Life and career[edit]

Lee Eliot Berk was born in 1942.[1]: 12  He graduated from Brown University in 1964 and earned his law degree from Boston University in 1967.[3] He began working at Berklee College of Music in 1966, serving first as bursar and supervisor of the Private Study Division.[1]: 100  In 1969, he founded the first New England High School Stage Band Festival, later known as the Berklee High School Jazz Festival. In 2010, its 42nd year, it was the largest event of its kind in the United States.[4] He served as a vice president from 1971 to 1979.[1]: 100  He is the author of Legal Protection for the Creative Musician, which won an ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award in 1971.[5]


Berk died on October 21, 2023, at the age of 81.[6][7]

Upon his retirement in 2004, Berk was awarded an honorary doctorate from Berklee.

2004: Awarded the from the Emperor of Japan for his contributions to strengthening cultural ties between the U.S. and Japan.[8]

Order of the Rising Sun

Received the President’s Merit Award for Outstanding Educational Achievement from the

National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences

2004: Received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Music Products Industry.[3]

NAMM

2014: Received an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from .[9]

Brown University

Small, Mark, , Berklee Today, Vol. 15, Issue 3, Spring 2004. Interview with Lee Eliot Berk, the then retiring second president of Berklee College of Music.

"All the Right Moves - Lee Eliot Berk"

NAMM Oral History Library (2004)

Interview with Lee Berk