The Berklee College of Music, founded in 1945 and one of the most respected musical education institutes in the world, and the Boston Conservatory, the equally venerated performing arts school founded in 1967, today announced the first step towards a merger. The schools are located a few short blocks from each other in the Fenway neighborhood of Boston.
“Our goal is threefold,” said Berklee president Roger Brown in a statement. “We want to attract the most talented, creative, and motivated students in the world; offer them a challenging, cutting-edge experience; and give them the best possible chance to succeed as professionals.”
“Increasingly, our Conservatory students live in a global community,” writes Conservatory president Richard Ortner. “They want access to the rich performance traditions of other cultures and other genres, as well as access to industry-standard digital infrastructure,” said Conservatory President Richard Ortner. “Berklee offers exactly that global outlook and that range of opportunity, right here in our shared four-block campus. Together, we form an unbeatable incubator for student and faculty creativity.”
The first step in the amalgamation is the joint signing of a memorandum of understanding, ratified by the governing boards of each school earlier in this money. From here, stakeholders of each institution will be consulted and a structure for the merger will be formed.
Officials anticipate the merger to be finalized in 2016.
