The bebop movement had a profound impact on Berk as he built a music curriculum that would become known around the world for its focus on contemporary trends and styles. The session, Parker’s first as a leader, is considered by many to be the first time that bebop-a new form of jazz characterized by rapid tempos, improvisation, and instrumental virtuosity-was ever recorded. In November of that year, saxophonist Charlie Parker recorded “Ko Ko,” one of his early masterpieces, with Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Curly Russell, and Max Roach. to be founded on the study of jazz, the popular music of the era. (Nine years later, he’d rename the school Berklee, after his son, Lee Eliot Berk.) It was the first institution of higher education in the U.S. Berk named it Schillinger House, as a tribute to his musical mentor, Russian music theorist Joseph Schillinger. “Talented kids seemed to find me and I got busier and my best students became teachers and that’s how the school started,” he told the Boston Globe in 1993. An MIT-trained engineer who had left a stable job at Raytheon to pursue teaching music full-time, Berk never expected to start a school at all. In 1945, Lawrence Berk purchased a three-story building at 284 Newbury Street and opened it as a new music school. Taken together, the list shows that where we’ve been can indicate where we’re going, and ultimately, how studying contemporary music becomes music history.Ĭlick the image to learn more and listen to the song.ġ945 Charlie Parker, 'Ko Ko' Brass students on the steps of Schillinger House. Listening to these songs, you will hear something like an audio version of a time-lapse camera, hearing big band shift to bebop and fusion, sitcom themes to iconic film scores, the music of the African diaspora to the traditional music of India, Spain, Mexico, China, and many other places. Many of the featured artists are alumni or have been faculty members, or were presented with honorary doctorates. The songs here showcase not just an impressive list of notable alumni (though it is that) and a collection of accolades (it is that, too)-nor are they meant to be an exhaustive record of Berklee’s contributions to music over the past seven and a half decades-but rather, they are the stories of those who have shaped and been shaped by the Berklee universe. To take stock of where we’ve been, we couldn’t think of a more fitting tribute to the school, from its genesis as Schillinger House to present-day Berklee College of Music, than to create a playlist featuring one song from each year of the school’s existence. The idea was simple, yet revolutionary: study not just the music that’s been made, study the music that is being made-study the history of music, but also make music history. Berklee’s Latin motto, Esse quam videri, can be translated as “to be, rather than to seem.” This call to be true to one’s self and one’s art has not wavered since Larry Berk founded the school in 1945.

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