumd, an ensemble formed by bassist Priscilla Vela. Adding Stephen Webber playing turntable, the group appeared at the experimental Sónar Festival in Barcelona and the audience absolutely loved them. Mendoza produced the July 14 commencement concert and it was quite evident that the student performers and writers had broken through self-imposed stylistic boundaries to make musical discoveries. That concert demonstrated artistic maturity and adventurous exploration that typifes the artistic ideals of Berklee Valencia. (See the "Lab Report" sidebar below.) Down to Business During the summer of 2011, Allen Bargfrede came to Valencia from the Boston faculty to head the school's major in global entertainment and music business. Boston's Chair of Music Business/Management Don Gorder and others helped with the preliminary development of the curriculum, and then it was up to Bargfrede to run with it. Even though he lacked a network to draw on when he started, the ever-resourceful Bargfrede assembled a team of faculty members from across Europe. "I spent the fall of 2011 traveling around Europe having lunch with anyone I could to fnd the right teachers," he recalls. He chose people from Madrid, Barcelona, London, and Paris who come in once each week to teach. "They're all active in the music industry in their countries, so the students get exposure to professionals." It was determined that the Valencia program would prepare the grads to work in a global business environment and place an emphasis on entrepreneurship. "We decided to position this as a program that's up to date with what's happening in Europe and the U.S.," Bargfrede says. "A lot of innovation in today's industry is coming from young entrepreneurs rather than people who have worked at record labels for 30 years. So we are looking into starting [a new business] incubator with real support and possibly grants for projects [that] the students create here. We're starting a Valencia student label through Warner Music and a concert series at the halls of the Palau with Live Nation. The series will give performance students a chance to play and the business students a real-life experience in concert production and marketing." A hallmark of the Valencia educational experience is the emphasis on student collaborations within their own majors and across disciplines. "The frst class had 30 students from 19 countries and they learned from one another," Bargfrede says. "The amount of diversity here has made this campus really interesting. We have students sharing ideas about how things work in their home countries and looking at how things can work on a global basis." The business major's core classes cover intellectual property law, accounting, fnance, and the economics of entertainment. "They're all business-specifc but taught from a music and entertainment perspective," Bargfrede explains. This fall, Bargfrede returned to the Boston faculty. Valencia faculty member Emilien Moyon, who previously worked as a music business professor in France, is the program's new director. Bargfrede refects, "The opportunity to come here and build something was phenomenal. And I can't express how proud I was watching the students walk across the stage to get their degrees. They will leave and disperse around the world, but they will maintain the network they created here. You're unlikely to fnd a situation like that in other college music business programs." Allen Bargfrede Ousso Lotfy Lab Report The graduation concert presented the results of the musical research conducted in the Berklee Valencia lab during the preceding year. Early on, the eclectic program placed an emphasis on acoustic instruments including nylon-string guitar, mandolin, wind instruments, and Middle-Eastern and Latin hand percussion as well as American drum kit. The opener was a Brazilian choro followed by zambas y chacareras: Argentinean folkloric music peppered with a hint of the blues. Throughout the program, the blend of musical sounds from Mediterranean countries, the Middle East, Africa, and the Americas was striking. Egyptian guitarist Ousso Lotfy was highlighted throughout on nylon-string and electric guitars, which illustrated his expertise in the seemingly disparate Mediterranean and American rock styles. Mournful Arab-infuenced vocals on ballads contrasted with the scat singing of Lithuanian vocalist Viktorija Pilatovic. Her uptempo swing version of Cole Porter's "I Get a Kick out of You" allowed her bandmates to shine in their solos and on a feet-fngered Chick Corea-esque unison line that resurfaced periodically. The group later rendered the jazz standard "Autumn Leaves" with a Puerto Rican bomba groove, serving up plenty of vocal and instrumental freworks in the process. A musical fearlessness characterized the treatment of known songs as well as original compositions. The intro to the Indian song "Vitoo" was also notable; it featured Spanish upright bassist Priscilla Vela and Argentinean grad Patricia Ramón on didgeridoo dueting in the bass clef before Ganavya Doraiswamy's vocal entry. The band transformed the Indian song, underpinning it with a reggae groove. The students also showcased original tunes with a global twist, including "The Wreckage" by Alessia Collarile (Canada) and "Easy to Take" by American Sarah Mount. The latter was enhanced with hints of Arabic musical sounds. Almost every song in the program showed a proud, carefree blending of multicultural infuences. Toward the close of the show, the musicians kicked it up a notch with a grouping of American pop songs, including "Long Train Running" (The Doobie Brothers), "Tell Me Something Good" (Chaka Khan), and a crazy soul-hoedown mashup on Ben E. King's "Stand By Me." The Sexecutives, a band made up of business majors, played songs with an alt-rock edge and plenty of stage antics, including Mexican lead singer Iñaki Barcos Melgar's handsprings across the stage. Victor Mendoza (center) and the graduation concert perfomers Fall2013 25