As a faculty member for over 40 years, Dominique Eade ’82, ’89 AD has played a key role in various areas of NEC, empowering collaboration and innovation.
After graduating from what is now the Contemporary Musical Arts (CMA) department, Eade helped build the vocal portion of the jazz and CI departments, producing award-winning alumni who have gone on to world-class performing careers, Grammy recognition, critical acclaim and top teaching positions. Although her training is in CMA and jazz, Eade promotes the value of all musical styles. “Exposing classical musicians to non-classical music can have profound repercussions, and vice versa,” she said. “NEC programs create a Venn diagram, and where everyone meets in the center is where it’s most enriching.”
NEC faculty like Eade elevate the NEC educational experience as they creatively evolve their role and curriculum. Eade recently expanded her interactions with NEC students as a guest coach for the esteemed Song Lab, a new program for classical vocalists born out of the Collaboration Challenge. Eade said, “Blinders and assumptions build a ‘keep out’ culture, and NEC is the opposite—we foster a ‘let in’ culture.”
In her decades of teaching, Eade has watched her students shape their paths in different ways after NEC. “I see the resources and perspectives that they gained from NEC allowing them to not just go out and succeed in one way, but continually reinvent themselves,” she said. Understanding that her students will need to learn beyond what she can teach them, Eade prepares her students to be on their own: “I believe in the artistic process. Learning the historical context of music is just as important as learning the music itself. I can’t know what the artistic professional trajectory is going to be for the students, but I feel that they are well equipped after NEC, technically, academically and artistically, to create the way.”