Berklee College of Music

So I was gigging, I was studying.

Because I wanted to be a studio musician, there was one place in England, in Leeds, which is about two hours train ride north of London, where you could actually study in a program that was similar to the Berklee School of Music in Boston, which included jazz and studio stuff.

I got accepted there, but then when I got my A-level music result and I got an A, I realized, wait a minute, not only could I go to university in London, London universities to study music, but I also could stay in town because I'd been paying my dues.

I'd already been playing with the National Youth Jazz Orchestra.

Left music for a while, went back to school and got a, if I'm not mistaken, a PhD in cognitive neuroscience.

And with her music background and a PhD in cognitive neuroscience under her belt, she got a job teaching at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, teaching essentially like music appreciation from a cognitive neuroscience point of view.

And about maybe four or five years ago, she published a book.

It's a wonderful book called This Is What It Sounds Like.

And the first chapter in the book is entitled Authenticity.

And the entire chapter is devoted to the Shags.

And when I saw her book and I read that chapter, I made a cold call to Berkeley College and got her on the phone and invited her to be part of the film.

And she said yes.

But he proves that somebody can basically play lead guitar for 12 minutes straight and have it be interesting and not repeat yourself.

Actually, the only other thing I'll mention is a wonderful show that John turned me on to, a Berklee show.

And there's a song on there that later became a different song on New Rise of the Rising Sun.

It's not even called the same thing, but on this one it's called Passing On.

So listen to the Berklee version of Passing On, and it's just a basic, really cool, riffy structure.

But you can see how easily he got bored, because every time he comes back around the verse, he plays...

the um main riff in a completely different place or just decides to change the chords or whatever and if you were not educated in music at all you'd be like oh well these are all different it's not it's all the exact same thing it's just like now i'm gonna play it you know three steps down and i'm gonna play chords instead of this and it is so interesting and he was capable of doing that over and over and over so as a player the guy was incredible That's what I think I have to contribute to that.

I apologize.

What's the what's the difference?

I think Berkeley, you get the knowledge and Wally's, you get the wisdom.

Okay.

All right.

Because, yeah, I mean, Berkeley is like a little school with classrooms and now studios and things and where you can learn, you know, the knowledge of like what, how to like how to work and how to.

speak the language of notes and harmony.

Whereas Wally's was really like a place where you could, all right, come try it out, feel it out, see how it feels in the world.

Um, I really love, uh, uh, he's inspiring in that in so many ways.

who has spent more than four decades establishing himself as one of jazz's most distinctive and soulful voices.

Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Chestnut developed his musical foundation through gospel, classical music, and the blues before studying at Berklee College of Music.

His remarkable career includes collaborations with Betty Carter, Wynton Marsalis, Terrence Blanchard, Donald Harrison, John Hendricks, just to name a few, along with an extensive catalog of recordings as a leader.

And Cyrus Chestnut continues to captivate audiences worldwide, and on Saturday, November 28th, he will receive the prestigious Giants of Jazz Award at the South Orange Performing Arts Center in New Jersey.

So I ended up playing in the band.

And it was because of my band, high school band director, Michael Pasterlak.

I saw a picture from Berklee College of Music, and it was a picture of Oscar Peterson.

And I looked at it and I said, wow, that looks cool.

amazing.

Actually, my audition for Berklee College of Music is on November 14th, that morning.

Wow.

I'm applying to, uh, SUNY purchase.

Oh, okay.

All right.

Not only is he talented, but he composed a piece that was selected to be performed at Berklee.

It's very, really kind of cool.

And they are a TikTok or Instagram artist, basically ground up.

They started with videos of them at Berklee, just singing harmonies, and they just went huge.

um or um yeah there's there's artists who i think like it maybe particularly works well for like singer songwritery artists i think um where that like for some reason short form video you can like really get like an impactful couple verses or something of an acoustic guitar piano and some singing and Um, that seems to do something.

Um, and that's different than turning into like a comedy act online where I don't actually think that translates really into like people knowing you for your music.

But, yeah, this is only the second time I've done an in-person interview for this show.

And we're doing this at the Berklee College of Music, which is a pretty...

Pretty damn cool venue to be hosting

a chat.