In April of this year, a gaggle of talented musicians gathered in Boston’s intimate Red Room at Cafe 939. Berklee College of Music had invited renowned guitarist Kaki King to record a live album with the Porta Girevole Chamber Orchestra, made up of 12 Berklee students and faculty. The resulting live album, “Kaki King Live at Berklee,” will be released September 22.
When you think of King, you might think of versatile guitar chords and acoustic instrumental ballads. She was the youngest person (and the only woman) named to Rolling Stone's "New Guitar Gods" list in 2006. Since then she's enjoyed some pretty heady collaborations, including with Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters and Timbaland.
“Kaki King Live at Berklee,” King’s first album in two years, introduces many of her older songs re-envisioned, or rather, re-energized with an orchestra. It’s not only an album that is the first of its kind for King, but was a unique experience for the students. BirnCORE, Berklee’s own record label, gave students the chance to experience the ins and outs of recording and producing under an independent record label.
"Magazine" is the only single released prior to the album dropping.
Ahead of her performance in Phoenix this week, PHOENIX checked in with King to chat about her new album, the challenges of recording live and her thoughts on being a woman (and mom) in the music world.*
Check out King, along with guitarist Derek Gripper, at the Musical Instrument Museum this Thursday at 7:30 p.m.
Nothing says “Arizona” like saguaros, the Grand Canyon and, of course, puppets. OK, so puppets might not be the first thing that comes to mind, but with one of the most notable puppet theaters in the U.S. located in the heart of Phoenix, puppetry is a part of our local culture.
"The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" runs Tuesday, June 20, through Saturday, June 25, at ASU Gammage.
Topia, a Ballet Arizona performance that runs through Sunday, is back-dropped by the prickly landscape of Desert Botanical Garden and Papago Park beyond. And it has as many peaks and valleys as the hills beyond the stage.
This spring at the Arizona Science Center, phones are ringing off the hook: It’s the ‘70s calling, and they want their lasers back.
Through June, the Science Center is holding a series of events called Lasers and Liquor Nights, and they’re just as far-out and groovy as they sound.
“Permanent Collection,” a play directed by Arizona State University professor Charles St. Clair, is now performing at the Herberger Theater after opening at ASU West Campus in celebration of Black History Month, and it’s worth checking out.
When it comes to introducing children to the works of William Shakespeare, there may be no more fitting entree than “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” The Bard’s tale of star-crossed lovers, magical meddling, and musical fairy merriment is a comic romp kids can follow even with the playwright’s original dialogue. So it’s fitting that Southwest Shakespeare Company has been touring Phoenix schools with their adaptation, titled “A Midwinter Night’s Dream.” The company’s performance at Kerr Cultural Center on December 9 marked the first time they performed it for adults, and it was a good look at what audiences can expect when SSC performs “A Midwinter Night’s Dream” at Taliesin West this weekend.
Who knew Scrooge was such a great dancer?
As the curmudgeonly character from Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” actor Robert Kolby Harper does the running man, the cabbage patch, the dab, and even twerks. It’s hilarious – as it’s meant to be in this shake-and-bake parody of the classic from improv comedy enterprise Second City – but it’s also impressive, because the dude has some seriously sweet moves.
Hey Phoenix, God is in town.
She's taken the form of Paige Davis, Broadway performer and former host of TLC's Trading Spaces, and is here (along with a couple of Her angels) to answer some of the biggest questions known to man, including the big papa: Why is masturbation a sin?
From Arizona Theatre Company, the first female production of the Broadway hit An Act of God debuts at Phoenix's Herberger Theater this weekend after a successful three week run in Tucson. Directed by four-time Academy Award nominee and two-time Golden Globe winner Marsha Mason, An Act of God is adapted from former The Daily Show with Jon Stewart writer and executive producer David Javerbaum's book The Last Testament: A Memoir By God. We caught up with Mason over the phone to talk shop.*
“The Merchant of Venice” is one of William Shakespeare’s most controversial plays. Southwest Shakespeare Company’s production proves it is as timeless as it is contentious.
The plot revolves around a man named Bassanio and his courtship of a woman named Portia. Bassanio needs 3,000 ducats to be her suitor, and he borrows the money from Shylock, a Jewish moneylender, with Bassanio’s merchant friend, Antonio, acting as guarantor on the loan. The terms are steep: If Bassanio can’t repay Shylock on the specified date, Shylock will take a pound of Antonio’s flesh.
The play has been set in pretty much every era and time period imaginable over the past 500 years; Southwest Shakespeare Company sets theirs in the U.S. during the late 1920s, presumably just prior to the Wall Street Crash of 1929 that helped trigger the Great Depression. Two rolling panel walls with doors and Art Deco windows, a faux marble floor and counter, braided columns, mannequin torsos draped in 1920 clothes, and a black chalkboard showing New York Stock Exchange rates set the stage for the talented cast of actors, and an oft-disturbing but always powerful story about prejudice, race, and religion.
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