Get Alex To Berklee NYC!!

Hiyaaaaa

For those who don’t know me my name is Alex Courtney. I am a 23-year-old musician and Creative producer from Cwmbran, South Wales. I have been on the music path since I was around eight years old when I started playing guitar in the Gwent Music Guitar Ensemble as well as singing with the Nidus Children’s Choir. These two extra activity clubs that my parents encouraged me to attend as a child turned out to be the start of an incredible 15 year journey. As a singer I joined every school production I could, sang in every school choir and joined the Gwent Youth Choir before auditioning and becoming a proud member of the National Youth Choir Of Wales for 7 years until I retired as a chorister in the summer of 2024 at the age of 22.

I remained a member of the Gwent Music Guitar ensemble where I progressed from guitar to bass, joining various Gwent Music Big Bands keeping the rhythm going until I left school at 18 after the pandemic hit. Hearing the words “creatives will need to retrain” before I had even started my undergraduate degree broke my heart… Little did I know that I was just a couple years away from working as a professional musician in London.

Once ‘normal’ life resumed I headed off to University, studying for a year at The Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama before taking the step to head up to London. Fast forward to 2025 and I have graduated from BIMM London, receiving not only First in my Popular Music Performance Vocals Degree but also crossing the stage a second time to be awarded the 2025 Musicians Company Award for Innovation to Songwriting and Composition for my work exploring Synaesythesia.

I found my passion for creative mixed media and the production of immersive multidisciplinary performance throughout my 3rd year at BIMM. Performance that intertwined cross pollination between different art forms that interlinked live music and physical art resonated deeply with me, and how I wanted to illustrate my music. The beauty of the context behind the creation and being given a platform to showcase emotions, feels like a full circle moment, a defined finished book of how to create and provide story from all angles.

Throughout my project; Exploring Synaesthesia Through Art, I followed the blending of colour and sound known as Chromaesthesia. I fell in love with the freeing feeling of writing music that meant something to me and giving it a physical body and showing everybody what it looks like inside my head. Allowing my music to be experienced through a physical artefact as well as its otherwise subtle simplicity of the live performance. Since graduating, I’ve been on a path of trying to decide what I would like to do next and how I can further my practice within this creative form of media.

Enter Berklee NYC…

Back in March this year I took a leap of faith and applied to Berklee with the idea of ‘I’ll never know unless I try’ so I said **** ** why not? And I started the application process. A week after submitting my application I received the invitation to an interview which started the ball rolling… Six weeks later, I received an email congratulating me on my acceptance onto the MA Creative Media and Technology in Live Music Production and Design…

It’s safe to say I had a bit of a breakdown, having the opportunity to study a masters within live music production and design, an area of the industry I feel so passionately about is beyond exciting, but above this, having the chance to study in an institution like Berklee NYC is beyond my imagination.

Much like most great things, it comes at a cost… and quite a heafty one at that. To study over in Berklee NYC tuition fees alone are a staggering $60,000 and additional rent and living costs in New York are estimated to exceed over $27,000 per year… bringing the projected cost of my Masters Degree to a whopping $87,000…

I have been incredibly lucky to have been awarded the I-House x Berklee partnership scholarship of $14,000, helping with my rent and living costs by providing me with living arrangements within their Manhattan residence. On top of this, I was also awarded a $10,000 Merit Scholarship from Berklee themselves to contribute towards my tuition. With these two incredible scholarships I find myself now figuring out how to bridge the final financial gap. My student visa will only allow me to work a maximum of 20 hours a week on campus which will help me top up my living costs in Manhattan.

With my I-House x Berklee scholarship and a part time job will help my personal life in New York; all that is left is my College tuition. After taking away my Merit scholarship I am left with $50,000 still to pay.

$50,000 roughly comes to around £38,000 and concludes the reason I am writing this little blurb about me… I need your help❤️❤️❤️❤️

Currently the average price of a pint of Guinness in London is £5.66… if you know me you’ll know how much I love a Guinness.

So having said that, all I ask is a helping hand… A helping hand to ‘buy me a pint for my tuition’ I can 100% say I’d forfeit that pint of Guinness if it meant you’d help me study at Berklee NYC.

If you donated the price of a pint to help me get to New York, you would make me the happiest girl in the world❤️❤️

I cannot express just how hard I will work for this and how unbelievably grateful I will be for any amount of pennies spent on me…

The Next round will be on me, I promise!!

Thank you for joining me on this journey!

Alex

I understand Money can be a scary thing right now and to ask for donations is easier said than it is done! So if donation isn’t possible, please know I understand!❤️ Sharing this link and my story with friends, family or anyone you feel might be able to help works just the same! Help me reach someone new, someone who loves the creation of music and art the same way I do! Help me spread the word, reach my goal and get me to Berklee!!!❤️❤️❤️❤️