In the News

Steph Davis (M.M. '23, marimba; B.M. '21, percussion) and alum Jonathon Heyward (B.M. '14, cello) were recently included on the Washington Post’s list of 23 emerging classical composers, performers, and artists.

The John Simon Guggenheim Foundation has announced this year’s fellowship winners. One of them is Jonathan Bailey Holland(Opens in a new window), chair of composition, contemporary music, and core studies at Boston Conservatory at Berklee. Among several projects Holland is currently working on is an opera commissioned by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project on the life of Martin Luther King Jr. during his time at Boston University.

Elijah Daniel Smith (B.M. '17, composition) grew up with music in the city, going to concerts at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and studying classical music at the Chicago High School for the Arts. Now, the composer is premiering an original piece in his hometown for the first time, opening the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s MusicNOW: Homecoming concert Monday.

Chair of Composition, Contemporary Music, and Core Studies Jonathan Bailey Holland is featured by Colorado Public Radio as a "contemporary Black composer you should know."

Boston Conservatory at Berklee alumna Shelbie Rassler (B.M. '20, composition) appeared on WLRN-FM to discuss her work on a video for the inaugural festivities. 

Recent Conservatory graduate Shelbie Rassler (B.M. '20, composition) talks to Billboard about the technological intricacies of creating “What the World Needs Now” for Virtual Orchestra, which was a viral sensation in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

One bright side of spending so much time apart during the coronavirus pandemic has been all the creative ways people have found to come together, from afar. One such effort — a series of virtual musical performances orchestrated by Boston Conservatory student Shelbie Rassler (B.M. '20, composition) — has managed to bring together millions.

On March 14, Shelbie Rassler (B.M. '20), a composition major in her senior year at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee, flew home to Fort Lauderdale, Florida as the coronavirus was shutting down the campus she loved. An ambitious 22-year-old who has written music for a Lexus commercial and a PBS documentary, she was shaken and upset.

Boston Conservatory senior Shelbie Rassler (B.M. '20, composition) turned to music to help her though these difficult days. The 22-year-old composition major and saxophonist organized a virtual orchestra of 74 fellow students and alumni performing, “What the World Needs Now is Love.”

Artists are coming up with creative ways to do their work while social distancing. Now a Boston student has pulled together dozens of performers from Boston Conservatory at Berklee and Berklee College of Music to form a “virtual orchestra.”

Boston Conservatory's composition program has been named one of the 10 best collegiate music composition programs in the United States.

Boston Conservatory alumni Oliver Caplan (M.M. '06, composition) and Gregory Fritze (B.M. '76, composition) have each been recognized as 2019 Honored Artists of The American Prize. Honored Artists have proven themselves to be artists of "sustained excellence" as laureates in The American Prize competitions.