PODCAST: Inside Berklee—David Mash

After more than 40 years as an integral leader at Berklee, Senior Vice President for Innovation, Strategy, and Technology David Mash, who Rolling Stone has called the "leading evangelist for the marriage of music and technology," reflects on his work and the future of the Berklee community.

By
Mike Keefe-Feldman
February 15, 2017

David Mash, senior vice president of innovation, strategy, and technology, reflects, just prior to his retirement, on his more than 40 years at Berklee.

After more than 40 years as an integral leader in the Berklee community, David Mash B.M. '76, Berklee’s senior vice president for innovation, strategy, and technology, has retired. Rolling Stone has called Mash the "leading evangelist for the marriage of music and technology," and Mash's contributions to Berklee were celebrated during Berklee's Voltage Connect Conference, which was dedicated to Mash.

Those contributions include a torrent of accomplishments, from building the major now known as electronic production and design, as well as the Berklee City Music Network and the Libraries and Learning Resources area, to getting Berklee’s campus connected to the internet and spearheading Berklee’s Vision for 2025, among other achievements. Mash’s expertise has also been sought out by companies working in music and technology such as Korg, Roland, Yamaha, Kurzweil, and Adobe.

In this episode, Mash discusses his background in music and what brought him to Berklee (first, as a student, in 1973), which led to his founding the popular progressive electronic jazz-fusion band Ictus.

"Many things have changed at Berklee—physically, technically—but one thing that's remained the same all the time that I've been here, and one of the reasons that I've stayed here for all this time, is the incredible passion of this community for creating new work," Mash says, reflecting on his time at Berklee. "That's what makes this place unique on the planet."

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