Sounds of Berklee

By Rob Hochschild | June 25, 2012 One comes from a small town and the other from Los Angeles, but when Erin Casey and Chris Carlberg met at Berklee, they found common musical ground. Now the pair is writing, recording, and performing, with two free shows this summer as part of Berklee's Summer in the City series. Herego performs at the Prudential Center on July 3 and at Fox Point on August 19.

By Adam Olenn | June 21, 2012 The songs of performer and educator Laura Vecchione '00 have placed in the Top 5 of the AMA chart and Roots Music Report, been quoted by Marvel Comics, and featured on television shows like Saving Grace and The Glades. Her debut album Deeper Waters was quickly embraced by XM Radio, and her sophomore outing Girl in the Band was produced by multi-Grammy-winner Jim Scott...

By Rob Hochschild | June 11, 2012 Spanish pianist and composer Ariadna Castellanos, Berklee's first Spanish Presidential Scholar, has been playing flamenco in places where it is rarely heard, such us Washington D.C.'s Kennedy Center and the Monterey Jazz Festival. Born in Madrid, she studied classical music in London before attending Berklee. Castellanos has performed and toured with many flamenco...

By Adam Olenn |May 31, 2012 It was a snowy evening in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, when 2011 alumna Maya de Vitry first played with guitarist Oliver Craven. De Vitry, an award-winning songwriter, had just returned from several months of itinerant fiddling in Europe. Craven had recently wrapped up a tour with Grammy-nominated artist Adrienne Young. Together, they found the sensitive bass playing of Cha...

By Rob Hochschild | May 29, 2012 Student pianist Hamish Napier was raised in the Scottish Highlands and learned flute, whistles, and voice, in addition to his principal instrument. After earning multiple award nominations for young Scottish musicians and recording with some of the country's leading musicians, Napier enrolled at Berklee to pursue an interest in fusing traditional music with jazz. T...

By Adam Olenn | May 17, 2012 Since 2002, singer-songwriter Mark DeRose has been building his fan base by gigging relentlessly up and down the Eastern seaboard, recording four albums both as the Ernest Goodlife Band and as Mark DeRose and the Way Home. Their most recent, Carolina Smile, was released in 2011. A musician and freelance graphic designer, this 2005 alumnus has played at clubs and colleg...

By Rob Hochschild | May 10, 2012 Berklee's Summer in the City series presents a slew of concerts—many of them free shows—around Boston and the United States each summer. It's a great way for people to hear Berklee students and alumni when they're not on campus. One of the summer 2012 performers is Mozambique-born guitarist Albino Mbie, a Berklee student who auditioned during a college visit to Sou...

By Adam Olenn | May 3, 2012 Originally from Seoul, South Korea, Hey Rim Jeon began playing piano at the age of four. An interest in jazz led to a scholarship at Berklee. She graduated summa cum laude in 2001, and became Berklee's first Korean faculty member in 2003. In addition to her international club tours, she has performed at Lincoln Center, the BeanTown Jazz Festival, and on the main stage o...

By Rob Hochschild | February 3, 2014 A key reason that Berklee's YouTube channel reached 2 million views last week was a series of videos highlighting student performers. One of them captured an October 2013 performance led by student bassist, vocalist, and songwriter Alissia Benveniste and her band on an original funk tune, "Let It Out," in the Berk Recital Hall. Less than four months since its r...

By Rob Hochschild | April 30, 2012 Berklee's Music Production and Engineering Department annually releases a CD of the finest work recorded by students in the year gone by. Two about-to-graduate students played key roles in "Tonight I'm Gonna Change the World," a song written and sung by Apoena Frota, a second-year student from Rio de Janiero, Brazil. The two seniors are Pete Jacobs, an MP&E major...

By Adam Olenn | April 20, 2012 2003 alumnus BJ Block was working on a sequel to his album Glitterball when he met Vancouver vocalist Dawn Pemberton. A staple of the Vancouver music scene, Pemberton was initially slated to record some background vocals for Block's instrumentals. One writing session later, it was clear that these two musicians had found a powerful creative connection, and the projec...

By Rob Hochschild | April 17, 2012 Yoga Girls is an electronic dance music duo known for incorporating elements of yoga mantras into their heavy noise and electro sounds. Current Berklee student Lillia Betz and recent Berklee graduate Dione Tan are from France and Singapore, respectively, and their music is a merger of organic sampling and grimy, distorted synth sounds. They site their musical ins...

July 21, 2015 | By Curtis Killian Behind the Song "Counterfeit" with #BerkleeAlumni Jenn Bostic: "Counterfeit is a song of deceit, uncovering the true colors of someone or something that has misinterpreted the truth. Whether it be a lover or a negative voice in your mind, it’s wrapped in beautiful clothing, slowly pulling you into its lie. It’s important to silence those voices and follow your hea...

By Adam Olenn April 5, 2012 Photo by Phil Farnsworth 1990 alumna and Berklee staff member Renese King is a talented instrumentalist and arranger whose soulful and moving voice has been called "resplendent" by The Boston Globe and garnered her a Boston Music Award for Gospel Artist of the Year. King has toured with the Boston Pops, the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, and many other orchestras, and was...

By Rob Hochschild April 2, 2012 Photo provided by the artist Canadian trumpeter Ingrid Jensen '89 has been a part of several recordings nominated for Grammy or Juno awards, including her debut album as a leader, Vernal Fields, which earned her a Juno in 1995. She's in several notable bands, including the Maria Schneider Orchestra and the IJQ with Geoffrey Keezer. Her name appears annually near the...

By Adam Olenn March 9, 2012 This episode of Sounds of Berklee features several of the fantastic artists showcasing at Berklee's seventh annual SXSW Party, which takes place on Friday, March 16 from 1:00–5:30 p.m. at 208 East 6th Street in Austin, Texas. The party is 21+ and open to SXSW badgeholders. Additionally, the general public can email sxswrsvp@berklee.edu to attend free of charge. Read abo...

By Rob Hochschild March 2, 2012 The Berklee Silent Film Orchestra merges the creativity and discipline of film composition and the without-a-net experience of live-to-picture performance. Faculty member Sheldon Mirowitz teaches a course—Scoring Silent Films—in which the Film Scoring Department's best students compose scene-specific cues based on original themes developed by Mirowitz. Intensive wor...

By Adam Olenn February 27, 2012 1999 film scoring alumnus Kishi Bashi has toured with Sondre Lerche, Alexi Murdoch, and of Montreal, not to mention the splash he made with his previous band, Jupiter One. A versatile musician, he has found success in many roles: violinist, composer, producer, and now as multi-lingual singer-songwriter Kishi Bashi. In addition to blending English and Japanese lyrics...

July 10, 2015 by Curtis Killian After winning a scholarship to Berklee at the Umbria Jazz Festival, Italian singer Alessandra Bosco honed her jazz and classical techniques and has since expanded into the avant-garde after discovering radical vocal improvisers like Diamanda Galas and Meredith Monk. Bosco says she was deeply changed by her Berklee experience, which she called "a beautiful sharing of...

By Rob Hochschild February 21, 2012 Voice professor Donna McElroy is one of Berklee's—and Boston's—most electrifying performers. Having commanded the stage as lead vocalist during many of the college's most memorable concerts, McElroy returns to the BPC stage on February 26 for The Great American Songbook: Music of Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer. Other performers on the bill include alumnus Ju...

By Adam Olenn January 30, 2012 The punk-ska yeomen of Big D and the Kids Table have been touring almost nonstop since the nine founding members graduated from Berklee in the late '90s. Playing up to 220 shows a year, Big D and the Kids table has earned its accolades one fan at a time, with a strictly do-it-yourself work ethic. And it's paid off big-time. Big D and the Kids Table has toured with Ra...

By Rob Hochschild January 24, 2012 Whether reinventing jazz standards, breathing fresh life into classical repertoire, or premiering its own original works, Tre Corda generates a compelling sound all its own. The group's three instrumentalists are Berklee faculty members, coming together in an environment where they are free to explore their own creative paths—independently and collectively—and ar...

Bob Boilen of NPR Music, recently visited Berklee, along with cohost Stephen Thompson, to hang out with students, faculty, and staff to listen to—and talk about—music. During a conversation at Berklee with Rob Hochschild, director of communications, Boilen talked about the evolution of All Songs Considered, being at Berklee, and the fact that what makes a song good is the same thing as what makes...

June 23, 2015 Listen to the title track from Motif by the Greg Abate Quartet featuring Berklee faculty members Tim Ray, John Lockwood, and Mark Walker, out now on Whaling City Sound Records. After graduating Berklee, jazz saxophonist, flautist and composer Greg Abate '71 played lead alto in the Ray Charles Orchestra for two years in the early '70s. In 1978, he formed the group Channel One, and lat...

Norwegian bassist Terje Gewelt '87 has appeared on over 80 recordings by Scandanavian, European, and American jazz artists like Billy Cobham, Tommy Smith, Misha Alperin, and Michael Schrieve. Before studying at Berklee, Gewelt studied at the Bass Institute of Technology in Los Angeles and then privately with electric bass virtuoso Jaco Pastorius. Gewelt has released eight albums as a leader on his...