As the second year of The Checkout - Live at Berklee concert series approaches, it looks like the collaborations between WBGO Jazz 88.3 FM (NYC's famed jazz station), NPR Music, and Berklee are really coming into their own. Take the first concert of this year's series featuring pianist and composer Chihiro Yamanaka '98. Along with the rest of the featured Checkout performers, Yamanaka is a young Berklee graduate who is finding success on the highly competitive New York jazz scene. As the leader of the Chihiro Yamanaka Trio, she recently recorded her second album, which reched #1 on the Japanese jazz charts and won the Nissan Presents Jazz Japan Award for Album of the Year.
Yamanaka will kick off this Checkout series on October 18 at 8:00 p.m. in the Red Room @ Cafe 939. Tickets, available at cafe939.com, are $10 and $5 for Berklee students. If you can't make it to the show, you can still catch the action at home by logging onto NPRmusic.org where the concert will be live webcast in HD. The show will also be archived and available for on-demand listening at NPRMusic.org and at Checkoutjazz.org.
Watching young alumni come back and perform on campus is always exciting; it shows what Berklee gives us and where our education can take us after we graduate.
