Kaki King to Perform New Arrangements of Her Songs with Student Orchestra

Virtuosa guitarist and composer Kaki King performs two shows on April 21 with the Porta Girevole Chamber Orchestra, composed of Berklee students and faculty, presenting new arrangements of her songs written specifically for this event.

April 14, 2017

Virtuosa guitarist and composer Kaki King performs a collaboration with the Porta Girevole Chamber Orchestra, composed of Berklee students and faculty, presenting new arrangements of her songs written specifically for this event by Tom Hagerman of Devotchka, Berklee students, and King herself. The set list will span her catalog, with songs from albums The Neck Is a Bridge to the Body, Junior, Dreaming of Revenge, Legs to Make Us Longer, and Everybody Loves You. Presented by birnCORE, the Berklee Internet Radio Network's (BIRN) record label, the event is the label's first to feature Berklee faculty and students collaborating with a visiting artist.

“I am so excited to be working with Berklee students and faculty on this special project,” said King. “I have reached way, way back into my catalog to resurrect some songs that have almost never been played live, or that have only been played by myself as a soloist. The addition of the ensemble is creating amazing new material out of tunes that are nostalgic for me at this point, and I can't wait to play and record them in a live setting.”

Berklee student Gabriela Sofia Gomez Estevez will be conducting the performances. “BIRN operations manager Tony Brown approached me last December about working on this project,” said Estevez. “I was absolutely thrilled about collaborating with Kaki, and once I listened to the music we were arranging, I was in. It has been a pleasure to work with a group of such talented musicians. The material is superb and having Kaki with us while we are playing her music has been fantastic!”

Hailed by Rolling Stone as “a genre unto herself,” King is a true iconoclast. Over the past 10 years, the Brooklyn-based artist has released six extraordinarily diverse and distinctive albums; has performed with such icons as Foo Fighters, Timbaland, and the Mountain Goats; has contributed to a variety of film and TV soundtracks, including Golden Globe-nominated work on Sean Penn’s Into the Wild; and has played to an increasingly fervent following of music lovers on innumerable world tours. In addition to her solo work, King sometimes performs accompanied by New York-based string quartet Ethel. She also performed a premiere of a classical piece commissioned by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Lang at Carnegie Hall.

birnCORE Live Featuring Kaki King takes place at the Red Room at Cafe 939, located at 939 Boylston Street, Boston, on Friday, April 21, at 7:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. Admission is $18 with discounts available and can be purchased at berklee.edu/red-room-cafe-939. Singer-songwriter Cammy Enaharo, from Rochester, New York, opens both shows.

The Berklee Internet Radio Network's BIRN Cooperative Recordings (birnCORE) is an independent record label created to emphasize performance, musicianship, and collaboration at one of the world's premier music colleges. birnCORE records and releases live music from some of today's best independent artists. The label’s releases have included Club d’Elf, Matador, Brooke Waggoner, and Jesca Hoop.