Norm Zocher Faculty Artist Clinic

In the styles of modern jazz, fusion, progressive metal, and rock, this clinic with faculty artist, Norm Zocher, will focus on striking a balance between inside and outside playing over grooves and ii-V's through the application of many tonal, polytonal, and atonal techniques, including the use of super arpeggios, tetrachords, double pentatonics, double harmonic minor, diminished, and augmented scales, as well as improvising with the cycle of fifths and the twelve-tone mother chord on guitar.

Originally from Chicago, Illinois, and referred to as "a guitar legend in the making" as well as being one of "Boston's best composers,” Norman Zocher is a long-time Berklee guitar professor and faculty member in the Jazz Department at New England Conservatory. He was the youngest faculty member at both schools at the time of his hiring. Zocher has performed and/or recorded with a broad range of artists, including Esperanza Spalding, Maria Schneider, John Medeski, Muhal Richard Abrams, and Steve Lacy, among others. The recordings of the Abby and Norm Group with his wife, fellow Berklee guitar professor Abigail Aronson Zocher, gained him international recognition as a guitarist and a composer. Other critically acclaimed albums have featured Zocher with John Patitucci, Jerry Bergonzi, George Garzone, and Joey Calderazzo. He is a guitarist and composer for the Jazz Composers Alliance Orchestra where he writes, performs, and records works for guitar and jazz orchestra. His recent work for solo violin, Rock Ethic (Affetto Recordings), commissioned by String Department faculty member Mimi Rabson with a grant from Berklee, was featured in Strings magazine and has been performed around the globe by former Metropolitan Opera Concert Master Elmira Darvarova and others. Described by the Boston Globe as a “fast-rising star of pedal steel,” Zocher has accomplished many firsts on the instrument including being the only person to ever perform John Coltrane’s "26-2" on pedal steel guitar as well as performing the world premier of Coltrane's "Giant Steps" on the E9 neck in a duo with bass legend Cecil McBee. Zocher was a featured performer at the International Steel Guitar Convention—known as the "Super Bowl of steel guitar"—where 5,000 steel guitarists from 33 countries converge on St. Louis. As a theoretician and international clinician, Zocher has presented on what he refers to as a "grand unified theory of music," which details how the harmonic series is at the root of all things musical, as well as the "Everything Sheet," which finds that all melodic or harmonic possibilities are one of 350 unique structures.