Sounds Of Berklee

Grammy nominee and jazz accordionist Victor Prieto graduated from Berklee in 2002. Born in Spain, the New York City-based composer and bandleader writes music that combines jazz, classical, tango, Celtic, and Brazilian music with sounds steeped in his Galician heritage. This episode features Prieto in a duo setting with fellow Berklee alumnus and saxophonist Chris Cheek, who plays soprano on "Chatting with Chris." Both musicians are performing at Berklee in November 2015 in an NPR broadcast filmed and recorded at Berklee's Cafe 939 in the year's first installation of the music series, The Checkout—Live at Berklee.

May 8, 2014 | Rob Hochschild Singer-songwriter Arielle Vakni, from Santa Cruz, California is one of more 900 musicians graduating from Berklee in May 2014. She's demonstrated great talent as a composer and performer in acoustic and electronic genres, and many of her originals fuse those disparate influences. Vakni came to Berklee after receiving a Fullerton Heritage Festival Award for vocal jazz in 2009. Acoustic guitarist and songwriter Patty Larkin recently produced a recording of one of Vakni's tunes, "Save Your Best." This podcast features Vakni's "Backwards," a track recorded live at Berklee's Cafe 939—you can watch a Vakni video at Berklee's YouTube channel. Visit Vakni's website to learn more and to hear her most recent recordings, which include Tryptich (with Skycranes) and her debut solo release, Facets & Resonance. On the same day Vakni receives her bachelor's in songwriting, she'll witness Berklee granting honorary doctor of music degrees to four greats: guitarist Jimmy Page, vocalist and songwr

April 25, 2014 | Adam Renn Olenn Alyosha Barreiro '01 is a composer and producer of electronic and dance music who has performed at clubs and festivals on both sides of the Atlantic to crowds of more than 100,000 people. With several No. 1 hits on Latin American music charts and a large following, Barreiro has been tapped as the producer of Beat Trend, an internationally syndicated radio show in which he curates the latest happenings in electronic music. As a special gift to Berklee, he has offered to share the show with Air Alumni, Berklee's all-alumni radio station on the BIRN. Beat Trend airs Friday nights at 10:00 p.m. Eastern for North- and South-American listeners, and Saturday nights at 7:00 p.m. Eastern for European listeners.

April 17, 2014 | Adam Renn Olenn Formed in 2009 as the house band for a production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, Evolfo Doofeht is loaded with Berklee alumni, including Kai Sorensen ’13 on trumpet and vocals, Julian Moore ’13 on drums, Rafferty Swink ’13 on keyboards, Ronnie Lanzilotta on bass, and Matthew Gibbs on guitar and vocals. The band has spent the last few years performing at colleges, festivals, and nightclubs all over the United States. The band won Best International Artist of the Year at the 2012 Boston Music Awards, and is working on a full-length album with producer Craig Welsch. And the unusual name? That’s "the food of love" spelled backwards.

March 27, 2014 | Rob Hochschild Guitarist Matthew Stevens has built his reputation on and brought his unique sound to recordings by many of jazz's leading young artists—including Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah, Ben Williams, Walter Smith III, and Jacky Terrasson—but his forthcoming debut on Concord Records promises to have as great an impact as any of the many albums he has appeared on. According to All About Jazz, he has "an impassioned sense of commitment, (and) his solos build with a burning combination of inevitability and sheer unpredictability." Stevens will lead his quintet in a performance at Berklee on April 2, 2014, on NPR's The Checkout—Live at Berklee, in a concert that will be broadcast by NPR Music and WBGO-FM. This episode of Sounds of Berklee spotlights a Stevens recording from 2010 that also features Walter Smith III, Milton Fletcher, John Escreet, and Jamire Williams.

March 25, 2014 | Adam Renn Olenn Sarah Sharp and Masumi Jones, 1997 alumnae, are the Berklee half of the Jitterbug Vipers, a magnificently weird quartet from Austin, Texas. The group specializes in ‘viper jazz,’ an idiosyncratic hybrid genre that recalls country, swing, and languid afternoons in smoky bars. Fusing Americana roots music and wry wordplay, the Jitterbug Vipers aim to employ a bygone aesthetic without being shackled to it. Their efforts are bearing fruit, as they’ve nearly sold out the prestigious One World Theater and have become music festival staples, as well as gigging extensively in Texas in support of their album Phoebe’s Dream.

March 13, 2014 | Rob Hochschild The Field Effect is a rock quartet featuring four Berklee alumni with a passion for well-crafted songs filled with introspective lyrics, infectious melodies, and ferocious rhythms. The song featured in this podcast, "Ogunquit, ME," earned the band a Boston Music Award for Song of the Year in 2013. The band, which formed in 2011, is composed of guitarist and frontman Doug Orey, guitarist Nick Grieco, bassist Annie Hoffman, and drummer Adam Hand. The group is one of several bands representing Berklee at the college's annual SXSW party in Austin, Texas in March 2014. Nearly 50 Berklee-affiliated bands are performing at SXSW showcases this year.

March 7, 2014 | Adam Renn Olenn Associate professor of guitar Thaddeus Hogarth ’88 has authored Funk-Rock/R&B Guitar Soloing, two popular courses for Berklee Online, and taught more than 120,000 students in his Introduction to Guitar course on Coursera, for which he was featured on NBC’s Today Show. But Hogath—who was born in England and raised in St. Kitts, West Indies—has a recording and performance history every bit as impressive as his pedagogical achievements. Hogarth has released half a dozen albums under his own name; performed with many of the seminal names in funk and R&B; and composed music for PBS, MTV, and many independent and feature films. And underpinning it all is thirteen years (and counting) in which he’s been an guitar faculty member at Berklee, teaching generations of students how to grow their skills and realize that, as he says, “process and practical results are equally important.”

February 28, 2014 | Rob Hochschild The Berklee Middle Eastern Festival not only provides an annual glimpse into the music of an important cultural region, it demonstrates how that area's music can be fused with other contemporary styles in innovative ways. This year's festival, The Music of Armenia: Dark Eyes/New Eyes, brings guest artist Sato Moughalian of Alexandria, Egypt, to perform with her Perspectives Ensemble. The concert, now in its sixth year, is led annually by faculty member Christiane Karam. Student performers come from a range of towns, including Izmir, Turkey; Amman, Jordan; Quito, Ecuador; Moscow; Stockholm; Panama City; Athens; Jerusalem; and many others. One of this year's performers, the Berklee student group Pletenitsa Balkan Choir, also performed in the 2013 Berklee Middle Eastern Festival. In last year's concert Pletenitsa performed "Folkscat Medley," a jazz arrangement of Bulgarian folk songs.

Saxophonist Donald Harrison talks to Berklee about his upbringing in New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina, and important musical relationships in his life.

Berklee in Atlanta, Berklee’s annual spring break trip to Atlanta, GA, celebrated its fifth year anniversary in March 2015. The 20 students who participated that year had an opportunity to work in one of Atlanta’s most reputable recording studios (PatchWerk Recording Studios) to create an original song from start to finish in a span of only six hours. “Give It Up for the ATL” is a theme song one might say about their incredible experience while in Atlanta. Enjoy!

Rob Hochschild | February 14, 2014 Fate & the Family Band is the kind of group that gets its audiences dancing, so it's clear why the producers at student-run Heavy Rotation Records decided to make "Sweet Creole Queen" the first cut on the just-released Dorm Sessions 9. Fronted by Virginia-bred student vocalist Emma Hern, Fate & the Family Band make music that fuses blues, rock, and soul. Fate & the Family Band perform at Cafe 939 on March 13, 2014. Learn more about the latest release and the rest of the catalogue from Heavy Rotation Records at the label's website.

Adam Renn Olenn | January 23, 2014 Originally from Falkirk, Scotland, Jason Lim ’13 is a polymath in the finest Berklee tradition. An accomplished violinist, guitarist, drummer, inventor, and recording engineer, he is equally comfortable on both sides of the sound board and soldering iron. Lim distinguished himself at Berklee as part of the Berklee Interdisciplinary Arts Institute, where he traveled internationally under the tutelage of artistic director Neil Leonard, putting his technical and musical skills to work realizing a wide array of interdisciplinary arts projects. He has founded a company with fellow alumnus Andrew Ikenberry ’13 to build and sell the Nebulae, their proprietary modular synthesizer, and continues to work on his own music.

Rob Hochschild | January 21, 2014 Argentinian composer and pianist Guillermo Klein '94 makes music that is "occasionally Ellingtonian, occasionally classical, and always beautiful," according to PopMatters. Klein has led his own big bands and small combos since graduating from Berklee and released several lauded discs for Sunnyside Records. Klein's first move, post-Berklee, was to form a 17-piece band in New York that quickly became known for its inventive sound. In a review of his 2012 disc, Carrera, Downbeat cited Klein's "idiosyncratic balladry" and efforts "steering his acclaimed ensemble toward even more individualistic ways to express itself." Now based in Argentina, Klein returns to Berklee on January 29, 2014 to perform with a few of his musical collaborators and a Berklee student ensemble as part of The Checkout—Live at Berklee, presented by New York’s WBGO Jazz 88.3 FM and NPR Music.

Adam Renn Olenn | January 8, 2014 Connecticut native Samantha Preis ’10 began playing the piano at a young age, but didn’t care much for practicing the music she was given. Instead, she preferred to write her own songs, a habit which led her to Berklee’s summer Songwriting Workshop, and from there to a songwriting scholarship. A veteran traveler who has studied and performed in Greece and Israel, in her last year at Berklee Preis traveled to Egypt on the Live! Music Festival charity tour to raise money for children with cancer. The experience inspired dreams of one day founding her own performing arts cultural organization to encourage cultural appreciation, understanding, and artistic expression. She is currently pursuing that dream at the University College of London, where she is working on a master’s degree in cultural heritage studies, as well as touring the UK in support of her 10-song debut release, Good News.

Adam Renn Olenn | December 10, 2013 Until you’ve seen a Chapman Stick performed live, the music it produces sounds too big to be real. A twelve-string electric instrument, it’s sort of like a guitar and a bass fused together, but played with a pianistic tapping of the fingers to activate the strings, instead of plucking or strumming them. And one of the best Chapman Stick players in the world is Tom Griesgraber. Griesgraber first learned of Berklee while taking music lessons as a high school student. After attending a Berklee in LA session, he set his heart on Berklee, but knew he had his work cut out for him to succeed there. Griesgraber began taking courses at MiraCosta college, and soon distinguished himself, tutoring other students, recording, and helping with administrative duties. He then transferred to Berklee, and two years later graduated summa cum laude. Griesgraber has performed with or opened for the California Guitar Trio, the Tony Levin Band, the Dixie Dregs, Adrian Belew, Tower of Power, the

Adam Renn Olenn | November 26, 2013 The members of R&B vocal quartet Ahmir were drawn to Boston by their respective colleges, including 2004 alumnus Mark Robertson, also known as Sing Sing, and they still call it home. Home, that is, when they’re not making one of the videos that have garnered over 75 million views and nearly 400,000 subscribers on YouTube. These four young men work hard, and their hard work is bearing fruit. Their single “Welcome to My Party” hit #3 on Billboard’s Hip-Hop/R&B single sales chart; they won Billboard’s “We Hear the Future” competition, BET’s 106 & Park competition for Best Group Performance, and advanced to the top 35 on the NBC television show America’s Got Talent. On May 20, 2013, Ahmir was the featured artist on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, and is currently working on a single to be released in early 2014.

Rob Hochschild | November 20, 2013 Spanish producer, composer, and performing artist Javier Limón's just-released Promesas de Tierra features music not only inspired by the Middle East; it shines the light on several young artists from the region. Limón, who is artistic director of Berklee's Mediterranean Music Institute, wrote nine songs for the album and invited a group of instrumentalists—many of them Palestinian and Israeli Berklee students and recent graduates—to play on the recording. According to the disc's liner notes, Limón and the Mediterranean Music Institute, with this release, are opening "a window to a new style of music far from the traditional archetypes of jazz or world music, leading a new trend towards cultural diversity in contemporary roots music." Within a few days of its release last week, the recording reached No. 1 on the iTunes Spain world music album chart.

Adam Renn Olenn | November 13, 2013 Multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter, dancer, and actress Marga Lane is a true triple threat. As a songwriter and performer, she’s played clubs from one end of the country to the other, including the Roxy and the Sayer’s Club in Los Angeles to the Bitter End and CBGB’s in New York. In addition to her studies at Berklee, her acting prowess carried her to the Musical Theater Program at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and her abilities as a dancer have put her on the stage of Carnival and as a member of the dance cast for the Industry Voice Awards, choreographed by Aliya Perry. Lane has sung the national anthem for professional baseball and basketball teams, including the Washington Wizards, the New Orleans Hornets, and the Kansas City Royals. Her independent EP Expressions has done well on iTunes, and an acoustic follow-up EP is slated to drop in early 2014. She is currently planning a college tour to support both releases.

Rob Hochschild | November 6, 2013 France-born vibraphonist Simon Moullier was in his first semester at Berklee in fall 2012 when he formed a quartet with three other internationally born instrumentalists. Vibes and alto saxophone combine to generate the group's strong melodic character while the bass and drums provide a balance rooted in neo-soul and pop influences. Moullier's list of influences is eclectic: Radiohead, Steve Reich, Tigran Hamasyan, John Coltrane, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Kenny Garrett, and Robert Glasper. The quartet is one of the featured artists on the latest release from Berklee's student-run Jazz Revelation Records. The label and its artists celebrate the issuing of Catalyst in a show at the Berklee Performance Center on Thursday, November 7, 2013.