On Commencement eve at the Berklee Performance Center, as is the Berklee tradition, students will present a tribute concert, performing tunes closely associated with the honorees' storied careers. The 2003 Commencement Concert is closed to the public, but will be broadcast live on the Internet, and can be viewed at www.berklee.edu, beginning at 7:15 p.m. EST.
Dianne Reeves
Two-time Grammy-winning vocalist Reeves has received this accolade from jazz journalist A. Scott Galloway, and we reprint it here, because we couldn't say it any better: “Dianne Reeves is jazz's replenishing empress. With her solar-powered contralto, expansive range, impeccable pitch and evocative writings, she has returned jazz to mother nature, reconnecting it with its earthen roots. A woman of strength and grace, she is an artist unencumbered by the shackles of categorization."
Reeves' interest in music is rooted in her Denver childhood. An uncle, Charles Burrell, was a bassist with the Colorado Symphony; her cousin, George Duke, is a celebrated pianist, composer, and arranger. As a child, she studied piano, and credits this as the source of her rich harmonic awareness.
At age 16, Reeves put her talents on display when she sang with her high school band at a National Association of Jazz Educators convention in Chicago. Clark Terry (signifies Berklee honorary doctorate), the first in a long line of Reeves' illustrious mentors, heard her, and asked her to sing with his all-star group. Other mentors have included Sergio Mendes, Harry Belafonte, and the late Joe Williams, who said of Reeves, “Dianne is the legitimate extension of all the good things that have gone before
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