Lee Berk, ‘visionary’ president who expanded Berklee’s range as a music college, dies at 81

Mr. Berk, who served for 25 years as president of Berklee, the school whose name was an inversion of his own, was 81 when he died Saturday in Phoenix. After concluding his 38-year career at the college, he and his wife, Susan, moved to Santa Fe, and then lived in a retirement community in Phoenix.

“Lee Berk has been the best kind of visionary,” Gary Burton, the renowned vibraphonist who taught at Berklee, said at the college’s 2004 graduation, Mr. Berk’s last as president.

Already a groundbreaking college that focused on jazz, rather than traditional classical music, Berklee added international outposts during Mr. Berk’s tenure as president, launched an online learning component two decades ago, and in 1991 created Berklee City Music — an outreach program to provide music education to underserved youth in the city.

“He significantly expanded Berklee’s presence as an anchor arts institution in Boston and solidified its reputation for artistic excellence around the globe,” David Bogen, the college’s interim president and provost, said in a statement Tuesday. “His dedication to advancing educational boundaries created an enduring legacy that has shaped the future of education and of the music industry.”

Under Mr. Berk’s leadership, the college expanded its offerings, including creating a production and engineering department, and awarding degrees in music management and music therapy.

“Whatever the issue, you could always count on Lee to be one step ahead and do the right thing for the college,” said Burton, who formerly served as executive vice president at Berklee and stepped down in 2004 as well.

Bogen said that Mr. Berk’s “visionary leadership and immeasurable contributions to Berklee have left an indelible mark on our community and on the world of contemporary music.”

Because Mr. Berk had graduated from the Boston University School of Law, he ended up having a direct, individual impact on the music business/management major that was launched in 1992, during his presidency.

More than 50 years ago, “when the faculty and students found out that I had a law degree, I was besieged with questions about copyright, performance royalties, manager relations, contracts, and other music-industry topics,” he recalled in a 2004 interview with Mark Small, which is posted on Berklee’s website.

“In response to that, I offered a course on music law and taught that for several years in addition to my other work,” Mr. Berk said, and that grew into the music business and management major.

Born in Boston on Feb. 17, 1942, Lee Eliot Berk grew up in Brookline and Newton, the only child of Lawrence Berk and Alma Schlager Berk.

Lawrence, a pianist, composer, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology engineering graduate, arranged music for radio stations and performed at hotels and nightclubs.

In 1945, Lawrence founded Schillinger House on Newbury Street. The pioneering school taught college-level jazz, rather than classical music, with Lawrence using methods created by Joseph Schillinger, a composer and mathematician with whom he had studied.

Alma worked alongside Lawrence, creating the college’s public information operation. “She was very much a pillar of the school, too,” said Mr. Berk’s wife, Susan.

In 1954, Lawrence renamed the school Berklee. When Lee was an administrator in the 1970s, he was in charge of acquiring the Massachusetts Avenue properties that became a residence hall with classrooms, and the Berklee Performance Center.

Even though Mr. Berk had studied music, “my strengths and interests led me into a liberal arts college and then to law school,” he said in an interview with Larry Katz, a former writer for the Real Paper and Boston Herald, that is on a Northeastern University website.

Mr. Berk graduated in 1964 with a bachelor’s degree from Brown University, often riding his motorcycle to and from Newton and Providence as an undergraduate.

He was completing his BU law degree when his father asked him in 1966 to split his time between studies and being Berklee’s bursar.

Although he thought his time there would be “relatively brief,” Mr. Berk told Katz with a laugh that he “found the environment so engaging and many of the challenges compatible with the strengths that I could bring to them that I just never left.”

On a blind date in 1975, Mr. Berk took Susan Ginsberg to a concert. Both were devoted to swimming laps, and she arrived late from her time in a pool, but the tardiness ended up mattering little.

“We fell in love on that first date and we were married five months later,” she said.

They had two daughters — Nancy Langan, who now lives in Portland, Ore., and Lucy Berk-Fisher of Cave Creek, Ariz.

For a time, Susan had an office next to Mr. Berk at Berklee while she helped organize hospitality for college events.

Known for his sense of humor, Mr. Berk “had a great laugh,” she said. “It was a loud laugh and everybody loved it.”

A voracious reader all his life, Mr. Berk was the author of “Legal Protection for the Creative Musician,” a 1970 book that evolved from the music management course he taught. In 1971, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers honored it with the organization’s Deems Taylor Award for best book in music.

“That’s sort of my fragile tie to the Berklee curriculum,” Mr. Berk told Katz with a chuckle.

A few months before Mr. Berk retired in 2004, the National Association of Music Merchants honored him with a Lifetime Achievement Award and the International Association for Jazz Education presented him with its humanitarian award.

“When my father retired, he gave me the unique opportunity to carry on with his life’s work,” Mr. Berk said at the jazz education ceremony. “I’m especially fortunate to have had my wife, Susan, by my side through so many memorable Berklee events and experiences all through this remarkable journey.”

In addition to his wife, Susan, and their daughters, Nancy and Lucy, Mr. Berk leaves four grandchildren.

A funeral service will be held at 11 a.m. Friday in Stanetsky Memorial Chapel in Canton, with Levine Chapels in Brookline in charge of arrangements.

Even in retirement, Mr. Berk filled roles as a writer and editor — putting out his retirement community’s publication — and in music, as he organized a series of concerts there each year, using longstanding connections to bring in talented performers.

“It gave work to the musicians and it brought us joy,” Susan said of the concerts he staged. “We always had music.”

Bryan Marquard can be reached at bryan.marquard@globe.com.