AEC Pop and Jazz Platform 2015

Berklee's Valencia campus will be hosting the 2015 AEC Pop and Jazz Platform conference that will take place on Friday 13th and Saturday 14th of February, at the Palau de les Arts in Valencia.

The conference will also include a concert by our students as well as a presentation by María Martínez Iturriaga, Associate Executive Director and Dean of Admissions, and Brian Cole, Dean of Academic Affairs.

Jazz, Pop and ME

Developing diversity and identities among artists and audiences.

Five outstanding artists and experts who as a group of individuals represent the very meaning of diversity will share their views. Grammy award winner Danilo Perez, Artistic Director of Berklee's Global Jazz Institute will open the event with a keynote speech. An expert panel will bring together Muhammad Mughrabi, a Palestinian rapper and producer, Scott Cohen, co-founder of the Orchard, the world’s largest digital distribution company, Merlijn Twaalfhoven, a Dutch composer and theatre maker whose works include large scale projects with local musicians and artists in various parts of the world and David Linx, singer, composer, lyricists, producer, multi-instrumentalist and educator from Belgium.

Developing diversity and identities among artists and audiences implies, amongst many issues, re-thinking the relationship between these two groups. The provider-receiver model is an increasingly inadequate way to characterise what goes on in our culturally and technologically dynamic world of musical production and consumption. Audience development is a major issue in our society and one that has been recognised by the European Union in its new cultural programme, ‘Creative Europe’. AEC is beginning an important three-year project under the Creative Europe scheme and will be spearheading its examination of issues surrounding audience development through its Pop&Jazz meetings between now and 2017.

The title of the 2015 meeting may also be seen as reflecting the needs of young and upcoming artists – our students - to find their own voice and survive in the globalised business of music. Jazz, Pop and ME last but not least could be a call to ask ourselves as artists and Music educators: Who are we? How can we use diversity to build identities? And, in the ‘ME’ that lies at the centre of each of our musical identities, to what extent do we, too, continue to develop ourselves as audiences for the music of others?

The Pop&Jazz Platform is a European initiative catering to the needs of pop and jazz programmes in the AEC’s membership institutions. As part of the conference the first official meeting of VOCON, the Vocal Teachers Network initiated by PJP working group member Maria Pia de Vito will take place.