Sounds of Berklee

By Adam Olenn December 16, 2011 Baby Atlas is a trio from Austin, Texas that Berklee bass professor Danny Morris calls "southern-fried soul, with freshness, optimism, and joie de vivre." The band includes 2006 alumnus David Jimenez and 2008 alumna Wendy Simmons and recently released its self-titled debut album. (Photo provided by the artist) Baby Atlas: Wendy Simmons, David Carroll, and David Jime...

By Adam Olenn November 30, 2011 Vocalist Jaime Garamella '06 attended Berklee with guitarist Lauren Stockner '08, but it wasn't until they connected with producer Tim Mitchell '05 that things really caught fire. The energetic performances of their band, the Spanish Channel, have won over wide-ranging crowds, garnering a national battle of the bands title, a sold-out CD release in New York, and a s...

By Rob Hochschild November 21, 2011 Photo by Phil Farnsworth Da'Rayia is a close-knit band of Berklee students and alumni that play a variety of genres, including hip-hop, jazz, soul, funk, rock, and reggae. The leader of the group—Da'Rayia Wilson—was the first winner of the Berklee and Essence magazine hip-hop songwriting contest. She subsequently was awarded a full scholarship to attend Berklee,...

By Adam Olenn November 14, 2011 Piano Department professor Laszlo Gardony has just released his ninth album, Signature Time, a blend of originals and ambitious reinventions of classic tunes. Hungarian-born Gardony '87 graduated from the Bartok Conservatory and the Science University of Budapest before working as a sought-after sideman in Europe. After releasing his own recordings overseas, he matr...

Drunken Logic, "The Good News is (Nobody Gives a Damn)" by Berklee College of Music

See the full interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDGw9oOtgFA

Berklee Alumni Advice: Sound Designer Eugene Gearty '82 (Martin Scorcese, Ang Lee) by Berklee College of Music

Berklee Alumni Advice: Paul Riggio '98 (Film Scoring; CEO of Tunespring.com, Groove Guild) by Berklee College of Music

Shawna talks about the importance of nurturing contacts.

Iggy talks about personal and professional development at Berklee.

By Adam Olenn October 31, 2011 Field Trip, featuring Ryan Fleming '03 and Tim Paul Weiner '03 Photo by Ben Meyers Instrumental funk-jazz quartet Field Trip has just released their debut album There's Shag on Jupiter. The 10-song disc features 2003 alumni Ryan Fleming and Tim-Paul Weiner on guitar and bass respectively, and recalls some of the groundbreaking collaborations between John Scofield and...

By Adam Olenn October 6, 2011 Alumnus Marc Muller has seen and done just about everything. He's played the Super Bowl with Shania Twain and backed up household names in every genre of music, from Branford Marsalis to the Backstreet Boys. On October 22, Muller comes to the Berklee Performance Center with his team of cracker-jack musicians who perform note-for-note renditions of the Grateful Dead's...

By Adam Olenn August 22, 2011 Composer, pianist, and vocalist Neara Russell '10 grew up singing to cows in her home state of Wisconsin, but she didn't stay in the cornfield long. While still in high school, she was featured on National Public Radio for her achievements as a classical pianist. She then went on to win a prestigious full-tuition Presidential scholarship to Berklee, where she majored...

By Berklee Office of Communications August 26, 2011 Emerging artist Katrina Bello '11 is a Nigerian-American soul/R&B vocalist and songwriter from the Washington DC metropolitan area. Bello performed from a young age in school choirs, and her talents earned her a host of accolades, including the 2005 Washington Post Music and Dance Scholarship Award. She began writing songs at the age of 16. After...

By Adam Olenn July 25, 2011 Originally from Blue River, Kentucky, guitarist Dave Reffett '06 is catching fire in the metal world. His Grammy-nominated album The Call of the Flames is packed with metal heavyweights like George Lynch (Dokken, Lynch Mob), Chris Poland (Megadeth), Michael Angelo Batio (Nitro), Joe Stump (Holy Hell), Mike Mangini (Steve Vai, Extreme, Annihilator), and Glen Drover (Mega...

By Rob Hochschild July 18, 2011 Photo by Douglas Levy Photography Award-winning composer Omar Thomas, a faculty member in Berklee's Harmony Department, leads an 18-piece band showcasing some of Boston's finest young jazz players. The Omar Thomas Large Ensemble also features several Berklee faculty members. The group's repertoire includes Thomas's original compositions and arrangements, several of...

By Adam Olenn July 11, 2011 Bassist Matthew Rybicki '95 has performed with Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, Nnenna Freelon, Renee Fleming, Mark Whitfield, and a host of other jazz luminaries on storied stages like the Village Vanguard and the Blue Note, and at festivals from Italy to Taiwan. Rybicki taught the inaugural bass course in the Essentially Ellington Band Director A...

July 5, 2011 Composer, saxophonist, and EWI player Zac Zinger just graduated from Berklee a few months ago, but he's been building a long list of credits since taking up the horn at the age of nine. His band, the Zac Zinger Group, displays influences from jazz, soul, funk, and other styles. As a composer, Zinger has written for quartet, orchestra, film, and video games. Catch the Zac Zinger Group...

May 19, 2015 By Curtis Killian In 2014, jazz percussionist Marco Pacassoni '04 of Fano, Italy and his quartet released his second album of original compositions, Happiness, featuring a duet with Grammy-award winning pianist Michel Camilo. Pacassoni, whose primary instruments are vibraphone and marimba, has studied with Gary Burton '62, Ed Saindon, and Victor Mendoza, among others, and has performe...

By Rob Hochschild June 14, 2011 The collection of talented Berklee students and alumni in Boston rock band, Foxtrot, may be young in years, but they possess the songwriting and onstage skill of much older musicians. Foxtrot lists Radiohead, Incubus, and Mute Math among their influences, but it has crafted a sound completely its own. And Foxtrot take its concerts seriously, describing itself as "a...

By Adam Olenn June 13, 2011 Born in Cambridge, England, and raised in Johannesburg, South Africa, Adam Glasser '81 is a keyboardist, a composer, and one of the U.K.'s leading chromatic harmonica players. He has performed with a wide variety of artists, including Martha Reeves, Joe Zawinul, Sting, the Eurythmics, Jimmy Witherspoon, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and Hugh Masekela, and filled in for St...

By Adam Olenn June 2, 2011 Violinist Morwenna Lasko and guitarist Jay Pun met in a class called Music of India in their last semester at Berklee in 2003. The two found a common interest in exploring musical vocabulary off the beaten path and moved to Charlottesville, Virginia to incubate their unique sound in this hip enclave at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Their iconoclastic sound has be...

By Adam Olenn May 26, 2011 Singer-songwriter Tiana Star '03 absorbed a wide range of influences in a childhood that spanned six states, Canada, and the Ukraine. Currently living in southern California with her husband and young son, Star spends much of her time touring both nationally and throughout the Southwest. She was a featured showcase at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival and as a result has b...

By Adam Olenn May 16, 2011 Before millions of television viewers knew her as the singer of "Come As You Are" on NBC's hit reality show The Voice, Rebecca Loebe paid her dues the old-fashioned way, playing hundreds of shows across the country. Her 2010 release, Mystery Prize, spent nine weeks on the Americana Top 40 chart, and she has racked up an impressive collection of awards, including the 2009...

By Rob Hochschild May 11, 2011 One of the more than 900 students who graduated this month is Juliana Ronderos, vocalist for the Colombian group il abanico. The group was formed in 2010 by Ronderos (vocals) and Nicolás Losada (guitar), and includes members from places as diverse as Peru, Japan, and Argentina. In December 2010 they recorded their EP, Crossing Colors, at Studio G in Brooklyn. They pe...