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 Bad Plus, and many, many more, as well as playing the Grammy Awards after-party. He’s currently writing, performing, and co-producing the sophomore album by Rymo of Slightly Stoopid, and plans to tour the U.S. and Europe this spring with his duo, Unnamed Lands, with Bert Lams of the California Guitar Trio.

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.