Berklee Summer Program at Newport Jazz Festival Allows Students to Study with Masters

This July, a group of Berklee summer program student musicians will head to Rhode Island as part of a new five-day, intensive Berklee Global Jazz Institute program that offers the opportunity to study with world-renowned faculty, including Danilo Pérez, John Patitucci, George Garzone, Yoron Israel, and Terri Lyne Carrington. All students accepted to the program will be offered a full scholarship, funded by George Wein through the Newport Jazz Festival.  

"The Berklee Global Jazz workshop will be an unique opportunity for aspiring young jazz musicians to share music and be mentored by the very jazz masters who are presently leading the music forward into the new millennium," says Marco Pignataro, the BGJI’s managing director.

Pérez, the BGJI’s artistic director, said the program will "inspire a new community of creative artists and students, as well as exchanges that are going to provoke new statements in music and life. Interconnecting youth with mentors is crucial to the development of jazz."

The Berklee Global Jazz Institute is a creative music institute with a progressive vision to help the artists of the new millennium evolve to the highest levels—as both musicians and human beings. It is designed to help instrumentalists and vocalists with unique talent and wide-ranging musical interests achieve their artistic goals through an experiential and interdisciplinary approach.

This summer won’t be the first that Berklee student musicians played the festival. Last summer, 19 student members of the Berklee Concert Jazz Orchestra performed on the main stage the festival. "It's always a thrill to be on the same stage that John Coltrane played on, that Miles Davis played on—Thelonious Monk, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Sonny Stitt," said Greg Hopkins, the orchestra’s director.

For student Ryan Linville, playing Newport was an unparalleled event. "The whole festival was just great—getting that artist experience. I got to hang out backstage, socializing with other musicians—I never experienced that vibe before; we were treated as equals,” he said.

Watch the Berklee Concert Jazz Orchestra play at the 2015 Newport Jazz Festival: