Berklee Performance Center · Boston
Music and Meaning in the Works of
David Bowie
Berklee students. Bowie’s songbook. One night every spring, and we’re always in the seats.
The class
A semester of Bowie. Then the stage.
Every year, Berklee College of Music runs a course called Music and Meaning in the Works of David Bowie, led by Associate Professor Gretchen Shae in the Liberal Arts and Sciences department. The students dig into the songs through big literary themes (mortality, identity, fate versus free will, the supernatural), and the semester ends the only way it should: a full concert at the Berklee Performance Center.
And these are students, but don’t let that fool you. Berklee is one of the top music schools in the world, and you can hear it in every arrangement. We’ve been in the audience at least three years running, and it has become one of my favorite Bowie nights of the year.
Set one
Seventeen songs, from Space Oddity all the way to Blackstar, sung and played by the students who spent the semester taking them apart. The program even came with a star-shaped QR code.
Set list · May 6
- Space OddityJuno Myers, Milia Fossey & Elia Schreiber
- Life on Mars?Juno Myers, Milia Fossey & Elia Schreiber
- StarmanKapono Wong
- Moonage DaydreamLeah Batman
- Diamond DogsAidah Asrar
- No ControlIzzy Savides
- Rock ’n’ Roll SuicideOpal Gibbons
- The Man Who Sold the WorldRana Chesmazar, Opal Gibbons, Juno Myers & Shabnam Nourishirazi
- BlackstarOpal Gibbons, Juno Myers & Rana Chesmazar
- Ziggy StardustAbby Volta Ensemble
- Scary MonstersAbby Volta Ensemble
- “Heroes”Abby Volta Ensemble
- WinLiam Gleason Ensemble
- StayLiam Gleason Ensemble
- Sue (Or in a Season of Crime)Queen’s Reign
- All the MadmenQueen’s Reign
- FameQueen’s Reign
Gretchen Shae – Concert Leader & Associate Professor of Liberal Arts
Kate Halstead – Musical Director
The year Earl came
Earl Slick
In 2025 the class had a legend in the band. Earl Slick, Bowie’s guitarist on the Diamond Dogs Tour, Young Americans and Station to Station, met with the course, led a master class for Berklee’s guitar students, and then played the show with them.
Hearing Stay, built on his own riff, with the man himself playing it? That’s a night you don’t forget.
Earl Slick & me
Guitar · Diamond Dogs ’74
Set three
Year three for us. This spring’s program circled mortality, fate versus free will and the supernatural, which is to say: pure Bowie. New faces on stage, the same jaw-dropping musicianship.
I filmed a lot of these nights. I’m putting the footage together now; check back for the YouTube link.
Bowie gave the commencement speech
Long before there was a Bowie class at Berklee, there was Bowie at Berklee. In 1999 he delivered the commencement address to the graduating class at the Hynes Convention Center, in front of about 4,000 people, and received an honorary Doctor of Music alongside jazz great Wayne Shorter.
Encore!
See you next spring at the Berklee Performance Center.
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