Digital Collections

Memorabilia created by Franklin McGinley for and by Duke Ellington, including a scrapbook, additional clippings, and various commemorative materials. The scrapbook, presumably put together by McGinley, documents the rise of swing music and Duke Ellington and includes autographs by Ellington and other musicians of the period. The remaining loose materials document Ellington's posthumous legacy, with the majority of the clippings consisting of obituaries or coverage of Duke Ellington's passing in 1974.

Correspondence, coursework, and memorabilia produced and collected by Bert Henry and Dr. Jerome Gross, as students and proponents of the Schillinger System of Musical Composition invented by Russian composer and theorist Joseph Schillinger. Additional archival materials on the Schillinger System may also be found in the Lawrence Berk papers on the Schillinger System (BCA-007). 

Multiple binders containing notes, formulas, and other figures compiled and created by Lawrence Berk, founder of Berklee College of Music, likely produced in the 1930s as a result of Berk’s private study with Joseph Schillinger, creator of the Schillinger System of Musical Composition. These papers presumably contain the foundation of Berklee’s early curriculum. Additional archival materials on the Schillinger System may also be found in the Jerome Gross and Bert Henry papers on the Schillinger System (BCA-006). 

This collection consists of concert programs generated by Berklee College of Music’s Concert Operations department, known colloquially as the Concert Office. Events include student, faculty, and visiting artist performances in the following five campus venues: Lawrence and Alma Berk Hall, Oliver Colvin Hall, David Friend Hall, The Red Room @ Café 939, and the Berklee Performance Center. The collection also features some joint performances with the Boston Conservatory at Berklee following the merger in 2016.

Pedagogical arrangements created and/or compiled by distinguished pianist, faculty member, and alumnus Dean Earl as teaching aids for Berklee Piano Department courses in harmony and piano performance. The arrangements themselves consist mainly of popular music and jazz standards, as well as musical exercises.

Established in 1998, the Berklee Oral History Project (BOHP) seeks to chronicle Berklee’s rich history from those who have lived, shaped, and defined it. In capturing the diverse experiences and perceptions of Berklee faculty, staff, and alumni, Berklee Archives seeks to document Berklee’s pedagogical contributions to music education, as well as the events and issues that have impacted the direction and identity of the institution. This collection comprises video interviews from over 100 individuals closely associated with Berklee College of Music and the Boston Conservatory, including faculty, staff, presidents, and alumni. Some early interviews also feature individuals unaffiliated with Berklee who were active in the Boston jazz community.

Selected digitized materials from the Berk Family collection of personal and professional material compiled by and about Lawrence, Alma, Lee, and Susan Berk from the 1920s through 2019, representing two generations of Berklee leadership (1945-2004). The collection includes assorted Berklee documents and ephemera; artifacts and awards presented to members of the Berk family in recognition of their service and accomplishments; other professional records or tributes; and scrapbooks, photographs, and audiovisual recordings capturing nearly 100 years of family memories and Berklee experiences. 

This assembled collection primarily contains course catalogs and bulletins covering 42 of Berklee's first 59 years of operation, offering insight into both the roots and growth of Berklee's curriculum. This collection has been collated from a number of different College sources, primarily the Berklee Office of Public Information records by Alma Berk (BCA-013) and former Vice President for Academic Affairs/Vice Provost, S. Jay Kennedy.

Berklee Today (1989- present) is the official alumni magazine of Berklee. The magazine is currently published semi-annually, though issues released per year have varied since its launch in 1989. Previously a publication of the Office of the Institute of Advancement, Berklee Today is now a publication of the Office of External Affairs as of 2019.

From 1958 to 1976, the fifteen-volume series Jazz in the Classroom was produced as an innovative educational method that combined scores and recordings to demonstrate jazz writing and performance techniques and showcase the talents of outstanding students of the day. The volumes feature faculty and student composers, arrangers, and performers such as Toshiko Akiyoshi ‘59, Arif Mardin ‘61, Mike Gibbs ‘63, Gábor Szabó ’59, Gary Burton ‘62, Sadao Watanabe ‘65, Alf Clausen ‘66, John Abercrombie ‘67, Alan Broadbent ‘69, Hal Crook ‘71, Abraham Laboriel, Sr., ‘72, Tiger Okoshi ‘75, and many more.

Explore Berklee campus event recordings available to stream online through the Archives’ in-house streaming platform, Berklee Events Online (BEO). This platform launched in 2019 and features select concerts, ceremonies, symposiums, and other events across College and Conservatory history.

This sampling of digitized Berklee College of Music commencement ceremony and concert audio recordings features speeches by Stan Kenton, Arif Mardin, Duke Ellington, Harry Ellis Dickson, Franklin Patterson, John Williams, Gary Burton, and Bruce Lundvall. Sources include event recording collections produced by the college's Video Services office (BCA-018 and BCA-017), and the Music Production & Engineering departmental recording collection (BCA-016). 

Berklee master's students conclude their programs with a culminating experience project. Whether creative, research-focused, or practical in nature, the culminating experience represents the highest expression of a student's learning at the graduate level. Berklee Archives makes selected projects available from Boston, Valencia, and Berklee Online programs. This collection contains select submissions from 2013 through 2019.