“ARTeria Valencia" will be a state-of-the-art, 25-story building (see artist's renderings) featuring faculty and student housing, a high-speed data network, a 1,000-seat outdoor amphitheater and several smaller performance spaces. Construction will be largely bankrolled by the SGAE Spanish performing rights organization, which is apparently eager to bring Berklee's approach to contemporary music education to Valencia -- already a popular “semester abroad" destination.
You might think the music industry's heavily-publicized woes would scare kids into more financially stable lines of work -- say, brokering stocks or managing hedge funds. Those aren't the greatest examples these days, but still, given shrinking labels and dwindling sales, the music industry seems like a hard place to get a foothold.
Nonetheless, budding musicians continue to be drawn like moths to the flame of the Berklee College of Music in Boston, where applications for Fall '09 matriculation are up 40 percent according, to Larry Monroe, the school's vice president of international programs, and popular subjects include music theory, composition, performance, music management, music education and even music therapy. The Boston location turns out 800 graduates each year, while the Valencia location will produce smaller classes of 250.
Famous grads include Aimee Mann, Branford Marsalis, John Mayer, Bill Frisell, Juliana Hatfield and Quincy Jones. The guy who wrote music for The Simpsons and scored Ferris Beuller's Day Off went there too -- Alf Clausen, class of '66. The school's more famous graduates, 58 of whom have won Grammys, have not been the only ones to turn a Berklee degree into gainful employment. According to the school's most recent survey, 80 percent of its graduates work in the music business, while 65 percent of graduates earn their livings solely from music -- fairly impressive statistics, all things considered.
For more information contact All About Jazz.
