Annette Philip

"I'm teaching Berklee's first contemporary Indian vocal ensemble. It's combining concepts of Indian classical music and the Indian tradition in art, along with Western harmonic and arranging concepts. We have students from all over the world. It's a nice little family. This is starting from scratch, but it's not a beginner's course. We jump straight into it. You learn as you go along. It's about evolving and imbibing a new culture."

"My first love is working with multiple voices, and in India I have a group, over 250 members now, called Artists Unlimited. The whole concept of circle singing is something that is so very powerful. Circle singing is a concept that as far as I know Bobby McFerrin introduced to the world. It's very organic. He assigns a part to the bass singers, and another interlocking part to the sopranos, and something else for the altos, and something else for the tenors, and maybe he would improvise over it. It's a very dynamic form of composition; it's always improvised.

"One of the students started a circle singing group at Berklee. You have to really surrender to the moment. I think in all music that's what we're trying to encourage our students to do, to surrender and be totally present in the moment. And I feel that circle singing is a very noncompetitive, nonhostile, supportive, healing, and liberating space to just give yourself to and then see what happens."