Courses

Entrepreneurship in Black Creative Expression equips students with the skills and knowledge essential for success at the intersection of entrepreneurship and creative Black expression, specifically emphasizing music, dance, and theater. This course offers practical insights and hands-on experience in establishing, managing, and expanding ventures within the for-profit or nonprofit Black performing arts industry. Students will be introduced to and explore various aspects, including understanding diverse business structures tailored to commercial and nonprofit endeavors, navigating fundraising avenues, and strategic planning. By exploring the multifaceted landscape of entrepreneurship within Black creative arts, students will be prepared to translate artistic visions into impactful ventures, whether a sustainable business entity or a socially impactful nonprofit initiative.

This research-based capstone course will allow students to synthesize the knowledge and skills acquired through their Africana studies coursework in an applied and artistic final project that relates to a real issue or challenge in the industry (music, theater, dance or film) or in society. Students participate in a weekly capstone seminar led by the faculty member who also serves as their capstone advisor. In sharing their capstone processes, content, and products with each other throughout the semester, students develop and demonstrate knowledge and integration of skills, scholarship, and strategies of Africana studies interdisciplinarity, mixed-method research, and grounded, local/global, reflective practices. At the end of the semester, students present their capstone project and use it for an employment portfolio and/or for graduate school application materials.

This research-based capstone course will allow students to synthesize the knowledge and skills acquired through their Africana studies coursework in an applied and artistic final project that relates to a real issue or challenge in the industry (music, theater, dance or film) or in society. Students participate in a weekly capstone seminar led by the faculty member who also serves as their capstone advisor. In collaboration with their faculty member and critique from guest artists, students will identify and artistically express their Afrodiasporic knowledge through the medium of film. Students will learn film production techniques and create a five-minute short film expressing their artistic perspective. Throughout this process, students will also analyze and critique their work product through workshop sessions with peers and industry leaders. The course will culminate with an offsite student film showcase at the Berklee Africana Studies Film Festival.

This course closely examines the intersection of race, identity, class, and gender as it pertains to the emergence of different sounds and communities throughout the African diaspora. In this course, we will approach musical practices established in selected diasporic communities through a variety of perspectives and media that will exhibit the interconnected and disparate qualities between practices. In combination with looking at the anatomy of musical pieces and recordings we will refine analytic tools and knowledge of historical and cultural placement. Selected geographic areas will include North America, West and Central Africa, East Africa, South Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean.

The workshop provides opportunities for student composers to hear performances of their own work, and for student performers to gain public performing experience of original student works and works written within the last 60 years. Important works of the 20th century are explored. It is advisable, but not required, for students to have taken MHIS-261 prior to enrolling in this course. This course can be repeated for credit.

Composing New Music for Dance is an advanced class for composers to learn pedagogue of collaboration with choreographers and write new music for contemporary dance.  Lectures cover topics such as the nature of collaboration between sound and body gesture, developing a vocabulary and language for musicians and dancers to collaborate, analysis of iconic contemporary dance and music collaborations, and more. Composers then collaborate one-on-one with a choreographer to create a new work for dance. Additional class time might be assigned to meet with dancers in the dance studio. Composers are free to use any style that suits their collaboration, and are responsible for producing the music performance themselves. Students are encouraged to experiment with new methods of composing and new ways to create music based on dance. 

This course explores the fundamental elements of contemporary business practices within the various specializations offered at BerkleeNYC. Students will gain a comprehensive understanding of core business concepts including, but not limited to; marketing strategies, industry roles, planning, budgeting, presentation skills, and other essential practices for creative professionals. Students will leave the course with a methodology to advance their project through all phases of development. 

In this demonstration and performance based class, students explore the tools and techniques of musical and visual improvisation and algorithmic artistic generation. Each week students, in a collaborative fashion, design and build their own custom digital instrument with laptops, midi controllers, musical instruments, hardware processors, and software such as Ableton Live. The majority of the class time is spent trying new interactive techniques for performing music together, discovering the capabilities of students’ own individual skills and developing the audio and visual possibilities of a group performance. 

Students enrolled in this course will advance their understanding of common procedures and techniques used in professional recording studios. Building on the information that is taught in CMSP-561, students will continue to explore advanced aspects of digital audio recording, microphone construction, analogue and digital audio effects, and various audio recording and mixing techniques.

Alternative approaches and concepts to writing that can be used in various aspects of songwriting, arranging, and composing for contemporary broadcast media, such as film and TV scores, that will supplement other writing approaches. Using compositional concepts pioneered by George Tremblay and Jack Smalley, the course explores writing techniques based on the use of the 12-tone row concept and the process of extracting consonant melodic components from the rows that are then applied to writing for contemporary musical styles and forms and commercial clients. Some writing projects will be realized through sequencing and live performance.

Gyrokinesis®, as developed by Juliu Horvath, embraces key principles also found in yoga, dance, gymnastics, and tai-chi. The system works the entire body through seven natural elements of spinal movement: forward, backward, left side, right side, left twist, right twist, and circular, as well as all other joint articulation. This work develops strength, flexibility, integration, and prepares the body for danced movement.