2004 Artist Support Program

Arni Adler crosses arts disciplines regularly. As a long-ago graduate of Bennington College (known for its “institutionalized creativity”), Arni has worked in theater, music, film, visual art, multi-media, and creative writing. As a stalwart fan of the trio format, she is a founding and current member of the super-harmony trios Uncle Bonsai and her ninth trio, the uke-based Go Janes. Her song cycle for voice, viola, bass, and piano based on poems by Charles Bukowski premiered at Seattle’s Royal Room. Arni exhibits her paintings and collages, and teaches visual art and writing to all ages, with a special love for working with kids with disabilities.

Artist Support Program 2004: Record elementary school students in the Powerful Writers program reading their work for use on radio, web site, and in a traveling exhibition.

Franchesska Berry is an eloquent performer, choreographer, and international intercultural arts educator. Franchesska specializes in dances and traditional culture of West Africa and the African Diaspora; however, her expertise is not limited to African based forms. Franchesska’s unique dance style is informed by her comprehensive background in the western classical forms of ballet, modern, jazz and improvisational dance. Franchesska strives to integrate dance modalities as if dance were derived from a single root language and her styled modalities were innovative dialects.

​Franchesska developed her professorial expertise as an academic leader in international intercultural arts education, termed the Relational Model of Education. Her pedagogical approach is firmly rooted in the lineage and kinesthetic anthropology of African and African American dance and cultural history. Ms. Berry invites students into a process of a liberated understanding of African thought and history, anchored in West African cultures. Her dance-informed integrative work helps students and audiences reclaim what has been forgotten and distorted by design, and denied through colonial cancellation.

Artist Support Program 2004 (with Som La Bi Joli Dance & Drum): Record visiting West African musicians, enabling the company to more easily rehearse and perform.

Adam Diller divides his time between performing and composing. A participant in a variety of open music in Seattle, his projects include doublends vert, BNSF, humph, pique, burns/diller, Xiao Gu Fang, the Constant Trio, the Degenerate Art Ensemble, and solo performances. Adam’s compositions reflect his interest in live performance. His compositions deal with different methods of structuring group interaction. Adam is also a founding member of Open Music Workshop, a Seattle-based musician-run non-profit organization committed to producing concerts, facilitating workshops, and acting as a resource for musicians making new music.

Artist Support Program 2004: Record open-form ensemble compositions with various local improvisers.

Johanna Kunin is an improvisational vocalist, jazz singer, pianist, and composer turned experimental singer/songwriter. A 2002 graduate of Cornish College of the Arts, she performs with various ensembles including Charlie Smith Circle and as a part of the Monktail Creative Music Concern, Non Grata, and Zipperupus.

Artist Support Program 2004: Record a series of original vocal compositions arranged for an ensemble of violin, viola, cello, bass, accordion, electric piano, and percussion.

Nancy Rawles has worked as a journalist, playwright, and novelist. The New York Times called her novel My Jim “as heart-wrenching a personal history as any recorded in American literature.”

Nancy has received many awards for her writing, including an Alex Award from the American Library Association, an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation, and a Legacy Award from the Hurston/Wright Foundation. My Jim was selected by the Seattle Public Library for its popular Seattle Reads Program.

​Nancy grew up in Los Angeles, studied in Chicago, and makes her home in Seattle, where she enjoys teaching writing and spending time with family and friends.

Artist Support Program  2004: Recorded My Jim – a companion CD to her novel of the same name

2001 Writers Program (Curator)

Artist Support Program 1997

Tom Baker has been active as a composer, performer, and music producer in the new-music scene since arriving in Seattle in 1994. He is the artistic director of the Seattle Composers’ Salon, co-founder of the Seattle EXperimental Opera (SEXO), and an advisory board member of the Washington Composers’ Forum. Baker’s works have been performed throughout the United States, Canada and in Europe. His two most recent chamber operas, The Gospel of the Red-Hot Stars (2006) and Hunger: The Journey of Tamsen Donner (2008), were both premiered by the Seattle EXperimental Opera and are available on the Present Sounds label. Baker has received numerous accolades for his work including awards and grants from Meet The Composer, the Seattle Arts Commission, King County Arts Commission, Artist Trust, and Jack Straw Cultural Center. He was also awarded a fellowship in 2006 as an associate artist-in-residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida, where he spent three weeks working with composer and saxophonist Henry Threadgill.

In 2011, Baker was chosen to be a resident artist at the Montalvo Center in Saratoga, CA, where he completed the first in a series of ten quartets based on a book of stories by Italo Calvino. As a guitarist (on both fretted and unfretted instruments), Baker has appeared in concerts and recitals throughout the United States including Seattle, San Francisco and New York, as well as in The Netherlands. Baker earned his DMA in Composition from the University of Washington, where he studied composition with Chinary Ung, William O. Smith, and John Rahn. His music has been recorded on several labels, including Rosewood Recordings, Acoustic Levitation, Present Sounds Recordings, and Engine Records.

Artist Support Program 2015: Record and mix new compositions for solo piano and soprano, trumpet, and percussion.

Artist Support Program 2009 (with Seattle Experimental Opera): Record Hunger: The Journey of Tamsen Donner, a new opera about The Donner Party.

Artist Support Program 2006: Record Gospel of the Red-Hot Stars, an “operatorio” based on texts by Margaret Atwood.

Artist Support Program 2004: Record four song cycles for vocalists accompanied by various chamber groupings.

Artist Support Program 2002: Record a composition for string quartet and spoken word.

Artist Support Program 2000: Record a cycle of four songs for baritone, piano and cello, and a work for eight voices.

Gust Burns composes performances of music. Drawing on his experience as a pianist, contemporary art practices, and 20th century composition, Burns’ works blur differentiations between performance, score, recording, and text.

Burns earned an MFA in music/sound from Bard College, and is a graduate student at the University of Washington, Seattle.

New Media Gallery 2008-09 (with Melanie Noel): Felt

Artist Support Program 2007 : Recorded an album of structured improvisations for 10 musicians.

Jesse Canterbury has played new music of many varieties for years:  performances have ranged over jazz, new and old classical music, and free improvisation.  He has performed on countless premieres of new works by emerging and established composers and has given concerts of some of the masterpieces of modern chamber music.  As an improviser, he exhibits a wide ranging vocabulary, built on a thorough knowledge of the clarinet including the various “extended” techniques.  He can be heard on a variety of recordings, highlights of which include collage/décollage, an album of chamber music for two clarinetists (with William O. Smith) and several recordings with the Tom Baker Quartet and the Tom Varner Tentet.  Canterbury’s own compositions can be heard on the contrasting albums Vertigo (clarinet, cello, guitar, and trombone) and Here/Now (clarinet, piano, bass, drums).  Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, he performs with sfSound and Dan Plonsey’s Daniel Popsicle.

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

The Monktail Creative Music Concern is a collective of composers, musicians and artists based in Seattle, WA who thrive o­n the atypical and exigent; the real weirdo stuff.

The collective recorded the Special O.P.S. EP Backdoor Draft as part of their Artist Support Program residency at Jack Straw in 2011.

Artist Support Program 2011: Record new pieces composed by its members.

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

I Wayan Sinti was born January 1, 1943 in the village of Banjar Dauh, Ubung Kaja, near Denpasar on the Island of Bali. He is the son of the late Mangku Ketut Sadra and Ni Made Rumik. He began his study of Balinese vocal and instrumental music in his village in 1957, because his parents could not afford to send him to government school. However, in 1961, he was accepted to the new high school for the performing arts, KOKAR, which had recently opened in Denpasar. He graduated from KOKAR in 1964 and was appointed a teaching position there because he graduated at the top of his class.

Pak Sinti has mastered many kinds of Balinese vocal music and nearly all forms of instrumental music with outstanding teachers such as, I Nyoman Gerana, Ida Peadanda Made Sideman, I Nyoman Kaler, and I Wayan Lotring. His dedication to the classical musical styles he learned from these teachers inspired him to revive many forms of gamelan including gamelan gambang, selonding, saron, gong luang, gambuh, semar pegulingan, legong, bebarongan, and others.

Pak Sinti has spread his love of Balinese music by teaching village ensembles throughout Bali, composing in both the classical and contemporary genres, and serving as a senior spokesman for the Balinese performing arts. Most significantly, during his four decades as an instructor at KOKAR, where he taught the next generation of Balinese musicians, his influence as a teacher, performer and composer is now almost everywhere apparent in Bali. His deep dedication to the arts has been officially recognized through awards presented to him by the mayor of Denpasar, the governor of Bali, and the president of Indonesia. He is also known worldwide for his compositions for gamelan in genres such as gong kebyar, gong gede, pelegongan, semar pegulingan, beleganur and also various vocal genres.

In 1974, Pak Sinti was invited to teach at the Center for World Music in Berkley, CA were he spent 2 ½ months teaching various forms of Balinese music. In 1978 he returned to the U.S. for four years to study ethnomusicology and teach Balinese music at San Diego State University, where he graduated with an MA in music. In 1985 he again returned to the U.S., this time to train the American gamelan Sekar Jaya for their performance in Bali as the first foreign gamelan to perform in at the Bali arts festival. His relationship with Sekar Jaya continued in 1996 when he spent ten months in San Francisco composing music for their performance of the Ramayana in collaboration with Abinaya South Indian Dance.
In 1994, Pak Sinti created a new type of gamelan ensemble called Manikasanti, which means “jewel for peace.” Manikasanti features a new tuning system that allows for the playing of various Balinese modes and musical scales, and was inspired by his long study of ritual vocal and instrumental music.

Pak Sinti produced several recordings at Jack Straw as part of a 2004 residency in the Artist Support Program, while in residency as a visiting artist at the University of Washington School of Music, where he taught Balinese vocal and gamelan music. During his time at the University of Washington he also created a new form of gamelan called Siwa Nada, which was constructed with the help of his students. Read more about this project and see images of the instruments at the UW Ethnomusicology Musical Instrument collection online.

Artist Support Program 2004: Record compositions for a chamber ensemble of suling (bamboo flute), rebab (spike fiddle), and kendang (drum).