Sense of Place: This Berklee group shines a light on musicians with disabilities

Today, we’re at the Berklee College of Music. Inside a small rehearsal room, a group of six musicians is running through an orchestral arrangement of Coldplay’s “Yellow.”

It’s Berklee’s Music Inclusion Ensemble, comprising musicians who identify with a disability, as well as their typically-abled peers. Every week, they meet to rehearse works that they’ll later perform for Berklee and the Boston community.

For our Sense of Place: Boston series, we sat down with professor Adrian Anantawan, the world-class violinist who co-founded the ensemble. Anantawan trained at the Curtis Institute, Harvard and Yale, and he has performed all over the world, at the White House, for the Dalai Lama and the Pope. He was also born without his right hand.

“The idea that disability provides a unique lens for us to see the world means that the people who are around — people who are typical or non-disabled or advocating for disability causes — can really see disability not as a deficit, but as an asset to not only the music making but hopefully eventually the music industry, as well.”

In this session, Anantawan invites us to one of the ensemble’s rehearsals, and we hear from some of the student members about why they joined the ensemble.

This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Miguel Perez. Our senior producer is Kimberly Junod and our engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus.