coveting commencement concert

are we in a zone of trust? because i'm about to admit something deeply embarrassing: im a music nerd. WOW you'd never guess that based on everything this blog has (cue spongebob anchor sound), but its true. i adore brainy music with harmony that makes your eyes, cross, lyrics that are unintelligibly metaphoric, instruments that are really more just noise, and maybe my biggest sin of all; I LOVE JAZZ (shudders).

sarcasm aside, i've stayed linked to the berklee college of music community because i've really always adored the ability to nerd about this kind of stuff within a space of people who are just as curious as me. today, i was scrolling through linkedin to find that this year's honorary doctorate recipients at berklee are jacob collier, jill scott, and vinnie colaiuta. admittedly, i was unfamiliar with the latter artist, but upon looking into him have learned a lot of interesting stuff! he's a berklee college alum, he's a drummer whos worked with the likes of sting, joni mitchell, and frank zappa, and he was the house drummer on the late show starring joan rivers. a well deserved recipient! jill scott also caught my attention: this woman in my eyes can quite literally do no wrong. her smooth deep alto voice could carry me across a treacherous ocean like a dory and have me curled up sound asleep like it were a peaceful lake i was quietly floating upon. her sound, which feels like a big combination of nina simone, diana ross, and chakha khan, is power and suave incarnate.

acclaimed drummer vinnie colaiuta and powerful vocalist jill scott were not the reason i stopped and stared at this linkedin post for a while, and subsequently ran to my keyboard to write this blog post, though.

i've been a fan of jacob collier's releases since he posted the crazy acapella-polyphonic jaw dropping flintstones theme . i know hes not for everyone; i've had friends describe his music as overstimulating, pretentious, and inaccessible. the truth is: thats why i love him. jacob collier has always made music for musicians, who love to dig in to the furthest reaches of what music can do. hes managed to bend genres in ways i've never seen done before, like making this bombastic zoological rock song WELLL (that will make more sense when you listen i promise), using folk sounds and brandi carlile's silky vocals to create this oxymoronic hype lullaby little blue (which i actually had the opportunity to watch them perform together live in 2023), or this song that i'm not even sure how to categorize because it grabs from so many musical worlds and i think could only liken vaguely to traditional spirituals, and the namesake hajanga is a term his mother made up "...the force of your life... how everything goes in cycles, everything goes up and down and round and round. It's people coming together, united by this celebratory force and a real sense of self-acceptance. The sense that everybody has this unified song that they sing, this idea of drawing from the whole of the universe around you and then learning how to love the people around, and the things around you and learning how to love yourself in that. You learn to celebrate yourself in the context of a universal community of energetic things."

all of this introduction was to tee up to this: i am so incredibly jealous of the graduating class of 2026 at berklee college of music, because holy WOW do i wish i could be there. every year, students audition to be a part of one of the most prestigious college-led performances: the commencement concert. in this concert, all three of the honorary doctorate recipients are honored by having bombastic arrangements of each of their collection of songs performed by the grads, some of the luckiest few being featured in solos and duets. it is a BLOOD BATH to get on the performance team for this show, and it is hours on painful hours of practice to get it all together, with an intensity comparable to the famous scene from whiplash. i know that the opportunity to perform some of jacob's most famous works is the height of so many berklee students dreams. from every part of production: arrangement, practicing, choreography, background vocals, choir ensemble, orchestral ensemble. every single part of this production is going to be PURE CHURCH.

theres not much more to it i can say other than i wish i were there. i hope the livestream becomes publicly available, but i might even have to avoid watching or the FOMO might become terminal. we'll just have to see.

for berklee's 2023 commencement concert, usher was one of the recipients (along with roberta flack and sona jobarteh) and got on stage with the performing grads for their final song to sing along with them. click the image if you want to see the concert in its entirety!