Artists You Should Know Ep. 1 - Kiara Notthaft
photo credit: Autumn Mackenzie, from Orkest’s concert at Gallery 263, March 7, 2026
I can’t put into words the loneliness that is felt when a friend that you loved dearly and were dedicated to leaves. Kiara can. It’s harder than a romantic breakup. This raw emotion, approached through gritty comedy and silly puns has the unique capability to make you laugh in hapiness while crying in grief at the same time. It is an extraordinary talent, and the fact that so many people have yet to be impacted by it yet is a shame.
Since her first concert with Orkest in September of 2025, Kiara’s been one of the most active members of our community.
Kiara not only makes the world’s most unhinged content (she’d put John Cozart to shame) to help promote our concerts, she cares deeply about the community. She’s always willing to lend our sound engineers a hand, advocate for fellow emerging artists in the community, and if there’s a show in town — you’ll probably find her working on it. If there’s an album being made she’s probably engineering it. If there’s a concert, Kiara’s probably in the audience. The name Kiara Notthaft is synonymous with The Boston Music Scene. Fun fact: Kiara was an overhire engineer for Boston Baroque’s latest opera that I was doing production management for!
If you do not know Kiara Notthaft, you need to. Your imagination will be better for it. Go stalk her linktree and become a more imaginative person: https://linktr.ee/kiararocktheworld
by Sapphire Skye Toth - Orkest Artistic Director and Co-FounderI discovered Kiara through a painstaking process as I was looking for artists for Orkest’s second season.
By looking up #bostonmusicscene on Instagram (my thoughts on Meta aside, Instagram has been an instrumental tool for us as we grow). I was immediately struck by Kiara’s humor, vibe, and her music.
Kiara’s music holds something that a lot of mainstream music since 2013 has been seriously lacking: gritty comedy. The first piece I heard from Kiara was her song Icky Feelings. At its base, the song is about cute aggression: “the urge to squeeze, bite, or otherwise act aggressively toward things perceived as being cute without the desire to cause any harm,” per Wikipedia. At its heart, though, it’s a way to think about puppy love that I’ve never thought of before. I knew that I had to reach out to Kiara, and I’ve been thankful every day since then that I have.
The first art of Kiara’s that truly shocked me though was her song, Virginia.
