berklee – Joe Bennett

A Night At The Opera: The Music of Queen #berklee

Posted by JoeBon December 17, 2019December 17, 2019in berklee, Education, musicology, Popular Music, SongwritingLeave a comment

On December 5th 2019, Berklee staged its annual Singers’ Showcase, and the theme this year was A Night at the Opera—The Music of Queen. As a lifelong fan, I was honored to be asked to write the program notes for the evening’s performance.

Each song entry features a reference to the original Queen recording, and the official video embedded, plus a description of the approach the students took for the Berklee version. Selected excerpts from the show itself will appear online sometime in the future, but for now you can get a great behind-the-scenes flavour of the quality of the performance by watching Marshall Lilly’s terrific drumcam footage.

Concert producer: Maureen McMullan
Words: Joe Bennett
Photography: Kelly Davidson Studio
Drumcam video: Marshall Lilly

The Berklee student performers, with special guest drummer, Berklee President Roger H Brown.
Photograph: Kelly Davidson Studio

Drumcam video: Marshall Tilly

Introduction: “I see a miniature libretto from a fan”

Popular Music Education: Foreword

Posted by JoeBon April 3, 2019April 5, 2019in Association of Popular Music Education, berklee, Education, music education, Popular Music, Research1 Comment

This post is taken from my foreword to The Bloomsbury Handbook of Popular Music Education: Perspectives and Practices (Bloomsbury, 2019). Editors: Zack Moir, Bryan Powell, Gareth Dylan Smith. Used by permission.

Popular Music Education. These three words, even though they have been at the center of my professional life for more than 25 years, continue to challenge and intrigue me because each one generates questions. What do we mean by ‘Popular’? Popular with whom, and for how long? Popular in the sense of widely distributed, or in the sense of culturally influential? When we say ‘Music’, which music… and whose music? The consensus reached long ago in conservatoires about the centrality of the European ‘common practice period’ has no easy parallel in PME, and popular music has evolved into so many forms and sub-genres that it is arguably impossible for any teacher or student to have knowledge of it all. And when we talk about ‘Education’, what, exactly, are we teaching? PME in high schools and in higher education deals variously with listening, performing existing music, creating original music, music technology, the commercial music industry, and (often controversially) the history of various canons, styles and traditions. Which of these should we choose to teach? Each answer to these questions breeds further questions. If we decide that our curriculum supports creativity, then our students will probably need to be songwriters, the song being the dominant creative product in most popular music. But how does one build a suitable grading framework for songwriting, when songs represent personal expression? What if the teacher’s definition of a good song is different from the student’s?

Berklee Indian Ensemble in #360 video

Posted by JoeBon January 15, 2019January 15, 2019in berklee, music productionLeave a comment

Sometimes music just speaks for itself.

Listen with headphones. For best results, use a 360 headset or phone with Google Cardboard (ambisonic mix will change as you turn your head toward band members).

Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice

Posted by JoeBon January 8, 2019January 8, 2019in berklee, music education, ResearchLeave a comment

In October 2018, Berklee announced the launch of a new initiative, led by the remarkable Terri Lyne Carrington.

The Institute was founded on a musical question, which is:

What would jazz sound like in a culture without patriarchy?

This morning I was viewing the video of remarks from our outstanding keynote speaker Dr Farah Jasmine Griffin (William B. Ransford Professor of English and Comparative Literature and African-American Studies at Columbia University NY). Like a lot of people, when an inspiring speaker mentions artists, music or books that are new to me, I like to explore further – cue a brief trip down a Google ‘rabbit hole’. So here’s the full presentation, with citations below.

References

Musician as Physician #berklee #musictherapy

Posted by JoeBon June 29, 2018in berklee, Education, music and health, music education, ResearchLeave a comment

Musician as Physician: Interwoven Artistry for Complex Cancer Pain Management

Douglas E Brandoff, MD

Dr Brandoff opens with two vignettes; one where he describes a time of personal social frustration where he wanted to punch a wall (but played some classical piano instead – he demos it live!). His second example is a patient case (see slide).

As a palliative care expert and pain specialist, he gives us an overview of patient needs, in the context of his profession, and in the context of US healthcare. He considers opioids an important part of pain treatment, but acknowledges the rampant public health opioid crisis. We look at some disturbing stats of overdose deaths involving opioids in the US, correlated with heroin and fentanyl takeup, and a more local analysis of the picture here in Massachusetts.

Pain: The Intersection of Sensation and Emotion

Posted by JoeBon June 29, 2018June 29, 2018in berklee, music and health, music education, ResearchLeave a comment

Daniel B Carr MD MA, Tufts University School of Medicine

Dr Carr ones with a powerful statement: Pain itself is a disease. There are a number of causes, and types, of disease (heart disease, lung disease etc) but once they become established and manifest as pain, they have similarities. Dr Carr believes that having access to pain control is a human right. Pain is a public health issue. Pain professionals view it it as a disease, which can be understood as a combination of pathology, host and environment. Definition discussion (Williams and Craig, 2016).

Loeser’s Pain Model (1980)

Pain, Dr Carr suggests, is a public health issue (O’Brien et al, 2017) and lower back pain is argued to be a global disability.

Crossroads of Music & Medicine

Posted by JoeBon June 29, 2018in berklee, Education, music and health, music education, ResearchLeave a comment

Dr. Annie Heiderscheit, Director of Music Therapy, Augsburg University, MN

Dr Heiderscheit begins with an historical overview, which is fascinating – see photo. She presents this slide with minimal comment due to pressure of time.

We see some quantitative (and remarkable) stats relating to public health issues – economic costs of addiction, trauma and pain – but Dr Heiderscheit suggests that the human cost of these issues is literally unquantifiable. They affect our health, relationships, wellbeing, security, purpose, community and environment. “We can work to slap band-aids on gaping wounds, but if we don’t address these areas we are not achieving [societal] well-being”.