Musical Involvement

In my short time in the college I was involved in a few different musical projects,  

I recorded work for L.A. based band Future Vince, for their debut album. They went on to tour nationally.

recorded in Berklee Studios, I was the Bassist

Playing with a fellow college peer, Benjamin Roberts. Playing many gigs across town, in MIT, Harvard and in Wally's.
We musically met over this session, where I was asked to sight-read this track on the day, we did it in 1-2 takes.
(This taking place back in 2009, having only being playing music 3-4 years, I was a novice at this kind of work at the time,)

recorded in Berklee Studios, I was the Bassist

I was a member of a gospel group. Fronted by Blethy Tiegnon, we were playing local churches and large venues, We played some large shows in UMASS and other colleges in the greater Boston area. It was radically different from what I had experienced in Ireland, and was an incredible learning process in the wide variety of culture in America. 

I took part in the annual Nashville Trip. This was one of the highlights of my entire time in the U.S., seeing the city in that way was unforgettable, and was probably the single biggest learning experience I had. We got to meet a huge variety of artists, and play with some of them, (Bela Fleck, Vince Gill, Allison Krauss, Rodney Crowell... many more)

I took part in a school choir that sang some backing vocals for Rodney Crowell's upcoming album.

progress in major

As I have not been in the college long enough to have taken many classes that relate to my major, My input here is limited. But I learned an awful lot in the classes that i did take. I have made some arrangements that use the techniques that I learned in Arranging 2, I have many of these, but here are 2 short arrangements of Jazz standards that I used as an exercise to work on specific principals of arranging. Each one focuses on a different principle. I have included 2 here.

in the berklee community

I managed to contribute a significant amount to the college and the community during my 3 semesters. Not long after arriving in the college I sought out to become a student mentor, I got in touch with Marjorie O'Malley who was working with the fundraisers for the school. I started out mentoring and helping incoming students, (with schoolwork, adjusting to the culture and meeting people). 

I then became an ambassador of the college, and was invited to events and was asked to speak for the college, meet and greet parents over dinners and explain student life. Some families were not from musical backgrounds so I would explain to them what they could achieve if they attended Berklee and gave examples of successful graduates. I worked at the Berklee American Roots Program doing this.

I was then invited to a the family home of a potential doner, which we were hoping to secure a multi-million dollar donation to the college, I travelled with Livingston Taylor and we performed music and mingled with the family and guests. It went very well and was a great experience.

Also acting as a college ambassador I attended the annual Gala, again I talked with people, explained about the college, performed and got to experience incredible peoples stories and learned a lot about the enthusiasm for the college from an outside perspective.

I also had the honour of representing the college for Aerosmith Bassist Tom Hamilton. He was very keen to learn about the college and become involved. I first had a meeting with his agent, discussed how we would meet and what we would talk about. Then I took a trip to his house, met his family and further discussed his contribution to the college. A few weeks after this Aerosmith reunited and went on to perform a massively successful tour, I remained in contact with Tom's manager and he even rang me for advice while in Argentina about cameras for close up shots of the guitars, as they were making a DVD.

Berklee Gala, pictured above: Matt Glazier, Ben Powell, Livingston Taylor, Marjorie O'Malley, James Brolin.

While I was studying I applied for, and got an excellent job with Berklee Online. I had the privileged job of helping create course content. This was an incredible learning experience, the Online school was in its infancy in certain ways, and had not got the global recognition that it has today. I was working there when Steve Vai was to conduct the worlds largest online guitar lesson.
My job was to help create content, and I worked with many of the professors who have there courses now online and doing very well. I created subtitle track for many of the interviews, particularly the music business courses.
I worked very closely with Ben Newhouse and helped create a beautiful online scores for the film scoring classes. Those scores are still used today and I received very high praise for my help in creating them. I used my extensive knowledge of Sibelius to create them. The online school was in its early stage of being very successful and the whole office was working very hard to have a large range of classes online to take. Im very proud to have made a significant contribution to the work thats become so respected around the world.

I have some examples below for download of the scores I made. They are old Sibelius files converted to Sib 7.5 so some of the transposition and tempo information has changed. I would have to find the original score I was working off to fix some of the errors, but I don't seem to have it anymore. But these files can serve as a demonstration. (they are my own personal files that I used and submitted to Ben, and not pulled off the online course)

outside the berklee community

While being away from the college, my main priority was to work as a musician and save enough to one day return. As a result of this I have been limited in my ability to pursue being a "artist". Also given that Ireland has a very small population, being an artist here was not the best way to earn money in the short term. 

I started teaching as soon as I could. It started with substituting with teacher who were sick, and eventually I became so dependable, I was given students of my own. This grew over time until I become the head teacher. I also helped implement a software system that dramatically increased the efficiency of the school and allowed us to more than double in size. This allowed me to take a more managerial role in the school, and was able to pay myself a small salary. These are by no means large figures, and could in no way cover the cost of my tuition for Berklee, but have at least shown me how to run a small school.

school website I designed (Link)  - its under construction now, so this link is for the site before it was taken down.

With the school taking up most of my time, my ability to do other things musically was always limited, but I have been able to get the chance to play with the top players in Ireland, and am often recommended to back up visiting International artists
- Tcha Limberger, Russel Freeland (Jaco Pastorius) many more - 
I also run a successful Jam Session in Dublin regularly featuring Irelands top Jazz Musicians. 

I have recorded a number of albums with various artists
With Carosel, I recorded on their album and it reached the top 10 in the Irish charts. They later relocated to Paris and achieved some success there.
I also recorded for David Burke, who achieved a number 1 spot on iTunes in Ireland for several weeks. Album included producers Roger Bechrian (Elvis Costello) Adam Kviman (Eagle Eye Cherry) and the String Orchestrator & Players from Amy Winehouse's "Back To Black" Album
I Just Finished recording with the Sydney Garrison on their new record also, and will be released later this year.

All recorded in Dublin, Ireland, Me as Bassist/Double Bass

During the summer of 2011 I began to learn guitar. It was an instrument I had a little bit of experience with, but I attended the Django Reinhardt festival in France, and when I saw the level of musicianship that was there, I sought out to learn the music. It was too cumbersome to bring an upright bass over to the festival, and since the jam sessions are usually outdoors, electric instruments aren't used. For this reason I studied guitar, and have since been performing on it regularly since. I recently headlined the Dublin Guitar Night, which hosts some of the top guitarists in Ireland, and high profile International guitarists (Paul Brady, Tony McManus)  in an intamite venue. I also recorded a video with (Patrus53) who can be considered the main promoter of gypsy jazz around the world. He features the greatest players in the style all around the world, (Bireli Lagrene, Stocholo Rosenberg). I have also become friends of the Rosenberg's family and manager, and regularly visit them in Holland to play music. Because of all this, I would consider learning guitar to be a very significant part of my development as a musician, and I have learned so much by playing a new instrument, and also one that serves a completely different role from the bass. It has certainly improved my bass playing. 

(note, the "Patrus53" above is actually a link to my video on his channel, we recorded a similar arrangement of "If I Only Had A Brain" that I played on bass under the MEDIA tab above)

Jamming in Samois, the place that inspired me to learn guitar, This is one year after I properly studied guitar.

Dublin Guitar Night. I'm on the right, my solo begins @ 2:50. 

I also have a video from a Jazz Festival on my YouTube Channel.