Renowned guitarist Kaki King is announcing her first release in over two years, and once again she delivers something completely unexpected. Kaki King Live at Berklee will be released on September 22, and is available for preorder now.
The album, recorded live at the Red Room at Cafe 939 in Boston in April of 2017, features King performing new arrangements of her solo guitar compositions, reimagined with the addition of strings and woodwinds. King, Tom Hagerman of Devotchka, and Berklee students Takuma Matsui and Shereen Cheong wrote the arrangements specifically for the recording. The Porta Girevole Chamber Orchestrais a 12-piece ensemble composed of Berklee students and faculty, conducted by student Gabriela Sofia Gomez Estevez.BirnCORE, the Berklee Internet Radio Network's (BIRN) record label, gives students at the college the opportunity to learn the ins and outs of operating an independent record label. Kaki King Live at Berkleeis the label's first release to feature Berklee students and faculty collaborating with a visiting artist. King visited campus several times last spring to rehearse with the ensemble, culminating with the live performance and recording. PREORDER HEREHailed by Rolling Stone as "a genre unto herself," Brooklyn-based composer and guitarist Kaki King has released 8 albums over the past 13 years. She has performed on every continent over the course of multiple world tours, and has presented her work in a variety of prestigious arts centers, including the Kennedy Center, MoMA, LACMA and The Met. She has created music for numerous film and TV soundtracks, including "August Rush" and Sean Penn's "Into the Wild", for which received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Original Score.
Her most recent work until now, "The Neck Is A Bridge To The Body," is Kaki at her visionary best: deconstructing and redefining the role of solo instrumental artist though virtuoso technique, insatiable imagination, and boundless humanity. This groundbreaking new multi-media performance uses projection mapping to present the guitar as an ontological tabula rasa in a creation myth unlike any other, where luminous visions of genesis and death, textures and skins, are cast onto her signature Ovation Adamas guitar which has been customized specifically for this production.Videos