1999 Artist Support Program

Christian Asplund is a Canadian-American composer-performer based in Utah where he teaches at Brigham Young University. His interests have included the intersections of text/music, improvisation/composition, and modular textures/forms. He has received awards and grants from Genesis Foundation, Barlow Endowment, Artistrust, King County, ASCAP, Alpert Foundation and Jack Straw Foundation.

Artist Support Program 1999: Recorded Liquid, An Epistolary Opera by the Seattle Experimental Opera.

Artist Support Program 1997

The Black Cat Orchestra (horn player Don Crevie, cellist Lori Goldston, saxophonist Scott Granlund, accordion player Kyle Hanson, vocalist Jessika Kenney, drummer Emily Marsh, and double bassist Jeff Teitelbaum) was formed in Seattle in 1991. Their repertoire spans a wide range of styles, including music from Eastern Europe, Latin America and Asia as well as original songs. In addition to concerts, club dates and private parties, the Orchestra has performed original scores to several silent films.

Artist Support Program 1999: Mysteries Explained

Sonia Gomez is an American born Sri Lankan, who was raised in Kenya and Zimbabwe. She received an MFA from the University of Washington and has taught at that institution, and at local community colleges. She has also worked at Seattle Arts and Lectures and Richard Hugo House. Gomez has received grants from Artist Trust and the Seattle Arts Commission, and has participated in Jack Straw’s Writers Program and Artist Support Program, as well as Writers in the Schools programs. Her work has appeared in Calyx, Crab Creek Review, The Journal of African Travel Writing, and Many Mountains Moving, and other literary journals.

2000 Writers Program (Curator)

Artist Support Program 1999

1998 Writers Program

Stuart Keeler is a sculptor whose work explores the territory between the public realm and the role of the artist in the built environment. His frequent work in other media, including curation, installation, sound, drawing and performance often explore the multiple histories, private functions, public mythologies while simultaneously questioning human landscapes. From the outskirts of Toronto, to urban Chicago, Paris and Munich – Keeler explores the evolving role of how art and the public can be united in subversive ways. Recently he has completed a series of works that challenge and offer multiple concepts of sustainability, “green,” and the power of information systems presented in social art contexts.

Artist Support Program 1999

Jim Knapp (1939-2021), director of the Jim Knapp Orchestra, trumpet player, composer, and teacher, was born in Chicago, and received BA and MA degrees in Music Composition from the University of Illinois. From 1977 to 1986, Jim directed and performed with the Composers and Improvisors Orchestra, a jazz chamber orchestra that presented new work by Karl Berger, Carla Bley, Anthony Braxton, Bob Brookmeyer, Gil Evans, Dave Holland, Jim McNeely, Art Lande, Gary Peacock, Julian Priester, Sam Rivers, William O. Smith, Ralph Towner and Cedar Walton, as well as members of the orchestra and regional composers. From 1979 to 1986, Jim performed with the collective improvisation group First Avenue (later New Avenue) that included Denney Goodhew, Eric Jensen, Jay Clayton and Jerry Granelli. ECM released their album First Avenue in 1980 with Knapp, Goodhew and Jensen.

The Jim Knapp Orchestra was established in 1995. The band has recordings released on Seabreeze, Origin and A-Records and has performed at clubs and festivals throughout the Pacific Northwest. The orchestra features the original compositions and arrangements of Jim Knapp and includes many of the finest jazz musicians of the region. The Jim Knapp Orchestra won the Earshot “Best Acoustic Jazz Group” award in 1995 and its CD, Things For Now, received the Earshot “Jazz Record Of The Year” award in 1999.

As an educator, Jim developed the Jazz Program at Cornish College in the late ’70s with a distinguished faculty that has included Jay Clayton, Chuck Deardorf, Denney Goodhew, Jerry Granelli, Carter Jefferson, Art Lande, Joni Metcalf, Gary Peacock, Dave Peterson, Julian Priester, Michael Spiro, and Jim Wilke.

CDs by the Jim Knapp Orchestra are: Things for Now on A-Records (AL73180), On Going Home on Seabreeze (SB2078), and Secular Breathing  (82412) and It’s Not Business, It’s Personal (82834) on Origin.

(Photo by Brigiyye Nowlin)

Artist Support Program 1999

Michael Shannon  is a sound/recording artist, musician, photographer, and performer of experimental media, based in Seattle. He began performing in the punk clubs of San Francisco in the late 1970’s evolving performance and sound designs through various venues and media, specializing in the use of a variety of string instruments from Asia, percussion, sound objects, and electronics. In San Francisco, he began Joy Street Studios, the name for all of his sound art productions and his studio in 1983, to the present. First releases of audio works in the form of cassettes began in 1987, followed by an LP ‘Laguz’ on Anomalous Records and CDs on various labels around the world. Presently a member of Seattle-based performing groups Gyre, Eye Music, Echore, Aono Jikken Ensemble, Animist Orchestra, Broken Mask (Bay Area). Past San Francisco bands: Appliances, Kahunas, KuKuKu, Earnerve, Joyo, Lethal Gospel.

Artist Support Program 1999

Christian Swenson is a performing artist and teacher who offers a variety of creative services and participatory events including; concerts, workshops, school shows, jams, lecture/demonstrations and private parties.

His work in the theater is concerned with the autonomous actor, the natural world, and the dynamic interplay between the self and the Other. Since 1980 he has been creating and performing solo works for body and voice, our original instruments. The work is unique in its cross-cultural synthesis of theater, dance and music and its willingness to unbridle the imagination. He creates shows where freedom is more important than conflict, and within which continual transformations can take place.

Artist Support Program 1999

Flutist Paul Taub has been a leading performer of chamber and contemporary music in the Northwest US since his arrival in Seattle in 1979. Professor of Music at Cornish College of the Arts, he is a founding member and Executive Director of the Seattle Chamber Players. Very active in musical projects with former republics of the Soviet Union, Paul has toured in Russia four times and has also performed in Greece, France, Estonia, Poland, Ukraine, Costa Rica, and at universities and colleges all over the United States and Canada. His teachers include Marcel Moyse, Samuel Baron, Michel Debost, and Robert Aitken. Paul has given premieres of works by composers such as Henry Brant, Janice Giteck, George Crumb, and many more. His program of ten commissioned solo pieces was presented at Benaroya Hall in May, 1999. Oo-ee, the CD of this repertoire, is available on the Periplum label. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the National Flute Association.

Artist Support Program 2016: Produce recordings of five new commissioned chamber works by emerging and established Seattle composers.

Artist Support Program 2001 (with Taneko Ensemble)

Artist Support Program 1999: Record Oo-ee, a collection of new works for solo bass flute, alto flute, C flute or piccolo commissioned from ten composers representing a broad spectrum of ages, musical styles, and ethnic backgrounds.

Artist Support Program 1995

Cheryl Kalinowski and the Bella Musica Woodwind Trio is a chamber music ensemble that commissions and performs music of this century along with more traditional repertoire, strives to make chamber music an integral part of people’s lives.

Artist Support Program 1999: Recorded their album Unrolling a Chinese Scroll, a collection of works by women composers, including world premieres by Sister Ida, Ludmila Ulehla, and Nancy Bondurant.

Bass-Baritone Simon Cram received his vocal training from Marianne Weltmann. He has appeared in many Northwest productions. As the bass soloist for University Unitarian Church, Simon has performed extensive oratorio and cantata work; under the baton of Karen Thomas, he has sung works by Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Faurè and Britten. In addition to his solo work, he is a regular member of the Seattle Opera Chorus;
he is also a two time award winner in the Civic Opera Guild Vocal Competition.

Artist Support Program 1999

Artist Support Program 1999

Intonarumori was formed in 1988 by Kevin Goldsmith to create new music outside the norm and beyond existing conventions.

The word “Intonarumori” is Italian and it means “noise intoners.” The word comes from the Italian Futurist art movement. The Intonarumori were machines built to mimic the industrial sounds of the age. The Futurist composers created symphonies for the machines. Their concerts often resulted in fist-fights with the audience. Intonarumori, the project, is very much influenced by the ideas of the Futurists as well as the more modern ideas of the serialists, the minimalists, the musique concrete-ists and modern experimental and industrial composers.

Intonarumori has composed for dance, video games, theatre and film and has appeared on numerous compilations and albums.

Artist Support Program 1999: Recorded their self-titled music album

Chris Jeffries received The Stranger’s first “Genius” Award in Theatre and was twice a finalist for CalArts’ Alpert Award in the Arts. His award-winning credits include book, music, and lyrics for Vera Wilde; Moon of My Delight; Kaleidoscope Eyes; The Glory Booty Club; I See London, I See France; Radio Pirates; and The Fatty Arbuckle Spook House Revue; music and lyrics for Laura Comstock’s Bag-Punching Dog; and Horse Opera; and music for Bunnicula.

Chris (music and lyrics) and Harold Taw (book) co-wrote Persuasion, a musical adaptation of Jane Austen’s final novel, which had its world premiere at Taproot Theatre Company in summer 2017. Persuasion received a staged reading at The 5th Avenue Theatre in 2015, and a workshop reading at Texas Musical Theatre Workshop in 2016. Chris and Harold’s one-act musical The Missed Connections Club won Third Place in the 2015 Frostburg State University One-Act Competition, was a finalist in the Arts Club of Washington’s 2014 One-Act Play Competition, and was longlisted for the 2015 British Theatre Challenge.

Artist Support Program 2017 (with Harold Taw): Produce a cast album of the Taproot Theatre premiere production of a new musical adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel Persuasion.

Artist Support Program 1999

Jill Cohen and The Radost Folk Ensemble are dedicated to the preservation of eastern European folklore, music, and dance. Their album Heirloom, produced through the Jack Straw Artist Support Program, documented instrumental and vocal music, including a Tamburitsa band playing Croatian choreographies, a traditional and modern-instrument Bulgarian band and women’s choir, and a string trio playing Hungarian choreographies.

Artist Support Program 1999: Recorded their album Heirloom

Stokley Towles tells stories.  Venues showing his work have ranged from the sidewalk of the corner of 151^st and 8^th Ave SW in Burien where story plaques tell a 10,000 year history of that block, to the University of Washington where for two years he acted as a professor and gave lectures to students in a construction trailer.  Over the past ten years his press, Cling Peaches Publications, has produced more than a dozen titles, such as It’s my body and I want it back and An Archaeology of Manhood: a dig into the male mind.  Currently he teaches at Colorado College, Antioch University, and Seattle Arts and Lectures’ Writers in the Schools Program.

2002 Writers Program (curator)

Artist Support Program 1999

1997 Writers Program