ITHACA, N.Y. -- Singer-songwriter Kate Klim, a rising folk-rock artist from the Boston area, will be the featured performer for the Lauren Pickard '90 Emerging Artist Series Monday, April 4, in Cornell University's Willard Straight Hall Memorial Room.

The performance, which is free and open to all, will begin at 7:30 p.m.

Klim, 22, whose musical influences include Patty Griffin, Jonatha Brooke, Chris Trapper and Garrison Starr, honed her writing and performing skills at Berklee College of Music in Boston. Her song "Heaven Help Me" led off the 2003 "Best of Boston" singer-songwriter compilation CD, and she is making a name for herself in the Boston music community.

Her self-released album Heaven Help Me has received airplay on Boston's WETS, WMFO and CreativeRadio's Internet folk show, among other stations, and she has performed live on Philadelphia's WXPN and appeared on the Boston-area cable show "Roots Rock Live."

"A talented songwriter, Klim has the inherent ability to craft an entire world within a single song," wrote Siren Song Magazine . "She invokes Tori Amos at times, leaning into the piano until it tells her story," noted Club Passim in Cambridge, Mass.

The Lauren Pickard '90 Emerging Artist Series was created in memory of a 1990 Cornell graduate who died suddenly after suffering an epileptic seizure several years ago while living and working in Paris. At Cornell, Pickard had been an active student employee and volunteer at Willard Straight Hall who loved the student union's weekly coffeehouse series. The emerging artist series was created through an endowment established by Pickard's estate, in an effort to commemorate her experiences at Willard Straight Hall. It sponsors one program each academic semester at Cornell featuring bright young artists.

Klim is the fifth artist to perform in the annual series, which is sponsored by the Lauren Pickard '90 Emerging Artist Fund and Cornell's Office of the Dean of Students.

For more information about the series at Willard Straight Hall, contact Catherine Holmes at (607) 255-3513 or cah4@cornell.edu , or David Bell at (607) 255-4311 or db66@cornell.edu .