Don Gorder, 2018 June 25
Don Gorder, chair of the Music Business & Management Department, discusses his early musical experiences, playing trumpet in Miami during graduate school, his transition into music business and entertainment law, and his early career as a music educator. He describes the process of launching a music business seminar while teaching at University of Colorado Denver, how he came to Berklee, and the creation of the college’s Music Business department as well as the related Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship and Berklee Popular Music Institute. Gorder also shares about former students, lectures series, the nature of the music industry and the evolution of students’ relationship with it, and his thoughts on the future of the department.
Donald C. “Don” Gorder, founder of Berklee’s Music Business and Management department, grew up in North Platte, Nebraska, where he trained on piano and trumpet. He received a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Nebraska Lincoln, majoring in performance, his master’s degree in 1975 in jazz pedagogy from the University of Miami, and a law degree from the University of Denver. After several years as an attorney, he taught music and music business at the University of Colorado Denver for six years before moving to California to serve as chair of Music Management/Business Department at the University of the Pacific. Gorder was invited to Berklee College of Music to help develop and chair the new Music Business department in 1991, which piloted the following year, and which Gorder chaired until 2020. Gorder received the Outstanding New Leader Award in 1993 and the Length of Service Award in 2002. He has served on the board of the Music and Entertainment Industry Educators' Association, the Massachusetts Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts, and the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) Affiliated Music Business Institutions. Gorder received faculty emeritus status in 2022.
