2005 Artist Support Program

Lesli Dalaba is recognized as one of the most distinctive trumpet players in improvised music, combining a mastery of unorthodox playing techniques with a delicate, moving lyricism. She began performing in California in the 1970s with Wayne Horvitz. In 1978 she moved to New York, where she formed her own quartet and performed for 10 years as both a soloist and ensemble player, traveling throughout the U.S. and Europe. Lesli was a member of the New York Composers Orchestra, Elliott Sharp’s Carbon, and the Balkan brass band Zlatne Ustne. Other musicians she has worked with include Derek Bailey, Eugene Chadbourne, Fred Frith, George Lewis, and LaMonte Young. Living in Seattle since 1989, Lesli was a member of LAND and Radio Chongching, and is also a member of Fred Frith’s quintet, Tense Serenity.

Artist Support Program 2005: Create a cue track for use in live performances of her Tzadik CD release, Timelines.

Chenoa Egawa is Coast Salish of the Lummi and S’Kallam Nations of Washington State. She is a ceremonial leader, singer, speaker, environmental activist and artist dedicated to bringing healing to our Mother Earth, and to people of all cultures, backgrounds and origins through recognition of our shared experiences as human beings.

Chenoa has long been active in local, and international work for Indigenous peoples, children and the environment. For over 20 years, she has worked in Washington State schools, creating programs that integrate Native American culture and history, often teaching through songs and storytelling, empowering Native youth and bringing greater appreciation for cultural diversity to all children in the public school system. Over the past 25 years, she has traveled throughout North, Central and South America facilitating communication among indigenous peoples with the intent of protecting and preserving cultural heritage, languages and homelands.

As a vocalist, Chenoa has released five CD’s – Sacred Fire (Sound of America Records), Road of Life (Swan Clan), Heartbeat of Life (Swan Clan), Songs of Strength and Beauty (Cool Runnings), and Spirit of Salishan (Swan Clan). In 2013, Chenoa and her brother, Keith Egawa, released their first children’s book, Tani’s Search for the Heart.

Artist Support Program 2010: compose and record new, all original Native American Church songs with Alex Turtle.

Artist Support Program 2005: Heartbeat of Life, a collection of Native American prayer songs together with Alex Turtle

Emma Zunz is Annie Lewandowski (accordion, guitar, voice) and Cristin Miller (voice, guitar). Cristin and Annie first collaborated as members of Switch, an experimental electro-acoustic sextet, in which Annie played accordion and musical saw and Cristin was the vocalist. They began Emma Zunz in winter of 2003. They toured with the Dead Science, Calvin Johnson, Toychestra, and others.

Artist Support Program 2005: Record a collection of experimental songs for their second album.

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.

Artist Support Program 1998

Victor Noriega is a Filipino American composer and pianist, born in Canada and raised in the Pacific Northwest, whose work explores the intersections of heritage, improvisation, and contemporary ensemble practice. His long-term project Kuyatet reimagines Filipino folk traditions and Tagalog song forms within modern jazz frameworks, balancing composed structure with open improvisation. Through this evolving body of work, Noriega examines diasporic identity, cultural memory, and intergenerational lineage as living, musical processes.

Described as possessing “the sensitivity of Bill Evans, the propulsion of Horace Silver, and the experimentation of Thelonious Monk,” Noriega’s music is known for its layered rhythmic design, harmonic depth, and seamless blending of jazz and modern classical influences. His performances bring together lyricism and drive, introspection and boundary-stretching exploration

Noriega has appeared at the Vancouver International Jazz Festival, Earshot Jazz Festival, Bumbershoot, the Filipino American Jazz & World Music Festival, and the Philippine International Jazz Festival. His commissioned orchestral work Generations, Directions, written for the Oakland East Bay Symphony, premiered in 2012 and addressed three generations of ethnicity in North America through music.

His recordings — including Stone’s Throw (2004), Alay (2006), and Fenceless (2008) — earned critical acclaim and three Golden Ear Awards from Earshot Jazz (Emerging Artist of the Year, Instrumentalist of the Year, and Album of the Year). Later projects such as 2 Trios (2013) and Horizons (2020) expanded his compositional and textural language through collaborative experimentation.

A graduate of the University of Washington’s Jazz Studies program, Noriega continues to compose, perform, and collaborate across borders and genres. His work positions jazz not simply as a style, but as a methodology — a space where tradition can be honored, reshaped, and extended into new forms.

Artist Support Program 2026

Artist Support Program 2010

Artist Support Program 2005

Amy Rubin, pianist and composer, has written and performed music in all genres – for the concert stage, jazz ensemble, film, television and theater, both in the U.S. and abroad. Her fearless eclecticism and desire to embrace all music regardless of style have brought her recent awards including the Washington State Artist Trust Fellowship, the King County Special Projects Award, the 2005 Jack Straw Artist Support Award and commission funds from the Seattle Arts Commission.

In summer 1999, Hallelujah Games, an all-Rubin CD, was released on the Mode label. Music from her sextet, “La Loba” was danced to by the Dayton Contemporary Dance Company in their national tour 2003-2004 of the Flight Project. Rubin’s most recent CD Like Ships That Pass… presents a retrospective of the last few year’s live performances of her solo piano pieces, chamber pieces, and a work for piano and chamber orchestra by that title.

As educator, Rubin ran the Musicianship Program at SUNY at Stony Brook, was an Assistant Professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey where she directed all musical activities on campus, and was a Visiting Professor and the Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle.

Rubin now lives in Seattle where she composes, performs, teaches, lectures and collaborates.

Artist Support Program 2005: Produce a series of radio portraits of pianists working in many different styles of music around the country.

Artist Support Program 2001: Produced The Rubin-Clement Piano Dialogues with Dawn Clement

Artist Support Program 2000

Tom Swafford (b. 1972) grew up in Seattle and lived in Boston, The Bay Area, and Amsterdam before moving to New York in 2007. He has presented many concerts of his music at New York venues including Roulette Intermedium and The Stone. His 11-piece ensemble String Power released its debut album in 2015. Tom recorded and toured Europe in the group Kef, with bassist Shanir Ezra Blumenkranz and guitarist Aram Bajakian. His musical theater piece, Bad Actor, was performed at The Tank (NYC) in 2017. He played on the song “Window,” by Guster, his classmates at Tufts University. He has a Ph.D. (2002) in composition from U. C. Berkeley where his principle teacher was Olly Wilson.

Artist Support Program 2005 : Recorded his album Dubious Diversions, performed by Beth Fleenor and Tiffany Lin

Greg Williamson is a jazz drummer, percussionist, composer, musical instigator, and keeper of a jazz flame. Early musical highlights include stints with Woody Herman’s Young Thundering Herd (1988-89), The Glenn Miller Orchestra (1988) and The Harry James Orchestra. He toured many times with Steve Allen’s re-creation of the Tonight Show alongside classic entertainers like singers Joe Williams and Rosemary Clooney, pianist Paul Smith, comedians Louis Nye and Bill “Jose Jimenez” Dana, and others. Through the 1990s Greg was seen often onstage leading and contracting with icons like Don Rickles, Bob Newhart, and Joan Rivers; and as a regular member of jazz vocal icon Ernestine Anderson.

Williamson has been instrumental in the creation of a non-profit performance and education venue in North Bend, Washington, Boxley’s and the Boxley’s Music Fund – along with satellite venues, now collectively called JazzClubsNW. The non-profit venture has partnered with many community members, producing Jazz Walks, festivals, public concerts, and live recordings  – including Live at Boxley’s with the Danny Kolke Trio + Pete Christlieb.

Williamson has also been an active educator and clinician, working at Green River College and Bellevue College, and recently at the highly regarded Central Washington University as a graduate jazz and percussion assistant.

Artist Support Program 2005: Recorded Conversations and Deconstructions: Jazz Traditions

The exotic dance style called charanga may have originated in Cuba, but one of the genre’s finest bands is the Seattle, Washington, USA-based Yerbabuena. While charanga is their musical speciality, Yerbabuena is very adept at other exotic dance genres as well, including son, cha-cha-chá, guaguancó, and danzón. This large group of musicians has been together in one form or another since 1994, with members including Tom Bergersen (guiro/conga), Barney Brazitis (bass), Astrae Doty-Vargas (vocals), Theodora Fogarty (violin), Marc Gavin (violin), Fred Hoadley (piano/tres/vocals), Elspeth Macdonald (lead vocals/clarinet), Heather Ballard and Irene Mitri (violin), Sabra Weber and Jim O’Halloran (flute), Steve Smith and Ernesto Pediangco (bongo/guiro), and Lance Lu and Chris Stromquist (timbales). While the group do perform some original material, Yerbabuena opt to play songs from renowned Cuban artists including Buena Vista Social Club, Orquesta Aragón, Los Van Van, Benny Moré, Eliades Ochoa, Candido Fabré, and Original De Manzanillo. Although they had been a band for quite some time, Yerbabuena did not release a proper studio recording until 2001’s Vaiven De Mar.

Artist Support Program 2005: Produce a CD of original songs and arrangements for 11-piece Cuban orchestra

Artist Support Program 2000: Recorded their debut album Vaiven De Mar

Carol DePelecyn grew up in Racine, Wisconsin. She went on to Madison to receive a Bachelor of Science Degree in Dance and Environmental Psychology from the University of Wisconsin. As a dancer, she knew the importance of light in sculpting form and moved to New York City to pursue her Masters degree in Lighting Design.

As lighting assistant for Jules Fisher & Paul Marantz in New York City, she worked on large architectural projects including the Grand Central Terminal Renovation, the Seattle Art Museum and the National Gallery of London. She took her professional experience to Seattle where she founded her own firm in 1997.

Carol has received numerous awards for her lighting design and creativity including the Americans for the Arts Award, the International Illumination Award of Merit, and the Illuminating Engineering Society Award. She guest lectures in the Design Department at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle.

Artist Support Program 2005: record environmental sound for a new King County public art installation.

Sandy Diamond studied literature at Brandeis University and earned a BFA from Columbia University’s School of the Arts as a Painting Fellow. Her life motifs are manic depression and a fractured spine; she traded painting for poetry, writing about the broken body and mind. Her first book, “Miss Coffin & Mrs. Blood: Poems of Art & Madness,” was published by Creative Arts Book Company in 1994. While writing her second book, “The Hunchback,” at Centrum Arts in Port Townsend, Diamond feared her subject matter would be too sad, and so hooked up with some simpatico jazz/blues musicians. Thus Quasimodo & the Bellringers was born. The group has performed at Bumbershoot, the Blue Moon Tavern, Elliott Bay Book Co., on NPR’s West Coast Live, and regularly at the Upstage Theater in Port Townsend. Diamond has also read solo at prisons, high schools, and organizations for the mentally ill.

Artist Support Program 2005: Recorded the album Still Life

Sheila Fox, a vocalist and clarinetist, has performed professionally for over 20 years. Her repertoire covers klezmer, Yiddish folk and theater songs, Ladino, Jazz, Swing and Latin. She is the lead singer of the Kosher Red Hots, has toured in Russia, New York, California, and the Northwest, and has recorded 2 CDs. Sheila has studied Yiddish and klezmer music for over 12 years. In the summer of 2000, she received full scholarship and attended the Yiddish program at Columbia University. She continued learning Yiddish while residing in the Bronx. She has worked with NW Folklife in the Schools and creates presentations for preschools through college. Her work in the elderly community includes performances at nursing and retirement homes and visits with native Yiddish and Ladino speakers. She is a licensed massage therapist and therapeutic singer. She works with people with Alzheimer’s, dementia and degenerative diseases combining music and massage.

Artist Support Program 2005 (with the Kosher Red Hots): Produce a CD of ballads, lullabies, folk tunes and spoken word in Yiddish, Ladino, and English.

Christian French is an artist, curator and arts activist who pushes boundaries, connects community, facilitates excitement, and shakes things up. From spandex-suited crusading on public transportation to shipping container concerts, his eclectic and non-conformist gestures deliver on the promise of art’s ability to conduct and disturb.

Originally trained in photography and experimental cinema, Christian moved to Seattle in 1994. He cut his artistic teeth as an early member of SOIL and has served as a board member of Allied Arts, the Executive Director of the live-work advocacy organization ArtSpace Seattle, a founding editor of Red Headed Stepchild, and Artist-in-Residence with Sound Transit, where he developed the Link light rail station pictograms. He has a long history of exhibiting work in artist-run and alternative spaces, as well as showing in and programming non-traditional venues. Using everything from disco balls to lottery tickets, found objects and cultural memes, Christian’s humorous yet omnivorous, medium and media-spanning approach equally delights and mystifies.

Currently maintaining a studio at Seattle’s Hiawatha Lofts, Christian continues to explore photography as well as sculpture using items gathered at nearby thrift stores, and is working toward his dream of turning his 1976 VW microbus into a Japanese-style tea room for two, in a project titled Zen Van: The Wheels of Dharma.

Artist Support Program 2005 (with Mark Johnson): Edit and mix live recordings documenting his installation and music using steel shipping containers as instruments.

Swampdweller was founded in 2003 by Seattle based saxophonist/instructor Marc Fendel. Fendel graduated from Berklee College of Music in 1995 and moved to Seattle to join Jazz group Bebop & Destruction.

Artist Support Program 2005: Recorded their album My Favorite Monster.

Sierra Nelson is a poet, lyric essayist, collaborative performance and installation artist, and teacher. Nelson’s books include The Lachrymose Report (PoetryNW Editions), collaborations with visual artist Loren Erdrich including I Take Back the Sponge Cake (Rose Metal Press), and Vis-à-Vis Society collaborations such as Who Are We? with 7-inch vinyl record. Winner of the Carolyn Kizer Prize, her poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies as well as in Seattle Metro buses, the Seattle Aquarium, with Nordic runes on lava stones in Iceland, read across the U.S. and Canada on the Wave Books Poetry Bus Tour, and at the Slovenian Natural History Museum. She has taught creative writing to students ranging from four years old to eighty-four, in settings including parks, aquariums, hospitals, public schools, and universities. Her work with patients at the Seattle Children’s Hospital via WITS culminates annually in the Words of Courage project in collaboration with Partners in Print, with beautiful artist-designed broadsides of student writing that tour the city including at the Jack Straw Gallery. Sierra Nelson was a Jack Straw Writer in 2007 with Vis-à-Vis Society collaborative partner Rachel Kessler; her poetry-film “Four Imagined Movies” was made with support from the NEA, Poetry Northwest, and Jack Straw Cultural Center. She is also president of Seattle’s beloved Cephalopod Appreciation Society.

2007 Writers Program (with Rachel Kessler)

Artist Support Program 2005 (with The Typing Explosion): Create a CD based on their multimedia performance Love, Exciting Love.

Eric Rynes has been hailed for his “intrepid,” “spellbinding,” and “achingly beautiful” performances in diverse styles and genres, from recitals of the “thorniest” new music (Seattle Weekly), to his work as concertmaster and concerto soloist with the Northwest Symphony Orchestra, to evenings of authentic Argentine tango with the quartet Tangabrazo, to guest appearances with jazz and rock groups. Particularly known for his expertise in new music, having studied in Europe with Maryvonne Le Dizès (Ensemble Intercontemporain) and Irvine Arditti, he has premiered solo works in Berlin, Havana, Chicago, Barcelona, Rotterdam, and many other cities, often with live electronics. As a soloist, he has performed concertos by Brahms, Berg, Shostakovich, Barber, Beethoven, and Bartók. As an orchestral musician, Eric has performed under the batons of Barenboim, Boulez, Slatkin, and many others.

Artist Support Program 2005 and 2013: Mikka and Other Assorted Love Songs, a collection of diverse virtuosic works for solo violin and violin with electronics.

Tunog Pil-Am is a youth ensemble of 15 members playing Philippine traditional music and their contemporary Filipino American interpretations. The ensemble is directed by Pamela Costes, a Ph.D. candidate in ethnomusicology at the University of Washington who has studied for more than 10 years in the Philippine gong and drum ensemble called kulintang with master musicians and Filipino ethnomusicologists trained in the tradition. Tunog Pil-Am cultivates its members’ experiences in a distant heritage through proper instruction on the Philippine instruments. Through this, they learn to appreciate their cultural heritage and develop a deep respect for the traditions. At the same time, the ensemble takes this cultural discovery further through reflecting their own identities in their music, thus utilizing the traditional instruments in a manner that enable them to create meanings for themselves. The style that ensues is the first of its kind and is not simply a type of fusion music heard in Asian American jazz or hip hop sampling. Tunog Pil-Am’s style blends the Filipino and American, almost blurring the distinction between them.

Artist Support Program 2005: Record traditional and contemporary kulintang music.