Kimberly Ashton

A quarter-century ago, Essaouira was mostly a quiet old port on the coastal edge of Morocco, out of the way for anyone not looking for it. Those who made pilgrimages there were mostly artists and musicians, including the likes of Jimi Hendrix and Carlos Santana, who came to explore a style of music that’s said to be a musical wellspring from which the blues and...

President Erica Muhl describes herself as a radio person, not a playlist person. She likes to channel surf. She’ll jump from the classical channel to the one that plays ’80s pop and rock. From there, she might dip into some bluegrass, take a ride on the country air waves, or spend time with folk and classic rock favorites. Lately, her digital dial has been landing a lot on the jazz station.

It’s hard not to hear a bit of her own biography in the genres she likes. “Music, I think, was really a v...

Courtney Harrell ’01 remembers being about 11 or 12 years old when her mother, a gospel singer, started calling her up to the front of church congregations: “She would point to me, and just say, ‘Come up here,’ while she was singing, and toss me the mic.”

Her mom would do this at Faith Tabernacle Assembly, the Dorchester church where she and Harrell’s father were co-pastors, and at the many churches where she was a guest singer. “That was her way: She just threw me in the deep end,” Harrell say...

The Mayan people of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula breathe new life into their ancient heritage, with help from a Berklee alum.“Barrio Maya and Múul Paax are trying to spread the message that, ‘Hey if we don’t do something, a huge part of our culture is going to be lost: our language,’” Guido Arcella M.M. '15 says. Itzincab, a village of little more than four blocks nestled in Mexico’s Yucatán jungle, is named after an insect that has played a central role in the local Mayan culture for centuries. I...

Charlie Rosen ’12 was just three years old when his parents noted his perfect pitch. Not long after learning his colors, he could say whether a piano sound came from a black key or a white one. His parents, both musicians, started giving him lessons and let him experiment with the assortment of instruments they had around the house, an assemblage that included his mother’s woodwinds and his father’s theremin and backyard pipe organ. As Rosen’s interest grew, so did the number of instruments in h...

Standing before a crowd of students that was born long after his band Megadeth came to life, bassist Dave Ellefson took the stage at the Berklee Performance Center on July 27 and treated the audience to some hard rock before getting down to the brass tacks of metal.

“Are you ready to rock?“ he asked more than 200 Berklee and Five-Week Summer Performance program students, many of them decked out in T-shirts from Megadeth, Iron Maiden, and other iconic metal bands. Then Ellefson, backed by Berkle...

In October of 2019, Abraham Granado and his father left their home in Valencia, Venezuela, to begin what would turn out to be a two-day journey to Colombia so that the teenage drummer could audition in Bogotá for Berklee.

The frontier between the two countries had been closed because of conflict, so the men took a 12-hour bus ride to a border checkpoint. From there, once in Colombia, they walked for a couple of hours to catch another bus that would take them on the 17-hour journey to the capita...