Music, Education, and Technology

How do you go from being thousands of miles away from your instructor in an online course, to several feet away from him onstage performing a show? Berkleemusic is the answer! Here’s Berkleemusic student Jeanine Guidry and her instructor, Dave Olsen’s story.

Berkleemusic business faculty, Dave Olsen was teaching Legal Aspects of the Music industry during the Spring 2007 semester. As Jeanine recalls, “During one weekly scheduled course chat, another student asked him if he played any instruments, and he said keyboards and a little bass,” Jeanine said. “I jokingly said he should come to Richmond next weekend because our band has two shows and because of high school graduations, we had no keyboards or bass. Well, turns out that Dave had to be in New York on Friday, and he just changed his plane ticket to stop in Richmond and played with us Saturday afternoon and late Sunday morning! It was an amazing weekend.”

Dave Olsen is also helping the band to reach one of its long-term goals. He was instrumental in signing the band Evanescence’s first sheet music publishing deal, is going to use some of his connections to help Offering publish one of its original songs.

“That brings me to one of the reasons I love Berkleemusic—the connections and contacts. If you invest yourself you can develop work/music relationships and even friendships that will last a long time,” Jeanine said.

There are lots of stories like this amongst the continuing education student body at Berkleemusic. It’s a vibrant learning community where professional connections that make a difference are made.