A different drummer

WATERTOWN -- A couple of years ago, as Roger H. Brown tells it, his professional life reached a crossroads. Bright Horizons, the child-care business he founded in 1986 with his wife, Linda Mason, had matured into a publicly traded $400 million company. At Brown's direction, the business had been turned over to new management, freeing him from day-to-day responsibilities. The youngest of the couple's three children was in grade school. Financially, he was pretty much set."I was waiting for some golden opportunity to present itself, and it never did," Brown says, describing the events that led last month to his being named president of Berklee College of Music, effective June 1.

Speaking in the drawn-out, honeyed cadences of a native Georgian, Brown adds, "I may have been a little naive on that score. Nobody was exactly pounding on my door."

Naive or not, the 47-year-old entrepreneur -- an unconventional choice to head the nation's preeminent college of contemporary music, where artists such as Quincy Jones, Bruce Hornsby, Diana Krall,

and Melissa Etheridge all studied -- has seldom followed a predictable path. Certainly not one that logically connects high-chair education with higher education. A 1982 graduate of the Yale School of Management and an alumnus of Bain & Co., the Boston-based consulting firm, Brown spent four years in the 1970s and '80s working in Third World refugee camps. His dedication to humanitarian causes parallels his interest in early-childhood education and music. And his passion for music, any kind of music, is "almost irrational," Brown says, listing among his current favorites pedal-steel whiz Robert Randolph, saxophonist Lester Young, and hip-hoppers OutKast. Bluegrass? Bebop? Both are on Brown's personal playlist, and more.

At Bright Horizons, consistently ranked among America's best employers by such publications as Working Mother and Fortune, he found outlets for his musical side, notably by playing drums on and producing several CDs of children's music. (Proceeds go to a foundation for homeless families in the Boston area.) One of Brown's proudest moments came on a flight a couple of years ago when he plugged in his headphones and heard "Bossa by the Numbers," a tune he'd co-written for one of the discs.

"Biggest excitement of my life," Brown says, smiling.

Other than a dream job like drumming in Sting's touring band, however, Brown wasn't sure what he wanted to do after stepping down from his Bright Horizons CEO post. Following the blueprint of J. Anthony Lukas's "Common Ground," he began researching a history of school desegregation in Gainesville, Ga., his hometown. That project languished, though, as did another notion to start a charter school.

Then one day last fall, Brown was leafing through a copy of The Chronicle of Higher Education when an ad caught his eye. Berklee was looking for a new president. Brown lingered over the ad and thought about how it connected with everything else he'd done. Growing up, he'd played drums in a variety of rock and jazz bands. Even lately, as a high-flying executive, he has continued to drum in a wedding-and-bar-mitzvah cover band for no ostensible purpose other than to play. A drum set stands in the living room of his Belmont home, right next to his wife's piano. "I've always found ways to make music an entry point into anything I do," Brown says.

Studying the Berklee ad some more, Brown had an epiphany. "Why not me?" he thought.

"Then I thought, well, you're not Gary Burton," he recalls during a recent interview, referring to the jazz musician and longtime Berklee executive vice president who, many assumed, would succeed outgoing president Lee Berk. Brown sits at a small conference table in his office at the Arsenal on the Charles complex. Dressed in a T-shirt, sweater, and jeans, he has the trim build of a devoted weekend athlete -- fitting for someone who's run four marathons (including Boston) and competed in indoor rowing competitions.

"I don't have any formal music-school education or background in higher ed," Brown says, resuming the thought process that led him to apply for the Berklee post. "But I'm not easily put off, either. And I knew Berklee is not a traditional place. Plus I figured, no, what they really need is someone who can raise money. And I can do that."

People close to Brown, including his wife, enthusiastically endorsed the plan. The ensuing courtship played out over the next several weeks. Candidates who survived the first cut (Burton had already taken himself out of the picture, having announced his intention to retire this spring) met with a trustees' search committee and an advisory group made up of faculty, students, alumni, and staff. Two finalists were invited to a daylong campus visit in January. Brown was one of them, and by all accounts he lit up the place.

In a funny yet moving speech to students, faculty, and staff, he laid out his vision for the college's future, built around how Berklee might look to his daughter, Grace, now 8, should she enroll a decade from now. He described an institution that championed cultural diversity and technological innovation, building upon current efforts to reach students online. While lauding Berk and Burton's leadership, he also promised a less hierarchically managed institution. Those remarks told only part of the story, though. A more revealing glimpse of Brown came from his recap of his music career and how it intertwined with his humanitarian work.

In the sixth grade, Brown recalled, he formed a band called Junior and the Jailbirds, whose set list consisted of two songs: Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind" and Sgt. Barry Sadler's "Ballad of the Green Berets."

"We didn't realize the irony at the time," Brown deadpanned.

After graduating from Davidson College, he said, he founded a jazz-rock fusion band, Cathexis, which released a couple of albums and managed to have a hit in college towns such as Moscow, Idaho, and Durham, N.H. The group's single was titled "Spider Bite." "I'm hoping you won't be able to find it" on eBay, Brown joked. More seriously, he talked about teaching in Kenya and the gospel band he played in there, and the pop bands that became part of his working life in Thai and Sudanese refugee camps.

But the most poignant moment occurred near the end of his talk, when Brown described his relief work in western Cambodia and the ugly legacy of the Khmer Rouge. Millions of Cambodians had been murdered, Brown said, including most native musicians. Brown helped gather together people in one camp with instruments and recorded their music. Cassettes circulated throughout the camp. "It was stunning to me," Brown said, "how much more important the music was" than the food the relief workers had been distributing. It was as if, he said, Cambodians had been "given permission to rediscover their culture" through this music.

Brown finished his talk to wild applause. Ten days later, he got the call. The job was his.

"We'd spent a lot of time struggling with questions like, did the next president have to be a musician or come from an academic background or have a PhD?" says board chairman Allan McLean. "In the end, we decided that when we saw the right person we'd know it. And that happened to be Roger."

Attorney Neal Curtin, who chaired the search committee, says the college's priorities -- which include an upgrade of both its physical facilities and its national profile -- helped dictate Brown's selection. Berklee boasts 3,400 students and 430 faculty members. Its endowment, valued at $125 million, has never been supplemented by a major capital campaign, and Brown will almost certainly be expected to lead the first in the college's 58-year history. Not right away, but soon.

"Would we have loved getting a blockbuster name in the music business? Sure," says Curtin, when asked what other considerations were on the trustees' minds. "But we got the CEO of a major public company, someone both principled and charismatic. And that was the substantial equivalent" of an academic or musical superstar, Curtin maintains.

Berklee also sought assurances that Brown was not in a "dalliance" mode, as McLean puts it, but serious about a long-term commitment to the college. Curtin adds that while completing their search, trustees had one eye fixed on Boston University, whose appointment of Dan Goldin as president last fall rapidly unraveled. "It was a very legitimate concern for us," Curtin acknowledges.

As for hopes harbored by some, at least, that Berklee would choose a leader with strong performance credentials, faculty member Livingston Taylor, who knows something about recording contracts and touring schedules, says he lobbied for the opposite.

"To me it was essential we have a fan, not a star," Taylor says. "Professional musicians are often opinionated about the type of music they make. Berklee embodies very diverse musical styles. We didn't need a celebrity like my brother James or myself running the place. We needed someone like Roger."

Brown's appointment is not as unconventional as it might seem, according to experts in the field. A recent survey by the American Council on Education found that 15 percent of private college and university presidents hail from outside the academic world, nearly double the figure from 1998. Public universities often recruit leadership from the political realm, Green notes, as the University of Massachusetts did with William Bulger. With private institutions, "Boards are often looking for entrepreneurial skills, especially for experience in finance," she says.

Between now and June, Brown will divide his time between the company -- he'll continue to serve as cochairman of the Bright Horizons board -- and the college. One early challenge will be finding an executive vice president who has strong credibility in the music world, experience in internal operations, or both. Once settled, Brown plans to address issues of student housing, quality of life, and diversity.

"Mention Berklee and you see a student standing on the corner of Mass. Ave with a guitar," Brown says. "Well, that student needs someplace to go."

Having raised millions for Bright Horizons and its foundation, Brown says he's eager and ready to play that drum solo, too, on Berklee's behalf.

"Not everyone will care," he says confidently, "but some will care a lot."

Joseph P. Kahn can be reached at jkahn@globe.com.