Tag: Berklee

Devin Jones wins Fletcher Bright scholarship at Berklee

Devin Jones, a first year guitar student at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, has been awarded a Fletcher Bright Endowed Scholarship to help pay for his ongoing studies. Fiddler Ruth Shumway was also chosen to receive this scholarship. Both were given out at the recent 2024 String Awards on April 8 at Berklee for the String Department and the American Roots Program, which houses the bluegrass students.

Only playing bluegrass since he was 14, Devin has quickly grown into a fine musician. While a student in Boston, he also performs up and down the east coast with Ettore Buzzini, and has developed a mentor/mentee relationship with Bryan Sutton, initially through Artist Works, and then as a part of Bryan’s Blue Ridge Guitar Camp. At last year’s camp, Jones was invited onstage to play one with Bryan and Chris Eldridge at the NC Guitar Celebration Concert at the Brevard Music Center.

We caught up with the young flatpicker this week by phone, and he expressed how much it means to him to be awarded the Fletcher Bright Scholarship, and to be studying in Boston.

“Ever since I got my first guitar at 14, bluegrass has been the focal point of my life. Having the opportunity to study at Berklee under world class musicians has been an incredible experience, and I have learned a tremendous amount in just my first year.

I am extremely grateful and honored to have been recognized with this prestigious award.”

Bright was an enthusiastic Tennessee fiddler who achieved tremendous success in commercial real estate. Based in Chattanooga, Fletcher spent the later years of his life engaged in philanthropy towards young bluegrass artists studying their craft in college. He also endowed an ongoing scholarship managed by the IBMA Foundation.

For many years he performed with a group called The Dismembered Tennesseans, which was one of the chief joys of his life. Fletcher Bright died on Christmas day of 2017, at 86 years of age. He was as good friend as fiddle and bluegrass music ever had.

Here’s a recent video of Devin performing with Buzzini on banjo, Willie Marcher on fiddle, and Briar McDowell on bass at a house concert Tom Mindte put on in Gaithersburg, MD this past weekend.

Well done all!

Many congratulations to Devin on his scholarship award. We’ll definitely keep our eye on this young picker as he grows and develops.

Tony Watt accepts faculty position at Berklee

The busiest bluegrass in Boston may be Tony Watt, who in addition to being a flat picker for hire, also teaches privately in the area, both in person and online, hosts the continuing Bluegrass Tuesdays concerts and jams in Cambridge, and serves as Vice President of the Boston Bluegrass Union.

Tony now has another feather in his cap, as he has accepted a faculty position at the Berklee College of Music. The prestigious institution in Boston’s Fenway area has a long reputation as a jazz school, but has opened up to bluegrass this past two decades, turning out top level graduates like Sierra Hull and Molly Tuttle along the way.

Most recently bluegrass fans may have seen Tony playing guitar with Alan Bibey & Grasstowne. His education was actually in a STEM field, and Watt moved to the northeast initially planning to complete his graduate program and work in renewable energy. But in a most unusual twist of fate, he found a career in bluegrass music instead.

He explained a bit about his new position and duties at Berklee.

“Teaching bluegrass at Berklee is a dream come true for me that I never could have imagined when I first started teaching many years ago. I am now an Associate Professor in Berklee’s Ensemble Department, taking over for Dave Hollender who taught at Berklee for 37 years. I am so grateful to both Dave and Matt Glaser for recommending me for this position, and to the other professors in the American Roots Music Program at Berklee, especially Joe K. Walsh and Greg Liszt.

My primary role will be coaching bluegrass ensembles, which thankfully is something I have many years of experience doing. Students in my ensembles will be preparing music for performances both at Berklee and at Bluegrass Tuesdays, which I now host. I also hope to offer some bluegrass guitar instruction, although I will never be able to fill the giant shoes of the late, great John McGann.

I have been privileged to witness the rise of bluegrass at Berklee, and I am so thankful to be able to contribute to the education of such talented young people. Having just started the job, I’m still trying to wrap my head around the whole experience, but this is without a doubt, the honor of a lifetime, and I couldn’t be more grateful.”

Congratulations to Tony Watt and to Berklee on this move!

Laura Orshaw wins 2023 Eisenson Family Prize for American Roots Music

The Berklee College of Music in Boston has announced bluegrass fiddler and vocalist Laura Orshaw as the recipient of the 2023 Eisenson Family Prize for American Roots Music. The annual award is decided based on criteria set by renowned fiddler and violinist Matt Glaser, who directs the American Roots Music program at Berklee.

The Eisenson Family Prize, endowed by Bill Haney in 2016, is given to allow a noted roots musician to visit the school to teach and interact with students. For some years now, Berklee has admitted students whose primary instruments and interests are in bluegrass music, and has hired instructors and created ensembles to further their studies.

Glaser said to Berklee Now about Laura that…

“Laura Orshaw sings and plays the fiddle with incredible intensity and power, a power that comes from her immersion in the deep emotional core of classic country music. As the great Ray Charles said, ‘Country songs are very earthy, like the blues. The people are very honest. Country songs and the blues is like it is!’

Berklee students who will get to work with her, thanks to the Eisenson Family Prize, will benefit from Laura’s amazing knowledge of the trailblazing work of artists such as Tammy Wynette, Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton, and Hazel Dickens.”

Bluegrass lovers know Orshaw as fiddler with The Po’ Ramblin’ Boys, where she also throws down as a singer with the band. Her previous work has included stints with Alan Bibey & Grasstowne,  Danny Paisley and the Southern Grass, and the Tennessee Mafia Jug Band.

She has already made one visit to the Berklee campus to meet with students, and will return periodically throughout the year to work with them in ensembles, master classes, and even private lessons.

Laura likewise spoke to Berklee Now about this award.

“As a music educator and professional musician based in the Boston area, I am so grateful for the incredible opportunities Berklee has afforded me. Through my experiences as a visiting artist, performing at symposiums, teaching private lessons, and working with student ensembles, I’ve come to know the true magic of Berklee.

Being named a recipient of the Eisenson Family Prize for American Roots Music is an absolute honor. I’m thrilled to continue my work with the American Roots Program, with a special focus on women in roots music.”

In addition to recording and performing with The Po’ Ramblin’ Boys, Laura Orshaw is signed with Dark Shadow Recording in Nashville, where her second album is in pre-production. Current plans call for it to be released in the spring of 2024.

Berklee’s American Roots Music program celebrates 10 years 

Boston’s Berklee College of Music’s American Roots Music program is to mark its 10th anniversary with a special concert that will feature collaborations between artists in styles as varied as blues, Celtic, country, Gospel, early jazz, folk, old-time, spirituals and western swing as well as bluegrass music.

The line-up features some who have passed through Berklee’s American Roots Music program and have gone on to enjoy successful careers, as well as some of the incredible bands that got their start there.

Assembled by Matt Glaser, the program’s artistic director, for this concert on Tuesday, March 12, 2019, are alumni Sierra Hull B.M., a mandolin prodigy who is now a seasoned touring musician and a 2011 graduate; and Molly Tuttle B.M., a 2014 graduate noted for her flatpicking, clawhammer, and cross-picking guitar prowess; Mile Twelve, IBMA Momentum Award winners in the band category in 2017; The Lonely Heartstring Band, one of the most talked-about young groups on the modern bluegrass scene; The Goodbye Girls, an exciting quartet from Boston with members from Canada, Sweden and the USA;  Twisted Pine, one of the most acclaimed young string bands in the north-east that “has developed a unique, infectious joyful noise without limits”; Molsky’s Mountain Drifters, led by Berklee College of Music’s Visiting Scholar in the American Roots Program, Bruce Molsky (fiddle), with Allison de Groot (banjo) and Stash Wyslouch (guitar); and Jenna & Màiri (Jenna Moynihan B.M., a versatile and inventive fiddle player who graduated with honors in 2013), and Màiri Chaimbeul B.M., a Boston-based harp player and composer from the Isle of Skye, who graduated in 2016). 

Sierra Hull, the first bluegrass musician to win Berklee’s prestigious Presidential Scholar award, is delighted to be part of this event.

“I am so thrilled to be returning to Berklee to help celebrate the American Roots Music Program. I was lucky enough to be a student there during the birth of this program and made some really fun memories while being a part of specials events like this. Perhaps more than any other school out there, Berklee continues to celebrate roots music, creating an exciting scene for students to be a part of. They are constantly bringing in amazing guests musicians for clinics and one on one lessons. The upcoming concert is going to be a wonderful evening and I’m so exciting to be a small part of it!”

This Signature Series concert takes place on Tuesday, March 12, 2019, at the Berklee Performance Center, starting at 7:30 p.m. 

Admission is $15.00 and $20.00 in advance; and $20.00 and $25.00 on the day of show. 

Tickets can be purchased on-line and at the box office 136 Massachusetts Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts, 02115.

Goldbrickin’ video from OctoPladd

OctoPladd is another young band formed within the growing bluegrass community that surrounds the Berklee College of Music in Boston. Their name could have bizarre, mystical connotations – or it could just be because each of the four of them are wearing two plaid shirts in their promotional picture.

In any event, they are remarkably talented young pickers who formed outside of their Berklee classes, and do shows around the Boston area, sometimes officially representing the school. They are Julian Pinelli on fiddle, Sam Leslie on guitar, Ethan Setiawan on mandolin, and Noah Harrington on bass.

Recently they have been recording at Berklee’s audio studios, and also captured the performances on video. At this point, what they have shot is all instrumental, and they can all be viewed on YouTube.

Here’s one with a distinctly grass flavor, their version of Ronnie McCoury’s Goldbrickin’.

 

Engineering in the studio were Jeremy Kahn, Loren Dorland, and Mateo London, Louise Bachand shot the video, which was edited by Julian Pinelli.

Two of the band members are taking advantage of the opportunity to study abroad this coming school year, so it looks like a hiatus is on the horizon, but hopefully OctoPladd will be back with renewed vigor next summer.

Julian Pinelli wins 2016 Fletcher Bright Award at Berklee

The American Roots Music Program at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA has announced Julian Pinelli as the winner of the 2016 Fletcher Bright Award.

The award has been given since 2008 to an outstanding young Berklee student in the strings program, which covers the cost of a semester’s tuition, and is funded by Fletcher Bright, the prominent Tennessee fiddler and philanthropist.

Matt Glaser, Artistic Director of the American Roots Music Program, and former Director of Strings at Berklee, says that Bright’s beneficence has been a big benefit to the school.

“Every year we choose an up-and-coming fiddle player who receives a very generous award to continue studying at Berklee. They also take a band of all Berklee students to play at Fletcher’s 3 Sisters Bluegrass Festival in Chattanooga. He’s been very generous for years.

Winning this award is an almost certain guarantee that whoever wins will go on to be a successful working fiddler and do quite well for themselves, based on previous winners.”

Julian is a second year student at Berklee, and a native of Asheville, NC, where he started his study of the violin at only 4 years old. His mom, a Suzuki violin instructor, got him started and his dad, with a keen interest in bluegrass music, began showing him fiddle tunes by the time he was 7.

Homeschooling provided Julian plenty of time to focus on music, and he continued to pursue both classical and bluegrass tracks through high school. He played with his folks in a family band called New Broad River Band, and he also got some time in with Southern Crescent Bluegrass, a group of older, traditional bluegrass pickers near Asheville.

A cousin, Duncan Wickel, went through Berklee and served as Pinelli’s impetus to make the move to Boston. There he has excelled in his studies, culminating in this month’s award.

Julian hopes to follow in the footsteps of other recent Berklee grads like Alex Hargreaves and Michael Barnett, who have gone on to a music career after completing their schooling.

“There is a whole movement of string players who have been coming out of Berklee who come from a bluegrass background, learn jazz at Berklee, and have now incorporated all that into their music.

I’m super honored to win this award; beyond words, really.”

Here’s a look at this fine young musician, in a performance of one of his tunes, Flutterby Ridge, with a group of fellow students. Jake Howard is on mandolin, Mike Gaisbacher on bass, and Ben Knorr on banjo.

 

Congratulations, Julian Pinelli!

Exploring Classical Mandolin by August Watters

It’s a long way from Bean Blossom to Boston, but that’s the exact route August Watters’ life has taken. Growing up in Unionville, IN, just ten miles from the famous festival put on by Bill Monroe, Watters never imagined that his boyhood impressions of Big Mon would culminate in a career playing mandolin, and working as an Associate Professor at the Berklee College of Music.

But there he is, living in nearby Brookline and teaching ear training at Berklee, where students of most any instrument (including mandolin) can cultivate the techniques and theory of modern popular music.

August has written a new book for mandolinists, published by Berklee Press, which is designed to introduce the study of classical mandolin to today’s players. As the popularity of the instrument has increased in recent years, mandolinists have explored not only bluegrass and old time music, but also other forms where the mandolin is common, like Brazilian dance music and classical music.

Exploring Classical Mandolin is meant to remedy the dearth of published materials for approaching the style, something August has worked intensely on recently. This is the sort of music performed by mandolin orchestras in the instrument’s previous hey day in the early 20th century.

He says that he has pored over vintage instructional manuals for hints on how to best present it to modern players.

“I’ve spent a lot of time over the past years studying the old method books. There are techniques in those books that hardly anyone uses today, so I decided to write a book to introduce these rich traditions to a broader audience. Berklee Press wanted to emphasize original music, so I wrote new contemporary etudes using the old techniques.

Now you can practice these techniques by playing musical pieces designed with a technical goal in mind, which is more rewarding than just practicing exercises. For example, most bluegrass players use a pattern of eight notes for crosspicking rhythms such as DUUDUUDU. There are specific patterns like that, with from 3 to 12 notes, in the literature. The 18th century methods Leone and Denis both have delightful music based on those patterns.”

Watters explained how he went from a jazz hound, to a grasser, and then to a classical mandolinist.

“I started playing in the ’70s, but was mainly a jazz guitarist then. I got hot into bluegrass in 1979, when I discovered Darol Anger and David Grisman. I moved to San Francisco in the 1980s to be around the acoustic music scene, but ended up studying at Berklee after that.

I got into mandolin in the last 15 years or so, and have always been a multi-stylist. My interest in the roots of the American mandolin brought me to Italian folk and classical mandolin music, until finally I had to have an Italian bowl-back mandolin. The big surprise has been that it’s also great for other styles I play: New England contra dance music, choro, and swing.

I still have my F5 and A4 mandolins, and use them sometimes — for example, some of this Golden Era early American mandolin music sounds perfect on the archtop mandolin, since after all that’s the instrument it was written for! Orville Gibson made his first carved-top mandolins in the 1890s, a good 40 years before Bill Monroe discovered his F5 hanging in a barber shop. It’s easy now to forget that the F5 mandolin was designed for classical and other popular music, since now that instrument is so closely identified with Bill Monroe and the music that came after him.”

In addition to August’s own compositions, the book includes arrangements of music from Bach, Telemann, Beethoven, Puccini, Foster, Dvořák and pieces written for mandolin by Fouchetti, Barbella, Denis, Beethoven, Mozart, and Nakano.

It runs to 170 pages in a 9 x 12” format. Exploring Classical Mandolin is offered through a number of music retailers and popular bookstores online.

Casey Driessen to Berklee’s Valencia campus

Fiddler extraordinaire, and Berklee grad, Casey Driessen, has accepted a teaching position at the Berklee College of Music’s European campus in Valencia, Spain. He will direct a masters program in Contemporary Performance (Production Concentration) that is not instrument specific.

Driessen came up as a bluegrass fiddler, but since graduating from Berklee he has developed a fascinating performance vehicle for himself creating complex arrangements through live audio looping. He uses his fiddle to trigger and record a variety of percussive and melodic loops, which he then interacts with on stage.

He has also toured with a number of experimental string bands, like Sparrow Quartet, Béla Fleck, Jerry Douglas, and others, and has recorded an album of duets with noted drummers and percussionists.

In describing his own music experience, it becomes clear why Berklee has tapped him for this opportunity.

“I’m a traditional American fiddler turned electrified live looper; a studio musician with producing, mixing, and engineering experience; a sideman who has become a band leader and solo artist; and also a tour manager, stage manager, merchandise manager, and drum tech.”

Casey and his young family will be moving to Spain shortly to begin their adventure.

Mando news from Berklee

We caught up recently with Joe Walsh, mandolin instructor at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, and he shared some news from the growing 8 string community on campus.

Joe says that they now have about ten mandolinists studying at Berklee, enough for him to put together an ensemble specifically geared towards the music of David Grisman.

Being that today is Grisman’s birthday, Walsh sent along a video of his Dawg Music ensemble performing last month at the annual Berklee Mandolin Mashup Concert. Jake Howard and JD Williams are on mandolin, David Adams on guitar, Sumaia Jackson on fiddle, and Mike Gaisbacher on bass playing Dawg Patch.

 

Joe also sent along this video of another ensemble, assembled specifically to study and learn the music from Béla Fleck’s Tales From The Acoustic Planet album, and from Uncommon Ritual by Fleck with Edgar Meyer and Mike Marshall. Here they are doing Child’s Play from Uncommon Ritual, with JD Williams again on mandolin, Jordan Alleman on banjo, Mike Gaisbacher on bass, David Tangney on cello, and Jake Howard on guitar.

 

Ensembles are a big part of the educational program at Berklee, and now that banjo and mandolin are accepted as primary instruments, the faculty must find appropriate ensembles for them to work in. Every student, whether pursuing a performance major, or many others like music education, recording arts, composition, or music therapy, must declare a primary instrument, and pass proficiency exams and participate in ensembles, based on graded skill level.

Joe also mentioned that Berklee will again host the Berklee Roots Weekend: Bluegrass, Blues, and Beyond this year, running June 26-28. The workshop welcomes students at any level, 15 years or older, on violin, viola, cello, bass, mandolin, banjo, guitar, and harp. It mixes lectures, master classes, and ensembles over the three days, with faculty concerts each evening.

The staff for 2015 includes Tony Trischka, Darol Anger, Matt Glaser, Bruce Molsky, Viktor Krauss, Paul Rishell, Annie Raines, Matt Munisteri, and Joe Walsh.

BBU Heritage Award winners announced

The Boston Bluegrass Union has announced the 2015 recipients of their BBU Heritage Awards. These awards are presented annually to honor artists and others who have made substantial contributions to bluegrass music in New England and beyond.

For 2015, the winners are Berklee College of Music in the Industry category, and The White Brothers, Roland, Eric and Clarence. Berklee is being recognized for their greatly increased concentration on bluegrass in the course of study they offer to promising young musicians from all over the world. In recent years the school has begun to admit students of all the bluegrass instruments to follow Berklee’s unique path. Not only can banjo, mandolin, guitar, and fiddle players enroll and focus on their primary instrument, bluegrass ensembles are offered to all students who wish to study America’s thriving folk styles.

The White Brothers made their mark on bluegrass as individuals and as a group. Though many associate them with Southern California, where their music bloomed professionally, the Whites were raised in Maine as youngsters before the family moved west in the 1950s. They performed for a while as The Country Boys, but made their biggest impact together under the name Kentucky Colonels. National attention followed after they were featured on the Andy Griffith Show. Clarence’s untimely death in 1973 ended the career of the most promising young bluegrass guitarist ever to pick a string, though he had begun to move away from bluegrass by that time. Brother Roland continued in bluegrass working for a time with Bill Monroe and Lester Flatt before leaving a lasting mark on The Country Gazette and The Nashville Bluegrass Band.

The awards will be presented during the 2015 Joe Val Bluegrass Festival, held February 13-15 at the Sheraton Hotel in nearby Framingham, MA. More details about the winners can be found online.

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