Jack Straw Artist Support Program

As a performer on lute, theorbo and Baroque guitar, August Denhard has appeared with Baroque Northwest, Seattle Baroque, the Concord Ensemble, Chicago Music of the Baroque, the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra, Camarata Pacifica Baroque, and many other ensembles specializing in early music. He is an accompanist/coach for 16th and 17th century song at Ars Vocalis Mexico in Morelia, Michoacan.

Gus has given numerous solo recitals and is in demand as an accompanist of 17th century vocal music. He performs regularly in a lute song duo with tenor Eric Mentzel, with the Turkish udist/composer, Münir Nurettin Beken, and with the Japanese kugo harpist Tomoko Sugawara.

In addition to his activities as a performer, August Denhard is the Executive Director of Early Music Seattle, the Pacific Northwest’s oldest and largest presenter of early music.

Artist Support Program 2024 (with Trio Guadalevin): El Noroeste – A Musical Portrait of Washington’s Latinx  Communities Past & Present

Artist Support Program 2012 (with Eric Mentzel): The English Cavalier Songs, a program of duets for lute and tenor.

Artist Support Program 2008 (with Münir Nurettin Beken): A Meeting Place: Medieval and Renaissance Music for Lute and Ud

Artist Support Program 2002: Cusp of the Baroque, a CD of works for solo lute.

Münir Nurettin Beken is one of the founding members of the State Turkish Music Ensemble and the leading ud performer of his generation in Turkey. He performs ud recitals in a variety of venues throughout the U.S. and Turkey, and lectures on classical Turkish music. Just as classical Turkish music (Ottoman court music) is distinct from neighboring musics in Arab countries and Persia, the Turkish ud is distinct from other Middle Eastern uds by the way it is made, its style of playing, and in recent decades, by compositions for it. Beken arranged this recording to showcase the history and current state of music played on the Turkish ud.

Artist Support Program 2008 (with August Denhard): A Meeting Place: Medieval and Renaissance Music for Lute and Ud

Artist Support Program 2004

Srivani Jade was introduced to music at the age of four by her father Bhavani Prasad Jade and uncle Raghavendra Tilwalli. She studied Khayal initially with Dr. Sharad Gadre in the Gwalior style (2002-03), and since 2006, with Pandit Parameshwar Hegde in the Kirana style. Srivani also sings an eclectic repertoire of light classical music, such as,Thumri-dadra, Tappa and Bhajans. She performs regularly both in India and North America, and has sung in major music festivals such as the Sawai Gandharv Bhimsen Mahotsav (2014) and Devanandan Ubhayaker Yuva Sangeet Utsav (2009). She has five solo albums to her credit, and several grants, artist residencies and awards–including the Washington State Arts Commission Fellowship Award (2009). She has lent her voice and music to independent films such as Tapasya (2003), Siddhanto (2014) and stage productions such as Indian Ink (Sound Theater Company). She is an auditioned artist with All India Radio, and Visiting Artist at the University of Washington’s School of Music.

Artist Support Program 2018: Peace Mantra, a musical composition for female voices composed of incantations of peace from all around the world.

Artist Support Program 2016: Record music combining Indian raga vocals with Greek clarinet, Latin piano, Senegalese drums, tabla, and other instruments.

Artist Support Program 2008: Meera’s Love, an album of original songs featuring a range of styles and instrumentation representing different regions of India.

Susie Kozawa, a sound artist, composer and performer, works mostly with sound collages and site-specific installations, in which the gathering of sounds is a primary activity. She explores different acoustic spaces using musical instruments she makes out of found objects, kelp, modified toys and human voice. She creates live sound design for dance and theater productions. She was a founding member of Aono Jikken Ensemble.

New Media Gallery 2023-24 (with Brigid Kelly and Alex MacInnis): Tokio Florist Is an Instrument

Artist Support Program 2008 (with Erin Shie Palmer): Recorded letters written by Asian American immigrants for a permanent sound and sculpture installation for the new Wing Luke Asian Museum.

Tiffany Lin is a pianist and toy pianists whose projects have ranged from traditional performances on piano and toy pianos to installations featuring re-constructed pianos. Tiffany performs in venues in the US and Europe, her work has been recognized and supported by the Montalvo Center for the Arts, Seattle’s Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs, 4culture, Artist Trust, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

Artist Support Program 2008 (with Paul Kikuchi)

Paul Kikuchi attended an Ella Fitzgerald concert while in the womb and was born the next day. He shares a birthday with Prince. His music is wide ranging — from drone/ambient soundscapes to compositions for traditional Japanese instruments, and has been described as “. . . somewhere between natural and deliberate, between wind chimes and the strict order of a composition” (The Stranger)  and “A Morricone showdown in a John Cage rock garden.” (Paris Transatlantic). His work has been supported by Chamber Music America, National Endowment of the Arts, and New Music USA, among others. Paul is tenured music faculty at South Seattle College.

Watch: Paul Kikuchi with Mako and Stan Shikuma, live at Jack Straw

Artist Support Program 2022: An album of original works that features traditional Japanese instruments along with electronics and “Western” classical and popular instrumentation.

New Media Gallery 2015-16: AUTONOMIC

Artist Support Program 2013: Recording and production of Bat of No Bird Island, a song cycle for chamber-jazz ensemble based on the memoir of his grandfather Zenkichi Kikuchi.

Artist Support Program 2008 (with Tiffany Lin)

Saxophonist and composer Greg Sinibaldi has established himself as one of his generations most inventive musicians, embracing a diverse musical world. Often described as a musicians’s musician, he can be found performing with his own groups, playing in metal bands, or developing new musical sounds with the EWI, he brings a characteristic and unique voice to each project. Inspired by a wide range of music and art, Greg has developed a unique improvisational language, developing a virtuosic and rich sonic palette.

Inspired by collaborations with many musical innovators, Greg has worked and performed with Gunther Schuller, Jimmy Giuffre, Bill Frisell, Wayne Horvitz, Cuong Vu, Ted Poor, Ryan Ferreira, Robert Dick, Amy Denio, Dave Douglas, Matt Moran, Rueben Radding, Jesse Canterbury, Kenosha Kid and many others. Always the musical seeker, he has toured with a wide range of bands and can be heard on myriad projects. His two most recent releases feature the EWI heavily. Ariel, released in 2017, draws inspiration from Sylvia Plath’s book of the same name. Utilizing EWI, guitar, and drums, the album has drawn wide acclaim for its uniqueness, being called “quite an emotive experimental work,” and “Its brilliance is definitive.” His most recent album, Voices, has drawn similar acclaim. One critic states, “Amongst the turbulence, we are swallowed by the crashing waves of a digitally compressed ocean and washed ashore, left to find our own serenity.”

Greg has been the recipient of many grants and awards from the Puffin Foundation, Jack Straw Foundation, Centrum, 4Culture, Earshot Jazz and The City of Seattle. He has also been Artist in Residence at the Banff Center in Banff, Canada, the Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida and Centrum. He studied at the New England Conservatory working with a wide range of artists, including George Garzone, Jimmy Giuffre, and Joe Maneri. He recently obtained a Master’s degree in Jazz and Improvised Music at the University of Washington, where he studied composition and electronic music with Richard Karpen. Currently, he is based in Seattle and Brooklyn, NY.

Artist Support Program 2022

Artist Support Program 2008

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

Curtis Taylor is a narrative filmmaker and playwright. In Seattle he operated the underground theater Vodvil from 1996 to 2006, and under these auspices created original folk operas, cabarets, recitals and sound art installations. His recent work has combined mannered musical languages (murder ballads, sacred choir and opera) with historic stage traditions (ballet, vaudeville and burlesque) to consider themes of art, life and time.

Artist Support Program 2011: Audio production design for The White Days, an original play.

Artist Support Program 2008: Record music featuring the Compline Choir of St. Mark’s Cathedral in Seattle and sound design for Church Weather, a short film that completes a trilogy on the theme of song as visual narrative.

Saxophonist Eric BarberR (b. 1972) has been recognized as part of a generation of artists whose artistic voice and output defy categorization. His versatility, unique approach to the saxophone and artistic fearlessness have made him a regular collaborator with some of the most innovative and unconventional figures in new music today, including Nels Cline, Mark Dresser, Vinny Golia, Wayne Horvitz, Art Jarvinen, Steuart Liebig, Poovalur Srinivasan, Wadada Leo Smith, Miroslav Tadic, Tom Varner, and Glen Velez. Eric grew up in Eugene and majored in music at the University of Oregon. He moved in 1997 to attend graduate school at California Institute of the Arts, and immediately became immersed in the thriving Los Angeles jazz and world music scenes.

Since moving from Los Angeles to Seattle in 2004, Eric has been sought after in Northwest creative music. Earshot Jazz presented a feature article on Eric in their April 2006 magazine, and he recently gave the world premiere of pianist/composer Wayne Horvitz’s These Hills of Glory, for string quartet and improviser. He leads his own avant-jazz trio and improvising chamber quartet, as well as performing in French hornist Tom Varner’s jazz and chamber projects. Eric has performed throughout the U.S. and Canada, most notably at the Knitting Factory New York, Vancouver International Jazz Festival, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Getty Center, and Skirball Cultural Center. Recording credits include the Capitol, Cryptogramophone, Nine Winds, pfMENTUM, Phlogiston, Recondite, and Virgin labels.

His first commercial release, the solo saxophone CD Maybeck Constructions (pfMENTUM CD 015), received positive reviews from around the globe. Sonic, metric, rhythmic, and melodic concepts are unified into cohesive pieces that have compositional structure yet allow for deep improvisatory exploration from performance to performance. Exploring the full sonic capabilities of his saxophones, Eric fuses complex rhythmic structures and multiphonics with a keen ear and compositional sensibility.

Artist Support Program 2008: New music for saxophone ensemble.

Robert Blatt was born in 1984 in Anaheim, California. His practice is rooted in explorations of expanded sonic situations through varying frames and gradations of environment, notation, object, performance, text and tone.

His work has been presented throughout the United States and Europe, in the context of performances, exhibitions, and a variety of unconventional methods and locals of presentation. He is a performer of experimental music and related artistic disciplines and is an organizer and practitioner in collectives and curatorial projects, which has included Inlets Foundation for Experimental Practices, The New Fordist Organiation and Acid Police Noise Ensemble.

He holds degrees from the Royal Conservatory in The Hague and the University of Washington in Seattle. He is currently a fellow at Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart and was until recently residing in Miami.

A number of his artist books, scores and editions can be found at Passages Bookshop in Portland, Oregon.

New Media Gallery 2012-13: Elements

Artist Support Program 2008 (with Jeremy Jolley and John Teske): Unused Lexical Variable, a self-titled album by a trio of two guitars and double bass.

Prolific trumpeter/composer Samantha Boshnack walks her own path. Whether blasting through the alternative sonic explorations of her 14-piece alternative chamber orchestra, B’shnorkestra, leading Seismic Belt or her own quintet, Boshnack’s sound pulses with vitality.  After getting a degree in jazz from Bard College in 2003, Boshnack moved to Seattle. She toured extensively with the modern jazz group Reptet for seven years, releasing four albums comprised mostly of her compositions. Since 2011, she has led three ensembles, released five critically-acclaimed albums, and continued to tour and present concerts, workshops, and festival performances. She is a member of the Alchemy Sound Project (a composer-led ensemble featuring composers Sumi Tonooka, Erica Lindsay, Salim Washington, David Arendt, and Boshnack) who have released two records.

Boshnack has received support and commissioning funds from New Music USA, Meet The Composer, 4Culture, Artist Trust, Jack Straw Cultural Center, New York Foundation of the Arts, Earshot Jazz, among others. In 2019 she was a composer fellow at the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music.  She was the 2018 Make Jazz Fellow, an annual award is sponsored by the Herb Alpert Foundation to support promising, emerging composers. She has attended two Atlantic Center for the Arts Master Artist-in-Residence Programs and was selected as a 2012 participant in the Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute  (a program of American Composers Orchestra in partnership with the Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University and the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music).

Artist Support Program 2020: Record six new compositions written for both a string trio and a chamber group of mixed instrumentation, collaborating with two poets.

Artist Support Program 2008 : Recorded Agendacide, a 7″ record with Reptet

Brian Cobb is an active composer, performer, and music educator who resides in Seattle, WA. Brian’s diverse composition catalogue includes music for voice, wind ensemble, orchestra, dance, film, electronic media, and numerous chamber settings (most recently a work for viola da gamba and harpsichord, …so simple a beginning… ). Brian’s most recent works include award winning film music for the documentary Bezango, WA, chamber quartet collections, Campfire Songs (for two voices and mixed ensemble) a theatrical song cycle set during the American Frontier era, sCatterEd (for solo flute) an interdisciplinary work that fuses music/theatre/kinesics, and the evolution-influenced in far country (for alto/soprano saxophone & piano) commissioned by saxophone virtuoso Dr. Chien-Kwan Lin. He has also received commissions from the Universal Language Project and the New Works for Percussion Project. Brian’s music has been published by Ludwin Music Co and has received awards and grants from ASCAP, the University of Washington, and Jack Straw Artist’s Assistant Program. He has studied composition with Klaas de Vries, Salvatore Macchia, John Bavicchi, Diane Thome, Dennis Leclaire, Juan Pampin, and Robert HP Platz. Brian’s music has been performed throughout the United States and Western Europe.

Artist Support  Program 2008 : Recorded Campfire Songs, a music album later released by Present Sounds.

Amanda Cole is a compelling and passionate performer specialising in art song, oratorio, chamber music, early music and the avant garde. As a soloist she has performed with some of the premier choirs, orchestras and ensembles in New Zealand, a highlight being the 100th anniversary celebrations of City Choir Dunedin, where she appeared with David Burchell, David Hamilton and Jonathan Lemalu in Handel’s Messiah. In Australia she has appeared with some of the country’s finest orchestras, including the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, as a member of small professional and semi-professional ensembles. Her more intimate performances have included Australian, New Zealand and world premieres, and she is active in promoting new music, receiving in 2011 a Creative New Zealand grant for a commission by Dame Gillian Whitehead.

Artist Support Program 2008 : Recorded her album Saudade – a collection of 20th century Portuguese art songs – with pianist Sandra Cranshaw

Zach Stewart, aka Skiff Feldspar, is a guitarist, bassist, and songwriter from Seattle. He attended Cornish College of the Arts where he studied jazz guitar. Zach is a versatile musician who listens to and plays everything from hip hop to classic rock. He has toured throughout the US and Canada performing professionally for over 20 years.

Artist Support Program 2008: New music compositions with the electro-acoustic trio, Goat.

Amber Flame is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, activist and educator, whose work has garnered residencies with Hedgebrook, Vermont Studio Center, and more. In her writing, Flame explores spirituality and sexuality, cross-woven with themes of grief and loss, motherhood and magic, and the interstitial joy in it all. As the singer-songwriter front of her band, Last of the RedHot Mamas, her original music is heavily influenced by both blues and choral music, often morphing from the comfortable into something new through the use of loops and electronically produced instrumentation and effects. A former church kid from the Southwest, Flame’s work is published in diverse arenas, including Def Jam Poetry, Nailed Magazine, Winter Tangerine, and Split This Rock, with her first full-length poetry collection, Ordinary Cruelty, published in 2017 through Write Bloody Press. Flame’s second book of poetry, apocrifa, is forthcoming from Red Hen Press.

Watch: Last of the RedHot Mamas live at Jack Straw

Artist Support Program 2022 (with Last of the RedHot Mamas): Magick Black Woman Blues, an album of eight original blues songs documenting different aspects of the everyday life of contemporary Black queer women.

Atrium Gallery 2018-19: ::intrigue8::

Artist Support Program 2015: Produce an album of original songs made from the poems of various writers

2010 Writers Program

Artist Support Program 2008: Record Last of the RedHot Mamas, which explores African American mixed race and bi-cultural experiences with spoken word and new arrangements of blues and jazz standards.

Composer/clarinetist/vocalist Beth Fleenor harbors a strong love for variety & all sonic manipulation, moving freely through genres such as rock, jazz, classical, contemporary chamber, Slavic & American folk, metal, musique concrete, ambient & pop. Her work has been heard internationally from 100,000 seat rock festivals, maximum-security prisons, and performance art in rural bars, to art galleries, bunkers, sidewalks, sacred spaces, and some of the most prestigious concert halls, museums, clubs and theaters in the country. Believing that “art is the discipline of being,” Fleenor uses sound to open the channels of communication between and within individuals and environments.

Artist Support Program 2013: Produce the 16-minute musical meditation SILT, performed by her blindfolded improvising group Workshop Ensemble.

Artist Support Program 2008: Produce Sweet Figeater Surprise, a collection of new compositions and structured improvisations with the group Figeater.

An accomplished chamber musician, Chérie Hughes has performed throughout the United States and Mexico. She is a frequent collaborator with guitarist Roberto Limón, and as the Pacific Duo they have toured throughout Mexico and been featured in recital at the famed Bellas Artes Manuel Ponce Chamber Hall in Mexico City.

Artist Support Program 2012: On My People, a CD of works inspired by the music of Spain and the Sephardic Jewish diaspora, in collaboration with Roberto Limón.

Artist Support Program 2008: The Divan of Moses-Ibn-EzraI, Opus 207, a song cycle for voice and guitar set to poetry by 12th century philosopher Rabbi Moses ben Jacob ibn Ezra, and composed by Jewish Italian composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, in collaboration with Roberto Limón.

Roberto Limón has performed extensively throughout Spain, Uruguay, Greece, Portugal, Germany, Korea, the Czech Republic, Russia, Lithuania, Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, the United States, and México. As a concert soloist, he has appeared with the Leningrad State Chamber Orchestra; the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra; the Lithuanian and Czech Republic National Symphony Orchestra, and the San Antonio, San Diego, and Pacific Symphony Orchestras. He has performed with all the major Orchestras in México including the National Symphony Orchestra. He is a frequent collaborator with singer Chérie Hughes, and as the Pacific Duo they have toured throughout Mexico and been featured in recital at the famed Bellas Artes Manuel Ponce Chamber Hall in Mexico City.

Artist Support Program 2012: On My People, a CD of works inspired by the music of Spain and the Sephardic Jewish diaspora, in collaboration with Chérie Hughes.

Artist Support Program 2008: The Divan of Moses-Ibn-EzraI, Opus 207, a song cycle for voice and guitar set to poetry by 12th century philosopher Rabbi Moses ben Jacob ibn Ezra, and composed by Jewish Italian composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, in collaboration with Chérie Hughes.

Jes Raymond is a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who writes lyric driven Americana songs.

Artist Support Program 2008 : Recorded her album Even the Trees

Percussionist Dale Speicher is the founder and artistic director of the Seattle Percussion collective.

Artist Support Program 2010 (with Seattle Percussion Collective): Record new work for chamber music written for percussion and non-percussion instruments in solo and chamber settings.

Artist Support Program 2008: Record compositions for solo percussion by Robert Ashley, Morton Feldman, Charles Lipp, Iannis Xenakis, and Seattle composer Tom Baker.