stories by Colette Greenstein John Mirisola
photographs by Joe Colón David Morresi
As Berklee on the Road programs in Puerto Rico and Italy mark decades-long anniversaries, we journey into the past and step into the future. Time Travel
Music needs time to unfold: it emerges out of silence, develops its themes in real time, and—every musician hopes—leaves its listener changed. It's a temporal art, as opposed to spatial arts like paint - ing or architecture that exist all at once in two or three dimensions. In music, the space might provide important context and inspiration—Jarrett’s Köln Concert couldn’t be the same as Lausanne —but no piece of music happens to us in an instant. The same is true of initiatives that develop musical talent. They need space to take root—say, classrooms and stages in Boston, or Puerto Rico, or Italy—but most of all, they need time to unfold, for lessons and relationships to deepen, and for their life-changing influence to be fully reckoned.
For Berklee’s two longest-running global part - nerships—Berklee in Puerto Rico and Berklee Clinics at Umbria Jazz—2025 marked major milestones: a 30th anniversary for the former, and a 40th for the latter. Alumni and faculty from across decades trav - eled to Puerto Rico and Perugia, Italy, to join current students in celebrating the friendships, careers, and music that have unfolded since the first notes were struck in those hot summer classrooms. And even as we looked back—to Puerto Rico in the ’90s, to Perugia in the ’80s—a new cohort of students and faculty was playing us into the future. Like witnessing music many years in the making, we heard echoes of long-established themes, and we listened for what would come next.
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