Berkleemusic Student Spotlight - Mike Breen

In the late 1990s, Mike Breen was playing guitar in a successful alternative rock band in Seattle that seemed to be on the verge of breaking through. Instead, the band broke up, and Mike walked away from music completely. Seven years later, he is now living in Japan, studying at the Kunitachi Music Academy in Tokyo, and getting started on a career in music, as a guitar teacher and vintage gear merchant. He credits Berkleemusic with giving him the knowledge, confidence, business acumen, and support he needed to start making his dream a reality.

As Mike tells it, after his band broke up, "my dreams just sort of faded. I had thoughts like 'I have to get a real job.' So I ended up pursuing computers and working as a network engineer for Microsoft." But, he says, "as time went on, it didn't feel right. I felt like I was getting stale - getting older without really accomplishing anything. My wife is Japanese, and I love Japanese culture, so we kept talking about moving to Japan. At that time, my motivation was that I wanted to study Japanese. I really just wanted more out of life."

So, three years ago, they left behind their lives and careers to start fresh in Tokyo. Mike began studying Japanese and picked up his guitar again, and after not too long, he hatched a plan. "My wife and I just couldn't see me as a computer programmer at 55," he explains. "So when we moved to Japan, the question I tried to answer was, 'what could I do for the rest of my life?' I wanted to do something for people and contribute to their lives somehow. As I was getting back into music and playing more seriously, these two ideas combined and I realized I wanted to become a music teacher."

The first step he took to accomplish this lifetime goal was to enroll in Berkleemusic's Master Certificate Program in Theory, Harmony and Ear Training.

"I was convinced I needed an education," says Mike, "which contrasts with when I was playing in a rock band. Back then it was cool to have not gone to school. But this was different. My Japanese at that point wasn't good enough to get into school here, so I decided that Berkleemusic would give me the knowledge I needed, in addition to a certificate. Especially in Japan, this gives you a lot of credibility, and the Berklee name goes a long way here. "

So as Mike spent his days going to school for Japanese, he spent every night working toward his certificate. Moreover, once Breen's Japanese was good enough, he enrolled in yet another program, at the Kunitachi Music Academy. "I finished the Berkleemusic certificate while I was going to Kunitachi," says Mike. "I was studying Japanese and music with both Kunitachi and Berklee, morning till night, 7 days a week. But, because Berkleemusic's online format empowers you to be in control of when you study and how much you do, that made it possible. If Berklee had been physically located here, and I'd been going to Japanese school at the same time, it would have been impossible to work everything out. The flexibility of the online school made it possible for me to become bilingual, while at the same time earning a certificate, and allowing me to get into music school here."

Berkleemusic turned out to be especially valuable for him, because he was able to learn everything he needed to know about music theory and harmony in English before learning it in Japanese, a language he was still mastering. "If I had enrolled in this school before Berkleemusic, I wouldn't have been able to do it," he says. "When I enrolled in Kunitachi, I already knew the theory and harmony, so now I'm just learning what the Japanese words for things are rather than having to learn everything completely new. Thanks to this I have a huge advantage that gives me the opportunity to participate in ensembles and play with people right from the start."

When asked whether it was difficult to take classes at a school fourteen time zones away, he says, "the instructors were really understanding about the time difference and would schedule multiple chat times to accommodate me. I usually wasn't the only person living outside the US - there were others in a similar time zone. There were times when I'd have to get up at 5 AM, sure, but things were usually really accommodating."

In fact, Mike considers the advice and mentoring he received from his instructors one of the most valuable aspects of his Berkleemusic experience. "My instructors were great," he enthuses. "My first teacher was Debbie Cavalier. She was just really encouraging. I wasn't sure I was doing the right thing, and at age 34 I'm still asking myself all the time, 'I just left a good high-paying job to do what?' I knew what I wanted to do, but I had no idea if what I was doing was insane. The chatrooms gave me the opportunity to talk to Debbie, and I could also email her directly and ask, 'is this a bad idea? Am I too old for this?' The nice thing is, I still have the chat transcripts and emails, and I can go back and read them right now. If I were physically attending the school, the memory of the advice would fade. But now I can go back and read what she told me, and remember her encouragement and her advice, and make sure I'm taking the right steps to make this happen." In short, he says, Berkleemusic's instructors "helped convince me that it wasn't really a crazy idea to move from IT to being music teacher."

"And teaching," Mike says, "really is the goal. Being a musician is about creating various revenue streams, which is something I learned from Berkleemusic, and that's how I'm hoping to pull things together, ultimately. I live near Tokyo, which has tons of schools, tons of colleges and young people, and a large population of foreigners and Americans who want to take guitar lessons, and I'm hoping I can crack that market." He has also started playing with bands again when he has the time, and is hatching plans to use his old career in a new way. "I want to leverage my IT skills to create an online retail business selling rare and vintage guitars and effects here in Japan," he says. "Japan is probably the second biggest market to the US. People pay incredible amounts of money for things here. I am hoping to take some business classes from Berkleemusic soon to help in that endeavor."

When asked who he thinks should consider Berkleemusic's programs, Mike says, "I would really recommend Berkleemusic for people who are even contemplating anything like what I'm doing. I know there are a lot of people out there who are not happy with their career and thinking of moving from where they are and what they are doing, are looking for something fulfilling, and have gotten away from their original dream."

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