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.

Pianist Tamara Friedman has been praised for the depth, wit, and humor of her lively performances (Seattle Times) and appreciated as “the magnificent pianist” whose “way with Mozart reached my heart as well as my intellect” (Journal Tribune, Portland, Maine). Tamara attended the Oberlin Conservatory and received her master’s degree from the Mannes College of Music (NYC). She has collaborated with such international artists as Stanley Ritchie, Jaap Schröder, and Vicki Boeckman, and appears with violinist Elizabeth Blumenstock as Duo Amadeus.  In the Pacific Northwest she has performed on the Seattle Camerata, Allegro Baroque and Beyond, Belle Arte, Early Music Guild, Gallery Concerts, and Mostly Nordic series and for the Governor’s Chamber Music Festival.

Tamara has been a featured performer in early piano workshops for Pacific Lutheran University (Tacoma, WA), Seattle, Edmonds, and Washington State Music Teachers Associations, and the Western Early Keyboard Association. She maintains a private studio in La Conner, WA, where she teaches modern piano and fortepiano on her collection of 18th and 19th century keyboard instruments, which is on display at SEKM!—the Skagit Early Keyboard Museum.

Tamara spends her summers in Bath, Maine, where she also has a group of historical pianos and performs on the Kennebec Early Music Festival.

Artist Support Program 2002: Recordings of Haydn Piano Sonatas

Ben Larson has been writing and performing music in the Pacific Northwest for the past several years. Recently Larson has turned towards improvisational electronic music and loop based composition performing in Seattle, and in Vancouver B.C. as part of the Vancouver New Music Mixtophonics series. He studied philosophy and biology at The Evergreen State College; the organization of biological systems serves as inspiration for his current work.

Artist Support Program 2002: Recordings of original electronic music compositions.

Sandra Layman, violinist and violist, studied violin with Werner Lywen (then concertmaster, Washington DC National Symphony), Paul Zukofsky (at the New England Conservatory), Martin Friedmann (longtime member, Seattle Symphony), Stanley Ritchie (then first violinist with the Philadelphia String Quartet; now early music specialist at Indiana University), and with Petre Lefterescu, Octavian Ratiu, and George Manoliu in Bucharest, Romania.

She studied music as an undergraduate at New England Conservatory, Oberlin, and American University, and also earned a BA in history from the University of Pittsburgh. While continuing to perform classical violin and viola, she earned an international reputation for her passionate and soulful performances of klezmer, Balkan (particularly Romanian and Greek), and Near Eastern music. She pursued graduate studies in ethnomusicology at the University of Washington (on a FLAS fellowship) and later studied and researched music in Romania on IREX and Fulbright fellowships. She appeared as a soloist with orchestras in Romania.

Her CD, Little Blackbird: Klezmer, Romanian, Greek, Turkish, and Hungarian Violin Music, has been acclaimed internationally.

She is a member of the American String Teachers Association (ASTA), Music Teachers National Association (MTNA), Suzuki Association of the Americas (SAA), Seattle Music Teachers Association (SMTA), Washington State Music Teachers Association (WSMTA), and Washington State String Teachers Association (WASTA).

Artist Support Program 2002: Recordings of a variety of traditional music for violin

Artist Support Program 2002 : Recorded Salt Free Soul.

Andrew Schloss studied at Bennington College, the University of Washington, and Stanford University, where he received his Ph.D. in 1985 working at CCRMA (Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics). He has taught at Brown University, the University of California at San Diego, The Banff Centre for the Arts, and currently at the University of Victoria.

Schloss is a pioneer in new musical instruments, and a virtuoso on a new instrument called the Radiodrum. He has received numerous awards and fellowships: Fulbright Scholar in France at IRCAM/Centre George Pompidou, collaborative composer’s grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, research fellowship from the BC Advanced Systems Institute (ASI), creative grant from La fondation Daniel Langlois, a New Media Initiative grant jointly awarded from the Canada Council for the Arts and NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council), Research/Creation Grant from SSHRC (Social Science and Humanities Research Council), commission from the British Columbia Arts Council, Jack Straw Foundation, among others. He has been a JUNO Awards judge in the World Music category for several years, was on the advisory board of CIS/R, Canadian Heritage, a judge for the Chalmers Awards, consultant to the Smithsonian Institution’s Center for Folklife Programs and Cultural Studies, and other organizations.

At IRCAM in the mid-80’s, Schloss began to explore interactive computer music and improvisation with the Radiodrum, a new instrument that he still pioneers. He has since focused his work on performance and composition with this instrument, using it to explore interactive computer music and improvisation. As a percussionist and computer musician, he has performed with such legendary figures as Tito Puente, Chucho Valdés, and more recently with Rickie Lee Jones and Joe Jackson at the EMP (Experience Music Project) opening concert in Seattle. He was invited to perform at the Centennial celebrations at Stanford University along with Leon Theremin, the creator of one of the earliest and most significant electronic musical instruments. In the 1970’s he toured Europe and North America with acclaimed British director Peter Brook. He performs on the Radiodrum in a duo with jazz pianist/composer Jeff Gardner in Europe and the US, for example in Germany at the ZKM’s Multimediale II Festival. In addition, he frequently collaborates with San Francisco composer David Jaffe on musical projects.

Schloss was featured in concert with Cuban jazz pianist Hilario Durán, in a live national broadcast on CBC radio from the Winnipeg New Music Festival in January, 2001. They later were invited as a trio, with violinist Irene Mitri, to perform at the Interactive Arts Performance Series at New York University. With Brazilian pianist Jovino Santos Neto, Schloss and Mitri were featured in the newstage festival at Stanford University in April 2006. In February 2007, they performed in New York again as part of the Electronic Music Foundation concert series. In August 2007, they were selected for inclusion in a new concert series called Jazz: The Second Century by Earshot Jazz in Seattle.

Dr. Schloss is co-founder of Physiosonics, creating auditory displays for anesthesiologists and physicians. He is also co-founder of Fundamento Productions, which has released two classics of Cuban music: Ilú Añá and ¡Afrocubanismo! In 1994 and 1996, he was the artistic director of the internationally acclaimed ¡Afrocubanismo! Festival at the Banff Centre for the Arts. In September 2001, Schloss was co-organizer of the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC) in Havana, Cuba. In May 2005, he was the music chair of the NIME conference (New Interfaces for Musical Expression) at UBC in Vancouver.

In 2004 and 2005, Schloss began work in the area of Public Art installations, collaborating with several other artists on major installations: Seattle City Hall (with Nobuho Nagasawa and Dale Stammen), and the Ballard Public Library and the Ballard Neighborhood Services Center (with Dale Stammen and Don Fels). In 2006, the Ballard Public Library won an American Institute of Architects award. His most recent collaboration with Nagasawa and Stammen is currently on exhibit at the Japan Society in New York in a show called Making a Home: Japanese Contemporary Artists in New York; it is an interactive sound and fiber-optic light sculpture called “Bodywaves.”

Artist Support Program 2002

Susan Starbuck is emeritus at Antioch University, Seattle, where she taught literature, history, and writing in education. She is the author of Hazel Wolf: Fighting the Establishment (2002), a biography of an early Seattle activist who embraced a wide variety of social, political, and environmental causes.

Artist Support Program 2002: Radio documentary on the life of Hazel Wolf

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.

Kent Chadwick is a West Coast poet and writer who lives on Bainbridge Island. His poetry has been published in Left Bank, Sojourners, Fishtrap Anthology, 1995, and the anthology Deep Down Things: Poems of the Inland Pacific Northwest. In July 1993 he exhibited the fiction painting installation “I Am A Man” with his brother Gregg Chadwick, a San Francisco painter, at Seattle’s Room 608. He served as the editor of the Northwest Ethnic News in 1990-91. He received his B.A. in Philosophy and International Relations from the University of California at Davis in 1980.

1999 Writers Program

Webster Crowell is a filmmaker and stop motion animator who pursues his own narratives with an escapist agenda and an eye for tactile ingenuity.

Artist Support Program 2002

Award-winning Nigerian writer, visual artist, performance poet, public speaker, filmmaker, and actor Folasayo Dele-Ogunrinde (1968-2013) was a self-taught artist versed in several disciplines including visual arts, theater, and writing. She wrote an award winning play entitled The Woman with a Past, and a book of poetry titled Conversations with the Soul at 3:00AM. She performed and toured with a dramatization of her poetry to African drums and jazz music and was the creator of a monthly poetry by candle light dinner series. Dele-Ogunrinde was a graduate of the University of Ibadan, and Iowa State University with an emphasis in Animal Nutrition.

Artist Support Program 2002: Recordings of poetry with music.

Based in Seattle, Goldston is currently working as a performer, dance class accompanist, teacher and studio musician. Discography and performances include work with David Byrne, Nirvana (Unplugged), the Presidents of the United States of America, Bush, Larry Barrett, the Old Joe Clarks, Jeff Greinke, Lori Carson, Laura Love, Gluebound, Citizens’ Utilities, Nancy Wilson, Flipp, Ed Pias, Elizabeth Falconer, John Doe, and Corporal Blossom. Goldston is accomplished in a wide variety of styles, including classical, world music, rock and free improvisation.

Artist Support Program 2006

Artist Support Program 2002

Artist Support Program 1995 (with Stacey Levine): The Post Office

Seattle and Brooklyn-based Jessica Lurie is an award-winning multi-instrumentalist, composer, and improviser, performing on saxophones, flute, voice, accordion and electronics. She calls on a wide range of musical influences, including, funk, jazz, Americana, gospel, Klezmer, Balkan, Latin, and Afro-Cuban music, as well as a great love for free improvisation.

She has performed at festivals, universities, clubs, social centers and workshops in the US, Canada and Europe. Current projects include The Jessica Lurie Ensemble;  Tiptons Saxophone Quartet & Drums;  Living Daylights Trio;  Bill Horist / Jessica Lurie Duo; Sephardic Sofie Salonika with Katie Down;  Jewish Afro-beat band Zion80; experimental Far Cry Flutes and Seattle based improvising ensembles Slingshot Songs and Full Fathom Five +, featuring  Skerik, Kate Olson, Naomi Seigel, Evan Flory-Barnes, and D’vonne Lewis.

As a leader, side-person, composer and collaborator, Jessica is featured on over 60 recordings. Collaborations with international artists include Fred Frith, Billy Martin, Skerik, John Zorn, Cyro Baptista, OU, Todd Sickafoose, David Krakauer, Bill Frisell, Jenny Scheinman, Chris Cochrane, Bill Horist, Robert Dick,  Jamie Baum, Joe Dorias’s McTuff, Chuck D,  The Indigo Girls, Mark Ribot, Eyvind Kang, Karl Denson, Frank London,  Allison Miller,  Vinicio Caposella, Nels Cline, Amy Denio, Jacob Fred Jazz Odessy, Kenny Wolleson, Sleater Kinney, Bernie Worrell and Ivan Neville among others.

Her work as a composer has been supported by national and international granting organizations, and she is featured in the 2009 jazz documentary Icons Among Us (2009). Jessica is currently teaching saxophone, flute and voice, as well as composition and technique in NYC.

Artist Support Program 2015: Document the musical work of the Sinovi Tamburitza Orchestra of Seattle by recording 12-14 songs that are representative of the group’s repertoire.

Hannah Palin is a media and communication professional skilled in Archives and Collection Management with a background in Film and Radio Production. She was instrumental in the creation of the award winning moving image preservation program at the University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections and has been working on grant-funded moving image projects since 2002 including the Washington Film Preservation Project, as well as, grants from the NEH, 4Culture, Friends of the Library and the Allen Signature Award. Palin is a founder and board member of Moving Image Preservation of Puget Sound. She co-authored The Washington State Film Preservation Manual: Low-cost and No-cost Suggestions to Care for your Film with Nicolette Bromberg and Starting from Nothing, The Art of Creating a Film Archiv” in the Association of Moving Image Archivists journal The Moving Image.

She taught workshops on moving image preservation for the Society of American Archivists, the University of Oregon, and the University of Washington. Her students have found work at the Academy Film Archives, the Alamo Drafthouse, Washington State University, Deluxe Archives Solutions and the Montana State Historical Society. Ms. Palin worked in both film and radio production and, before coming to Special Collections, she used to spend forty hours a week, sitting in the dark, watching home movies in a local film transfer lab.

Artist Support Program 2002: Recorded her audio documentary The Day My Mother’s Head Exploded

Ed Petry (1955-2021) was a guitarist for whom the term ‘singular’ was no mere hyperbole, an under-the-radar virtuoso whose probing musical mind reconnoitered remote harmonic and melodic territory.

Artist Support Program 2002: Record new music with a group of improvising musicians.

David Wright is a pianist and Sacred Harp singer who currently resides in Seattle. His work is influenced by traditional folk singing styles and poetic genres, and he is a collector of field and traditional recordings. He graduated from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in 2000, where he studied composition with Brenda Hutchinson and Randolph Coleman.

Artist Support Program 2002: Recording his song cycle with original texts and music entitled The Cruel Welcome.