Submitted by Chelsea Renee Broeder on February 15, 2019 - 9:20am
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Michael Berry, UW Music Theory (image via The Whole U)
THE WHOLE U: Posted on by Matthew Leib. This entry was posted in Faculty Friday, Spotlight and tagged Faculty Friday, Spotlight. Bookmark the permalink.
If aliens were ever to land, Michael Berry thinks his music theory students would be prepared.
“I want my students to be able to figure out what makes their music tick,” Berry says, calling up connotations of the scene in 1977’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind in which aliens and humans communicate through a series of musical tones.
Centering music, its permutations, and influences is at the heart of Berry’s work between two academic appointments at the UW—one as an adjunct professor at UW Tacoma teaching courses on rap music, music and trauma, and the history of rock and roll and another as an artist-in-residence at the UW School of Music in Seattle teaching first-year music theory.