Amplify Berklee 2025 Celebrates the Next Generation of Berklee City Music’s Creative Leaders
Chelsey Green and the Green Project will be one of this year's featured Amplify Berklee performers.
Image by Derrel Todd
Berklee will host one of Boston’s most unforgettable nights of music, purpose, and community, Amplify Berklee, on Saturday, November 1, at the Westin Copley Place in Boston, starting at 5:00 p.m. The electrifying celebration of artistry and impact will shine a spotlight on Berklee City Music and the students the program empowers. All proceeds from Amplify Berklee will benefit Berklee City Music.
“The Amplify Berklee gala will feature live music and 12 musical acts across six rooms,” says Krystal Prime Banfield, Berklee's vice president for education outreach and social entrepreneurship. “It's about raising funds for scholarships at an extraordinary event that unites us and reaffirms our commitment to supporting the creative youth of the Berklee City Music program. Supporting their voices and dreams helps strengthen our communities and fosters a better future for all.”
Berklee City Music is a global network that enables youth from underresourced communities to develop musically, academically, socially, and emotionally, primarily through the study of contemporary music and the performing arts. Since 1993, Berklee City Music has awarded 283 full-tuition college scholarships, totaling over $33 million. More than 2,000 students from the Berklee City Music Network have attended Berklee's Aspire: Five-Week Music Performance Intensive on City Music Summer Scholarships. The Berklee City Music Network is made up of 47 sites across the United States, Latin America, and Canada, serving more than 60,000 students each year. Since the program’s inception, over 500,000 students have been served through preparatory and high school academies, and through summer and full-tuition scholarships.
“In each of us lies an innate creativity, a spark waiting to ignite,” said Misael Martinez, Berklee's assistant vice president for social entrepreneurship and creative youth development. “When we come together, our individual gifts harmonize to create a symphony of unity, resonating across the world. Together, we wield the greatest power: the ability to create peace and harmony that transcends boundaries."
Amplify will feature a genre-spanning lineup of Berklee’s world-class students, faculty, alumni, and staff, in a collection of immersive, nightclub-style music rooms where the artistry of live musicians, dancers, and a DJ fuel the celebration well into the night. The evening’s entertainment will include the exuberant energy of Berklee’s K-pop idol group, B-Girls; the vocal dynamism and jubilance of the Overjoyed gospel ensemble led by Jerome Kyles; the masterful interplay of percussion and horns of the Grammy Award–winning percussionist Eguie Castrillo and his acclaimed salsa orchestra; the spirited brass and improvisation of a New Orleans second-line marching band; and the dynamic swing grooves of the Diamond Cut Big Band led by Grammy-nominated professor Tia Fuller.
Additional performers include Franco-American bluegrass musician and singer-songwriter Jean-Baptiste Cardineau; genre-bending string quartet Cosmo Ling & the Four Strings; and Chelsey Green, who recently made history as chair of the Board of Trustees at the Recording Academy, and her band, Chelsey Green and the Green Project. DJ Brian “Raydar” Ellis, a professor in the ensemble and songwriting and production departments, will fuel the celebration into the night with a hip-hop set.
