Berklee College of Music

Berklee College of Music is a private, nonprofit institution of higher learning located in the Back Bay neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. The college opened its doors in 1945 and was founded on jazz and popular music rooted in the African cultural diaspora. From those beginnings as a small jazz school, it has grown into the largest independent college of contemporary music in the world. Berklee offers degree programs at campuses in Boston, New York City, and Valencia, Spain, and through Berklee Online. The college's presence in Boston — its buildings clustered along Massachusetts Avenue and Boylston Street — has made it a defining feature of the city's cultural and artistic identity for eight decades.

Founding and Early History

In 1945, pianist, composer, arranger, and MIT graduate Lawrence Berk founded Schillinger House, the precursor to the Berklee School of Music, after quitting his job at Raytheon. Located at 284 Newbury Street in Boston's Back Bay, the school specialized in the Schillinger System of harmony and composition developed by Joseph Schillinger. Berk had studied with Schillinger. Schillinger House was the only college-level school in the United States in which jazz acted as the basis of the curriculum.

The school was named after Lawrence Berk's son, Lee Berk, a pianist and composer who wanted to teach contemporary music — genres frowned upon by traditional conservatories — to aspiring musicians. Schillinger House acquired a reputation as a jazz mecca, then became Berklee School of Music in 1954 and has been expanding its curriculum ever since. It became a nonprofit institution in 1961.

Berklee further expanded its curriculum in 1962 as faculty crafted the first-ever college courses offered in rock and pop music. Berklee's first bachelor's degrees were distributed to sixteen students in 1966 — thirteen in music education and three in composition. In 1970, to honor its 25th anniversary and to fully capture the scope of its educational program, the name of the university was officially changed to Berklee College of Music.

In 1970, Lawrence Berk bestowed the college's first honorary degree on Duke Ellington in 1971. When Lawrence Berk retired in 1978, his son Lee Eliot Berk succeeded him as president. During Lee Berk's tenure, enrollment more than doubled to 3,800 and the school's endowment grew to over $125 million.

Campus and Facilities

Berklee's Boston campus, home to Berklee College of Music and Boston Conservatory at Berklee, pulses with music, theater, dance, and artistic energy. Located in the city's vibrant Back Bay neighborhood, the campus is an ideal place to begin developing a lifelong professional network with artists and creative thinkers who come from all over the world. The college's location places its 21 buildings near the intersection of Boylston Street and Massachusetts Avenue.

Berklee remained at its original location at 284 Newbury Street from its founding in 1945 to 1966, when it moved into the larger 1140 Boylston Street building, the former Hotel Bostonian. Beginning in 1972, an era of more rapid expansion began with the purchase of the Fenway Theatre and the adjoining Sherry Biltmore Hotel at 150 Massachusetts Avenue. The theater was renovated and opened as the 1,227-seat Berklee Performance Center in 1976.

The Berklee Performance Center (BPC) remains the college's flagship performance space. Housed in the renovated, historic Fenway Theater, the Berklee Performance Center — located at 136 Massachusetts Avenue — seats more than 1,200 and is counted among Boston's most prestigious concert halls. The renovated theater was rechristened the Berklee Performance Center, and grand opening ceremonies took place on April 5, 1976. In his dedication address, former Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis called the new facility "an outstanding contribution to the cultural resources of the city and state." Showcasing more than 200 events each year, the BPC is one of the busiest theaters in Boston.

Berklee's first ground-up, custom-built facility at 160 Massachusetts Avenue boasts 173 residence hall rooms for 369 students, 23 practice rooms, six two-story common areas, a fitness center, and a 400-seat dining hall that doubles as a performance space. Berklee also owns 21 buildings and has 13 recording studios.

Academic Programs and Curriculum

The Berklee College of Music was founded on the principle that the best way to prepare students for a career in the music industry is to educate them in the study and practice of contemporary music. The college became the first to offer courses and/or degrees in rock, pop, and hip-hop; songwriting; film and video game scoring; music synthesis; and electronic digital instruments.

In 1986, the world's first college-level major in music synthesis was offered, followed by the world's first college songwriting major in 1987. Instrumental majors also expanded to include the first college hand-percussion major in 1988. The college was also the first institution in the world to offer a course in Electric Bass Guitar.

Berklee consists of the College of Music and the Boston Conservatory at Berklee, conferring bachelor's degrees in 27 majors featuring academic programs that enable students to study 35 principal musical instruments. Known for the study of jazz and modern American music, it also offers college-level courses in a wide range of contemporary and historic styles, including rock, hip-hop, reggae, salsa, heavy metal, and bluegrass.

Berklee Online is the world's largest online music education system, offering undergraduate and graduate degrees and certificate programs that serve musicians from more than 150 countries. In January 2014, the college launched the Berklee Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship (Berklee ICE), a new campus center which offers courses, workshops, research, and an incubation environment to encourage music business startup companies.

In August 2021, Berklee College of Music announced it would begin offering a Bachelor of Arts program in Music Industry Leadership and Innovation starting in the fall of 2022 — the first undergraduate Bachelor of Arts degree to be available in the college's history.

Admission to Berklee is competitive. As part of the application to the college, applicants are required to complete a live audition and interview. The college has a total undergraduate enrollment of 7,549 (fall 2024), and the student-faculty ratio is 9:1.

Merger with the Boston Conservatory

A landmark development in Berklee's institutional history came when it announced plans to join forces with the Boston Conservatory, one of the oldest performing arts schools in the United States. In June 2015, Berklee College of Music and The Boston Conservatory announced that the governing boards for the two schools had approved plans to pursue a proposed merger. On January 19, 2016, the two schools announced that they would be merging. In a joint statement, officials from Berklee College of Music and the Boston Conservatory announced that a formal agreement had been reached to merge the two Fenway institutions, a move that would create a central training ground for students interested in pursuing an education in music, dance, and the performing arts.

Berklee retained its name, and the new partner became the Boston Conservatory at Berklee. The schools share facilities, faculty, and programs as part of the agreement. As of June 1, 2016, the merger was official, and the two became effectively one institution.

Within the new Berklee organization, The Boston Conservatory's highly regarded programs in music, dance, and musical theater retained autonomy, while giving Berklee students access to a uniquely designed curriculum — especially in dance and theater. Similarly, Conservatory students gained access to Berklee's studies in jazz and contemporary music, technology, music business, music therapy, sound design, production, film scoring, and online education.

Founded in 1867, The Boston Conservatory is an independent private college with fully accredited programs in music, dance, and theater.

Notable Alumni and Cultural Impact

Berklee's alumni have had an extraordinary impact on American and global music. Berklee alumni have won 310 Grammy Awards, more than any other college, and 108 Latin Grammy Awards. Other accolades for its alumni include 34 Emmy Awards, 7 Tony Awards, and 8 Academy Awards.

Among the college's earliest and most distinguished alumni is Quincy Jones, who enrolled in the late 1940s. In 1958, Quincy Jones presented Lawrence Berk with a check establishing the Quincy Jones Scholarship. Jones was so impressed by Arif Mardin's arranging abilities that he awarded him the first Quincy Jones Scholarship at Berklee in 1958. Mardin accepted and moved from Istanbul to the U.S., where he would make his mark over the next several decades, producing and arranging some of pop music's most legendary recordings by the Bee Gees, Dusty Springfield, Donny Hathaway, Willie Nelson, and Norah Jones.

Alumni have included film and TV composers such as Alf Clausen of The Simpsons and Miami Vice's Jan Hammer, rock superstars including members of Aerosmith and Imagine Dragons, rock virtuosos such as Annie Clark (a.k.a. St. Vincent) and the members of Dream Theater. Most of all, Berklee has fed jazz history with generations of important artists — saxophonist Branford Marsalis and guitarist Bill Frisell, as well as pianist Danilo Pérez and drummer Terri Lyne Carrington.

At the 2025 Grammy Awards, Amy Allen, a class of 2015 graduate, earned the Songwriter of the Year, Non-Classical award for cowriting all 12 tracks on Sabrina Carpenter's Short n' Sweet as well as hits for Olivia Rodrigo, Tate McRae, and others. St. Vincent (Annie Clark, class of 2004) captured awards for Best Rock Song, Best Alternative Music Performance, and Best Alternative Music Album, while Gillian Welch and David Rawlings (both class of 1992) took home the Best Folk Album award.

Berklee expanded its community outreach efforts in 1991 with the launch of City Music, a program designed to make music instruction available to underserved youth in the Boston area. Berklee students are central to Boston's arts community and are the driving force behind popular annual events such as the Boston Art & Music Soul (BAMS) Festival and the expansive Summer in the City concert series.

Berklee is supremely international — more than 80 countries are represented in its 8,200-plus student body — and it has a Berklee branch in Valencia, Spain.