1998 Artist Support Program

Aono Jikken, pronounced Ah-Oh-No Gee-Ken (Japanese for blue field experiment), is a Seattle-based experimental ensemble. Through structured improvisation the group creates unique music and soundscapes played on everything from traditional Asian and Western instruments to childrens sound toys, found objects, and specially invented instruments made of metal, plastic, kelp and other materials. The group also incorporates dance, theatre, film, and visual art into their live performances. Aono Jikkens work aims to balance Eastern with Western influences, improvisation with composition, and innovation with conventional approaches to their instruments. Founded in 1997 by Taiko drummer/percussionist and filmmaker William Satake Blauvelt, the group’s members have included: sound composer and instrument maker Susie Kozawa; dancer/choreographer and visual artist Yoko Murao; multi-instrumentalist and sound designer Mike Shannon; and flutist/composer Esther Sugai.

Artist Support Program 2011: Record one or more of their original scores for classic and contemporary silent cinema

Artist Support Program 1998: Produce a soundtrack for the 1926 silent film A Page of Madness.

Degenerate Art Ensemble, formerly known as The Young Composers Collective, has shown their work throughout the US and Europe known for their large scale dance and theater projects, concerts, site-transforming spectacles and ongoing public experimentation.

Recent highlights of the group’s work include a major exhibition at the Frye Art Museum in 2011, was commissioned by director Robert Wilson to interpret his work Einstein on the Beach in 2012 and collaborated with the Kronos Quartet in 2013. Also in 2012 Degenerate Art Ensemble was commissioned by the city of Seattle to create a massive site specific work Underbelly in collaboration with Olson Kundig Architects to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Seattle World’s Fair. The group’s most recent work Predator Songstress premiered at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco in 2015 followed by Seattle and will show in New York in November of 2017. In December of 2016 DAE teamed up with Czech rock legends Uz Jsme Doma for an epic orchestral work inspired by the group’s music and the music of Degenerate Art Ensemble for a concert at the Archa Theatre in Prague with the Philharmonic Orchestra of South Bohemia.

Degenerate Art Ensemble was born out of The Young Composers Collective in 1999 a big band performance art garage orchestra. Among many projects the Collective generated was an original orchestral score to Frit’z Lang’s German Expressionist masterpiece Metropolis.  The work was premiered in 1997 to a audience of 10,000 people in Seattle’s Gasworks Park Outdoor Cinema.  The work was composed by Joshua Kohl, Haruko Crow Nishimura, Kevin Nortness, Ian Rashkin, Troy Swanson and Timothy Young.

Artist Support Program 1998 : Recorded their original orchestral score of the same name to Frit’z Lang’s German Expressionist masterpiece Metropolis

Elizabeth Falconer is one of the few American masters of the koto, a traditional zither from Japan.  She began playing the koto in 1979. She earned a junshihan (associate degree) from the Seiha Koto School, studying under Nagane Utayumi. This school focused on classical works. She later moved to Tokyo and studied under the esteemed Sawai Kazue and Sawai Tadao at the Sawai Koto School, and earned a Shihan (master’s license) at the Sawai Koto School, which focuses on contemporary works.

Artist Support Program 2005 (with John Falconer): Production of the album Affinity, by the duo En.

Artist Support Program 2000

Artist Support Program 1998

Joann Farías is a writer in many formats.  As a script writer, Joann Farías’s opera libretto, Past the Checkpoints, with music composed by David Hanlon, was produced by Houston Grand Opera, and is available for touring. Her play The Land of Corn and Power was read at the ACT Multicultural Playwrights Festival (2011). No More Masterpieces was read at Seattle Repertory Theatre by the Seattle Playwrights Alliance (2011). She is a 2005-2006 recipient of the NEA/TCG Theatre Residency Program for Playwrights Miracle Theatre, where she wrote The Road to Xibalbá, which was produced in September of 2006, thanks to a grant from the NEA.  Her work has been seen at A Contemporary Theatre (in coordination with eSe Teatro), the Seattle Repertory Theatre (Northwest Playwrights Alliance), Brava! For Women in the Arts in San Francisco, FringeACT Festival, A Contemporary Theatre/Hedgebrook Women Playwrights Festival, Carlsbad Playreaders, and Richard Hugo House. Claudia Meets Fulano Colorado was workshopped at South Coast Repertory Theatre’s Hispanic Project in 1997 and at Live Girls! Theater in 2005 and published in Latino Plays from South Coast Repertory: Hispanic Playwrights Project Anthology (2000). South Coast commissioned Tino Does Time, which won the Richard Hugo House New Play Competition in 2000 and was produced by Live Girls! Theater in 2003 and Miracle Theatre in 2004. Two Steps Forward, One Step Back, was produced by South Coast Rep as part of California Scenarios and published by Playscripts. Las Tres Marias (co-authored with Marta Sanchez and Carmen Carrion) was produced by Mae West Fest and read at Bumbershoot and Miracle Theatre.  Edward, CEO was read at FringeACT. The Seattle Opera Education Department commissioned and produced La Casa Verdi and Orpheus Sings of Love. Live Girls! Theatre produced the short plays Raul’s Last Stand and El Corrido de Manny Cruz. Cornish College of the Arts commissioned and produced a translation of Moliere’s George Dandin (with Chuck Hudson). Seattle’s La Casa de Artes commissioned and produced El Corrido de Manny Cruz. Her radio work has been produced by Shoestring Radio Theatre, Jack Straw, New Waves Radio Theatre, and KUOW.  Literary work has been published in The Amherst Review, The South Carolina Review, and Dialogue.

Artist Support Program 1998

Barrett Golding makes radio and web work. He is Fearless Leader of the Peabody Award-winning pubradio series Hearing Voices from NPR, a Reynolds Journalism Institute Fellow, and a United States Artists Rasmuson Fellow in Media. He was General Manager of KGLT-Bozeman and an NPR Audio Engineer in DC. Other accolades include: the NFCB Silver Reel, the Scripps Howard Award for Journalism Excellence, the ABA Gavel Award, Harvestworks Artist-in-Residence, Montana Arts Council Fellowship, and grants from CPB, NEA, Rockefeller and Andy Warhol Foundations.

Artist Support Program 1998

Amii LeGendre is an independent choreographer, dancer, and teacher. In recent work, her aesthetic direction tends toward hybrid performance — dance supported by elements of theater, live sound, and set design.

Artist Support Program 1998 (with Sandy Cioffi)

Clarinetist and composer William O. Smith died in 2020 after a long and fruitful career, ranging from playing – as Bill Smith – with Dave Brubeck to performing and composing his own pioneering modern classical work. Bill was a longtime friend of Jack Straw and produced a number of projects here, including his 2001 album Solo Music. This New York Times obituary contains a more in-depth overview of his life and career.

Artist Support Program 2008

Artist Support Program 2001

Garrett Fisher has created more than a dozen opera-theatre productions in the US and Europe, work that “has combined elements of opera, dance, Indian raga, Japanese Noh theater and more into fusions that have both a ritualistic intensity and an improvisatory freedom . . . a groundbreaking hybrid . . . a strong, unified and strikingly individual utterance of unambiguous beauty” (The New York Times). His work has been profiled in the Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times. His Noh-inspired Kocho was premiered by Beth Morrison Projects in New York City; Yoshinaka, in collaboration with Tokyo-based Noh master Munenori Takeda at Seattle’s ACT Theatre. Garrett’s music is on the BIS label (The Passion of Saint Thomas More is part of their 30 year/30 disc commemorative series). The Iris was recorded at Jack Straw Cultural Center as part of their Artist Support Program; his sound installation Mikawa was presented as part of the New Media Gallery Series. Blood Moon, commissioned by Beth Morrison Projects and HERE Arts Center, was premiered at New York City’s Prototype Festival in 2020.

In addition to his work as a composer, Garrett is developing Cultivating Feedback: A Pocket Guide to Creative Survival with longtime collaborator Ken Cerniglia.

Artist Support Program 2022: On Foot Across the Solar Systems, a song cycle composed by Garrett Fisher featuring vocalist Maria Männistö, based on poetry by poet Edith Södergran.

New Media Gallery 2016-17 (with Tori Ellison): Mikawa

Artist Support Program 2014: Recording and production of The Iris by The Fisher Ensemble.

Rick Garcia has been an artist and composer for over 25 years. Much of his work as a visual artist explores polyphony. His painting, primarily oils on wood panel, contain many layers of color, symbols and textured brush strokes in different tempo relationships. To Rick, painting, much like music, is a generative process that pulls him along. He takes cues from his materials and views his work as growing organically and directly from his tactile approach to color and texture.

Rick attended Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle where he met and worked with the artist Trimpin for 12 years. He has received awards and grants from the Art at Work program, Museum of Arts and Culture, Washington Composers Forum, Jack Straw, and The Tacoma Art Museum.

Artist Support Program 1998

A Guggenheim Fellow in choreography, Dayna Hanson creates minor-key, cross-disciplinary work with humanist values and a strong movement sense. A graduate of the University of Washington’s Creative Writing Program and a self-taught choreographer, Hanson entered film through dance: Measure, a short film she directed with Gaelen Hanson, has been considered a seminal work in dance film since its premiere at New York Film Festival in 2001. Since then Hanson’s dance films have screened at festivals internationally, including Los Angeles International Short Film Festival, Dance Camera Istanbul and Festival Internacional de Videodanza de Buenos Aires.

Her debut feature film, Improvement Club, premiered in Narrative Competition at South by Southwest Film Festival in 2013. Backstage Magazine called Improvement Club “as good a representation of the dedication and tunnel vision required to make art as any ever filmed.” Hanson wrote, choreographed and directed an episode of HBO’s Room 104—”Voyeurs,” starring Sarah Hay and Dendrie Taylor—that was hailed as one of the top television episodes of 2017 by multiple outlets, including The New York Times and Vox. James Poniewozik of The New York Times wrote, “‘Voyeurs’ is one of the most striking half-hours I’ve seen all season.” Hanson’s feature film Confession, written by Gregory Mulligan, produced by Yale Productions and Convoke Media and starring Sarah Hay, Michael Ironside, Clark Backo, Sterling Beaumon and Nolan Gerard Funk, is available on demand.

Hanson has toured her live performance throughout the U.S. and in Europe. Her body of work in dance includes abstract pieces and original dance theater created from disparate, cross-disciplinary sources. From 1994 – 2006 she co-directed, with Gaelen Hanson, 33 Fainting Spells, a dance theater company whose critically acclaimed work was commissioned and presented by more than 30 presenting organizations internationally, including Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Kunstlerhaus Mousonturm and Walker Art Center.

Artist Support Program 1998 (with 33 Fainting Spells)

Dave Hollinden has composed extensively for percussion, and his music is widely performed in the US and overseas. He has a unique voice that speaks not only of his training in composition but also of his background in rock music and his affinity for rhythm and number.

He has been the recipient of grants from Artist Trust, the Seattle Arts Commission, the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts, and the Artist Support Program of Jack Straw Productions. His Bachelors Degree in Composition is from Indiana University, where he studied with Harvey Sollberger and Juan Orrego-Salas. He received his Masters Degree in Composition from the University of Michigan, where he studied with Fred Lerdahl, William Albright and Leslie Bassett.

He has received commissions from the Eclectic Trio and Crescent Duo (chamber quartet), Sole Nero – Tony DiSanza and Jessica Johnson (duets for piano and percussion), Michael Burritt (marimba solo), Nick Petrella (multi-percussion solo), Nachiko Maekana (multi-percussion solo), Central Washington University (percussion octet), Midlothian High School (wind ensemble), and Victoria Memorial High School (percussion octet). His music appears on recordings by the Base Four Percussion Quartet ([one]), Norman Weinberg (Quilt), Sole Nero (Musica per Due), Joseph Gramley (American-De-Construction), the Ethos Percussion Group (Ethos), Michael Burritt (Shadow Chasers), the Eclectic Trio and Crescent Duo (Woodwind Echoes), and Equilibrium/Michael Udow (Border Crossing). The CD Slender Beams, created by Hollinden and percussionist Andrew Spencer, features live and studio recordings of his music.

Artist Support Program 1998 (with Andrew Spencer): Slender Beams

Kevin Joyce is a singer/songwriter, actor, writer and director.  He has toured Europe as a soloist with a Spanish Choir, composed music for Buffoons with UMO Ensemble, sang with Joan Baez in Teatro Zinzanni, and posted youtube videos singing upside-down with a face on his chin.

Artist Support Program 1998

Alex Keller is an audio artist, sound designer, curator and teacher based in Austin, Texas. His work is in the media of performance, installation, and recorded release, and reflects his interests in architecture, language, abstraction and music. He is an active audio production professional, has taught classes in media production at the Art Institute of Austin, Shoreline College, and the Art Institute of Seattle, and has won awards for his creative work from the Austin Chronicle, the City of Seattle, Puget Sound Transit, and Jack Straw.

Alex received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1995 and an MLA from St. Edward’s University in 2005. He is a founding member of Phonography Austin and the Mimeomeme collective.

Artist Support Program 1998: recording of an electro-acoustic work titled The Four Hundred Boys, based on the Mayan book of creation.

The Motherland Ensemble performed traditional klezmer, Romanian, and Turkish music. The members of the group were Paul Beck (cymbalon), Constantin Parvulescu (violin), Jason Munger (oud,clarinet), and Bill Moyer (percussion).

Artist Support Program 1998 : Recorded several songs at Jack Straw including Ana el Owerka.

KT Niehoff is an artist whose focus is the complex relationship between bodies and space. She creates multi-sensory, multi-dimensional, immersive performance environments, with highly crafted audience participation. These experiences both integrate and transcend choreography, music, design, film and technology, narrative and audience/artist proximity. In 1992, KT was invited by choreographic pioneer Pat Graney to perform Graney’s masterpiece, Faith, bringing KT to Seattle, where the city’s Punk Riot Grrl politics and energy was the perfect incubator for her actionist nature.

KT was a founding member of D-9, an all-female cooperative that commissioned, produced and performed new dance work. She envisioned and co-founded with Michele Miller Velocity Dance Center, a vital arts resource and incubator for thousands of movement artists. During her career she has built over 30 works that have toured performance venues, festivals and colleges throughout the US and in Japan, Canada, Germany and Ecuador.

As an educator, KT has built three pedagogical systems that she has taught and refined for 20 years. Reinvent Your Eye – Tools for Abstract Composition, Physical Practice, a daily training class for professional dancers and her film workshop, Frame by Frame. She has taught at numerous festivals and universities including Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Oberlin College, Cornish College of the Arts, Texas Christian University, Mt. Holyoke, The University of Washington, The Hong Kong Academy of the Performing Arts and the SNDO, Amsterdam.

Artist Support Program 2005 (with Adam McCollum): Record a score for Relatively Real, a new performance by Lingo Dancetheater.

Artist Support Program 2000: Record a score by Bob Barazza for the performance piece Dysfunction.

Ota-Prota is a Seattle-based band.

Artist Support Program 1998 : Recorded Blues for the Splitting Atom, their self-titled EP

Y York is the author of more than 50 plays, half for young people and their adults, half for adults without their young people. Her popularly and critically acclaimed plays are noted for their relevance and humor. Her adaptation of Janet Taylor Lisle’s Newbery Honor Book Afternoon of the Elves has been produced in virtually every state in the country plus Canada and Australia. She is currently at work on two new musicals with composer Amanda Jacobs. York is a five-time recipient of the AATE Distinguished Play Award and has won the Charlotte Chorpenning Award for her body of work for children and their families. She is the recipient of the Smith Prize for . . . and LA Is Burning, Houston’s Buzzy Award for Best New Play for Woof, the Berrilla Kerr Award for The Secret Wife and the Hawai`i Award for Literature for Nothing Is the Same. Her plays have been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, AT&T OnStage, United States Artists and many local arts organizations through the years. York is an alumna of New Dramatists and a member of The Dramatists Guild. She lives with Mark Lutwak, to whom most things are dedicated.

(Photo by Ed Caballo)

Artist Support Program 1998