For the second straight year, Berklee College of Music has been named the Number 2 music school in the world by Hollywood Reporter. The Boston institution, which Vanyaland partners with for our annual showcases at CMJ and SXSW (disclosure!), topped Hollywood Reporter’s inaugural list in 2013.
This year, the publication lists Berklee’s “notable alumni” as Howard Shore and Quincy Jones. Last year’s alumni highlight featured Kiesza, Jeff Bhasker, Psy (!!!), and “three members of Imagine Dragons.” In 2013, Shore, John Mayer, and Branford Marsalis got the shout-out.
Where’s Betty Who at?
Anyway, here’s what Hollywood Reporter has to say:
With a more generous 35 percent acceptance rate and an average class size of 11 students, Berklee ranks closely to Juilliard in terms of prestige but embraces more mainstream popular music disciplines, jazz and music production, including student-run record labels and concert venues. Composer and orchestrator Kevin Kaska found the school’s connections with the Boston Symphony and Boston Pops helped him work with conductor John Williams and later establish his career in Hollywood.
“When I attended the school in the early ’90s they had all the leading technology of the day,” Kaska says. “No other music school in the world could hold a candle to Berklee’s dedication to film scoring, music synthesis, contemporary writing concepts, and music production and engineering. I studied film scoring but it was also very exciting to learn about microphones, recording consoles, reverb and mixing from the seven different recording studios they owned.”
On the local level, the New England Conservatory, by the way, came in at Number 6.
Featured photo of 160 Mass Ave by Lee Kennedy