Time Travel

Time Travel 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.

April 10, 2026

By

John Mirisola and Colette Greenstein

Students performing in the 2025 Berklee at Umbria Jazz Clinics Gospel Ensemble.

Image by David Morresi

Music needs time to unfold: It emerges out of silence, develops its themes in real time, and-every musician hopes-leaves its listener changed. Its a temporal art, as opposed to spatial arts like painting or architecture that exist all at once in two or three dimensions. In music, the space might provide important context and inspiration (Jarrett's K ln 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, 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 partnerships, 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 traveled 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.

Berklee Alumni and guest artists performing at the Berklee in Puerto Rico 30th Anniversary Concert.

Dariel Peniazeck (Electric Guitar); Kalani Trinidad 12 (Tenor Sax); Marcos L pez 11 (Timbales); Hommy Ramos (Trombone); David Antonio Rosado Ortiz 24 (Congas); Julio Alvarado (Trumpet - behind Marcos)

Image by Joe Col n

Berklee in Puerto RicoOn a warm June afternoon in Caguas, Puerto Rico, 17-year-old violist Sergio Ortiz stood outside an open-air classroom, running scales he'd just learned from a Berklee faculty member. For Ortiz, returning to Berklee in Puerto Rico for a second straight year felt like stepping further into his future.

I wanted to expose myself to other things, Ortiz said, and I was like, Let's try something new.' A fan of jazz, he soaked up lessons in improvisation and theory-material that, he said, blew his mind. Even a class geared toward woodwind players offered unexpected insights; Ortiz adapted breathing techniques from instructor Jonathan Suazo and incorporated them into his own practice.

For three decades, Berklee in Puerto Rico has provided exactly that kind of inspiration and discovery. Founded in 1995 by music educator and former Berklee trustee Luis lvarez BM '83, in partnership with the late Larry Monroe '69, the program has introduced more than 4,000 young musicians to Berklee's signature approach: rigorous musical training paired with live performance and mentoring from top-tier artists and faculty.

The idea was sparked by lvarez's own Berklee experience in the early '80s, where faculty blurred the lines between classroom and stage. A bassist and composer, lvarez envisioned a summer program aligned with the Heineken Jazz Festival-now the Puerto Rico Jazz Festival-so students could learn from Berklee faculty by day and see them perform by night.

Fabiola M ndez BM '18 performing at Berklee in Puerto Rico 30th Anniversary Concert.

Image by Joe Col n

Monroe, who spent four decades at Berklee as a faculty member, department leader, dean, and vice president, helped turn that vision into a reality. Alongside Gary Burton '62 '89H, Monroe helped launch Berklee on the Road, the broader initiative that gave rise to Berklee in Puerto Rico.

The 2025 program ran from June 2 to 8 at Escuela Libre de M sica Antonio Paoli in Caguas. Each day, students buzzed between sessions on music theory, improvisation, ensemble performance, and more. Outside, they gathered in the courtyard to rehearse and connect; inside, classrooms pulsed with rhythm and discovery.

For many Berklee faculty, the program is just as meaningful for them as it is for the students.

Eguie Castrillo, percussionist and Berklee professor, has returned every summer since 2004. The students are amazing, he said. It's a way for me to give back.

Rebecca Cline, professor of piano, first attended the program as a student in 1996 and now returns each year to teach. I really like finding people who are looking for the same thing I was looking for, she said. I have a real soft spot in my heart for the island. It's part selfish and part wanting to give back. This place really gave me my start.

The program also serves as a pipeline to Berklee itself. Students can audition for admission and scholarships during the weeklong intensive, and many go on to attend the college. One of them is Rub n Amador BM '01, who took part in the inaugural year and now leads the Conservatorio de Artes del Caribe (CAC), Berklee's Global Partner school on the island.

Many students, like Amador once did, return multiple times-testing the waters in year one, digging deeper in year two, and eventually preparing to apply to Berklee. By the third year, they've decided they want to continue their education at Berklee, he said. And because of the ecosystem, they get to Berklee prepared.

The program culminated in a 30th-anniversary tribute concert on June 5 at the Centro de Bellas Artes Luis A. Ferr in San Juan. The celebration featured performances by alumni and faculty, headlined by sax

LINK:	https://www.berklee.edu/berklee-now/news/berklee-puerto-rico-umbria-ja...
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