Nicolás Emden is a Chilean singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist based in Boston, creating music at the intersection of South American folk traditions, Americana, indie folk, and rock. Raised in Patagonia and with nearly 20 years of performing across Chile, the United States, and Canada, he brings a sound that is both culturally rooted and genuinely cross-genre: melodically direct, emotionally grounded, and built for the kind of live experience where the audience stops being an audience.
His shows are participatory by design. Sing-alongs, call and response, a performance approach that prioritizes connection over distance. People come to a Nicolás Emden concert and find themselves singing, breaking language barriers in the process.
He founded the Chilean band Tejado Pimiento in 2007, winning the national television contest Garage Music and releasing two albums as the group's primary songwriter. His 2014 solo debut, Como Los Pájaros, was accompanied by a documentary series filmed busking through Chilean cities. That same year he relocated to Boston to study at Berklee College of Music, deepening a practice that already spanned folk, rock, and contemporary music theater. He has also composed original scores for two musical theater productions based in Chilean tales and mythology, Las Cosas Que Hay Que Hacer (2018) and En La Tierra En el Mar (2019).
In the years since, he has built a career on both sides of the Americas. He opened for Gondwana on their 2024 US/Canada tour, performing at Sony Hall in New York, Sonia in Boston, and Le Studio TD in Montréal, and for Nano Stern at a sold-out Club Passim in February 2025, before headlining his own sold-out Club Passim show in April 2025. He has won the World Act of the Year at the New England Music Awards (2023), with nominations in the same category in 2024 and 2025, and has received grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council Creative Individuals program and Club Passim's Iguana Fund.
His second studio album, Coraje, is releasing song by song through 2026. The album moves through everyday acts of courage: migration, identity, building a life across cultures. The first single, Naces, arrived January 4th, 2026. The title track follows May 1st. It is music made to be shared, written from the belief that a song is most itself when someone else is singing it with you.
