Jack Straw Artist Support Program

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.

Anna Bálint is the author of Horse Thief, a collection of short fiction spanning cultures and continents that was a finalist for the Pacific Northwest Book Award. Two earlier books of poetry are Out of the Box and spread them crimson sleeves like wings. Her poems, stories, and essays have appeared in various journals and magazines; also as part of a sound installation in the Beacon Hill branch of Seattle Public Library. A novel, rooted in the Roma (Gypsy) experience of the Holocaust, is close to completion (she hopes). Anna is an alumna of Hedgebrook Writers Retreat, the Jack Straw Writers Program, and has received awards from the Seattle Arts Commission. She has taught creative writing for many years and in many places, including in prisons, community centers, Antioch University and Richard Hugo House. In 2001 she received a Leading Voice award in recognition of her creative work with urban youth at El Centro de la Raza. Currently she teaches at Recovery Cáfe in Seattle, where she leads Safe Place, a weekly writing circle for people in recovery.

Artist Support Program 2015: Words from the Café, a book/CD of ten emerging voices from Seattle’s Recovery Café.

2009 Writers Program

2005 Writers Program

Gregg Belisle-Chi is a guitarist and composer. He is a regular member of Jim Knapp’s Scrape Orchestra, Andy Clausen’s Shutter and Split Stream Big Band, Fluke (with Brian Kinsella, Chris Symer, and Chris Icasiano), and performs solo and duo music with vocalist Chelsea Crabtree. His newest project is Tyrant Lizard, a collaboration with trumpeter Ray Larsen and bassist Carmen Rothwell.

He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Cornish College of the Arts, where he studied with guitarists Dave Peterson and Michael Nicollela, multi-instrumentalist Jay Thomas, and composer Jim Knapp, and then enrolled in the Masters Program at the University of Washington’s School of Music under the direction of Cuong Vu and Ted Poor.
He has also studied under guitarists Steve Cardenas, Larry Koonse, Keith Ganz, and John Stowell. He has performed with Bill Frisell, Eyvind Kang, Wayne Horvitz, Tom Varner, Bob Sheppard, Jay Clayton, and Jessica Dobson (Deep Sea Diver, Beck, The Shins.)

Gregg’s debut album, Tenebrae, features music for solo guitar and duo (with Chelsea Crabtree). He can also be heard on Scrape’s Approaching Vyonnes (Original Classical, 2013) Honey Noble’s self-titled album (self released, 2013) Tomten’s Wednesday’s Children (FlatField Records, 2012), and Annabel Lee’s Lone Bodies (self-released, 2012).

Artist Support Program 2015 (with Chelsea Crabtree): Record an album of new music for guitar and voice.

Stephen Cohen is a performing and recording artist, acoustic guitarist, singer/songwriter, composer, cigar box guitar player, and visual artist. Stephen has performed in concerts and festivals across the U.S. and in Spain. His many recordings include The Tree People and Human Voices, originally recorded in a studio in the woods near Eugene, Oregon by his creative acoustic ensemble the Tree People, and released only in Eugene in 1979 and 1984. Those albums were rediscovered around the world by record collectors in this century and reissued internationally by record companies in Japan and Spain. A 3^rd Tree People album, It’s My Story, was released by Guerssen Records of Spain in 2010.

Stephen was born in Pawtucket, Rhode Island and now lives in Portland, Oregon. He has done countless performances, workshops and residencies in his home state of Oregon. He made a nationally acclaimed children’s album, Here Comes the Band, in 2006. He created a short film/music video/work of art, the Cistern Symphony, recorded and filmed in 2012 in the echo filled Dan Harpole Cistern in Port Townsend, Washington. Stephen has added cigar box guitar to his repertoire. His new solo album is appropriately named 3 String Stephen Plays Cigar Box Guitar.

Artist Support Program 2015: Talk to Me, a music performance audio project featuring voices, homemade and custom made cigar box guitars, acoustic guitar, and an original 5 String Thing instrument.

Antonio Davidson-Gómez is an educator and percussionist focused on fostering musical dialogue between cultures. He has studied, performed and recorded in various genres with emphases on Mediterranean, Middle Eastern and Afro-Latin music. Tony has produced arts and culture programming, educational projects and community engagement initiatives for over two decades. A 2013-14 Jubilation Foundation Fellow for music in education, he has developed curricula for PBS and the EMP Museum/Smithsonian, in addition to teaching students and educators for Seattle’s Creative Advantage and various school districts. Tony is the Education Manager at Broadway Center for Performing Arts and is a speaker on music and culture for Humanities Washington, offering presentations including Saffron & Honey: Muslims, Jews and Christians in Medieval Spain and Mapping Latino Musical Migrations. Formerly a K-12 teacher, he has been a Collaborating Teacher with Cal Performances, the Silk Road Project and the Jewish Music Festival, designed a college prep course on world music and managed educational resources and wrote documentaries for KCTS 9 Public Television in Seattle. Recent musical projects include work with Tango del Cielo, Gary Stroutsos and the Early Music Guild of Seattle. Tony holds a Masters in Education from UC Berkeley and has conducted study and research trips in the Mediterranean and Latin America, most recently returning from travels in Morocco and Spain where he studied music and history.

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

Artist Support Program 2018: Continue work on the Guadalevín Project: an intimate exploration of identity and cultural dialogue which radiates across generations and continents; principally a musical collection bolstered by personal writings and historical accounts.

Artist Support Program 2015: Record music from many traditions for the Guadalevin Project, an exploration of identity and cultural dialogue combining elements of autobiography, travelogue, and musical collection.

James DeJoie hails from Seattle and revels in bringing together diverse musical genres in distinctive combinations. Through his use of electronics and world-influenced rhythms, James writes and performs music that broadens the scope of what may be defined as “jazz.” He is equally fluent on baritone and alto saxophones, clarinet, bass clarinet, flute, and percussion. In addition to playing in and composing for his wide-ranging musical groups, James is also a regular contributor to such top-flight Seattle based ensembles as Wayne Horvitz and Robin Holcomb’s Washington Composers Orchestra, Tom Varner’s Nonet and the world-renowned Jim Knapp Orchestra. James has toured parts of Siberia and most of the US performing with groups such as Moraine, Jeremy Enigk, The Benny Goodman Orchestra run by Peanuts Hucko and the rock group Cheap Trick, to name but a very few.  He is also active performing classical music and was the featured soloist in a Baritone Saxophone Concerto written for him by composer David Gaines, which he recorded with the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra in Bratislava in 2008.

Artist Support Program 2015: The Ocular Proof, a full-length CD of original music by the quintet The Ocular Proof.

Different Drummer is a multi-genre chamber ensemble founded by three string players from this region’s premier chamber orchestra, the Northwest Sinfonietta. Violinist Brandon Vance is a two-time winner of the US National Scottish Fiddle Championship. Gretchen Yanover is an acclaimed electric cellist with three solo albums to her credit. Bassist Anna Doak has performed and/or recorded with Dave Mathews, Joe Williams, Spirit of the West, Linda Ronstadt, and the Seattle Symphony. Add to the mix Don Dieterich, a percussionist who is willing to whack in any number of non-traditional gadgets from lamp shades to garbage cans and you’ve got a show that represents genres as varied as the artists presenting it. Prepare to by entertained, amused and exhilarated by this unique collaboration!

Artist Support Program 2020: Mix 9 tracks from a 2019 performance at the Chapel Performance Space and record 3 new pieces live in-studio to include on new album release.

Artist Support Program 2015: Different Drummer, an album of music for double bass, fiddle, and tap.

Since the 1990s, ECOSS has been a leading urban environmental nonprofit in Seattle. Formerly known as the Environmental Coalition of South Seattle, ECOSS specializes in bridging knowledge and cultural gaps, serving the interests of residents, industry and government. With Co-Artistic Directors Sarah Kavage and Nicole Kistler, they produced Duwamish Revealed, an ambitious program of site-specific, public art and performance along and about the Duwamish River, an iconic industrial river in Seattle.

Sarah Kavage is an artist and urban planner with a wide variety of creative, academic, and political pursuits and experiences. She has a masters’ degree in urban planning from the University of Washington and works for a small firm that does research on walkable communities, urban design and health. She has years of varied experience in art, education, and community building projects – including a Recycle-A-Bicycle program in Brooklyn, NY, afterschool art programs in New York City and Pennsylvania, and planning for a sustainable wastewater treatment system in Havana, Cuba.

Nicole Kistler creates interactive art and landscapes that help connect community members to the places they live and start conversations. She has over 12 years of experience managing large-scale public art, arts planning, public involvement, and landscape design projects, with work shown in Washington, New York, and Arizona. She co-developed the award-winning plan for UpGarden, the nation’s first large-scale community rooftop garden and is currently the City of Seattle’s first Urban Agriculture Artist-in-Residence, creating story-based cast iron sculpture for the Beacon Food Forest. She has a Masters’ Degree in Landscape Architecture from the University of Washington.

Artist Support Program 2015: Record oral history interviews with people who utilize the Duwamish River for fish, to be incorporated into public art and events as part of the Duwamish Revealed project.

Sara Edwards is a performing artist, curator, event-planner, yoga teacher and arts administrator. Director of The People’s Grand Opera, she has performed original music at On the Boards and the Frye Art Museum. Sara founded lounge act Honey Castro, which performs at Vito’s, and is a principal collaborator in The French Project. She has worked with organizations and venues as diverse as City Arts Festival, Richard Hugo House, and Smoke Farm, and has served as an administrator for 4Culture, On the Boards, Canoe Social Club and Fife Consulting.

Artist Support Program 2015: Record songs from “The Public Road,” an a capella choral music/interdsciplinary performance.

Josephine Ensign is a writer and a nurse with a focus on health inequities for people marginalized by poverty and homelessness. Ensign is the author of Catching Homelessness: A Nurse’s Story of Falling Through the Safety Net, Soul Stories: Voices from the Margins, and most recently, Skid Road: On the Frontier of Health and Homelessness in an American City, which was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. She has had writing residencies at Hedgebrook, Centrum, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Mesa Refuge.

Artist Support Program 2023: Skid Road/Way Home Oral Histories and Podcasts

Artist Support Program 2015: Produce a series of oral histories with Seattle-area homeless service providers and activists for a digital storytelling project on health and healing in the context of homelessness.

2013 Writers Program

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.

Alice Gosti is an architect of experiences. While her background is mostly in dance and choreography, she uses all media to create a cohesive environment in which the viewer is invited to both experience and perform. Born and raised by the dynamic art duo SANDFORD&GOSTI in Perugia, Italy, she trained at Associazione Culturale Dance Gallery with Valentina Romito and Rita Petrone. At 19, Alice moved to Seattle, where she received a B. A. in Dance from the University of Washington with a focus in choreography and experimental film.

Alice has received the Vilcek Foundation Creative Promise award in Dance, the 2012 danceWEB scholarship from ImpulsTanz; and, for How to become a partisan, an Artist Trust Gap Grant 2014 and a Seattle Office of Arts and Culture individual project award 2015. She has been awarded residencies and smaller prizes all over the world. Gosti is Velocity’s 2015 Artist in Residence.

Alice’s work has been presented in Italy, Germany, Japan, and on both coasts of the United States. Her project, Spaghetti CO. toured as part of Velocity’s SCUBA National Touring Network, and had the honor of being the last piece presented at the Joyce Soho in New York City, before the theatre closed. She has been presented in Northwest New Works, Seattle International Dance Festival, and Velocity’s NEXTfestNW, Bridge Project, Fall Kick-Off, and Guest Artist Series.

In 2013, Alice inaugurated Yellow Fish // Epic Durational Performance Festival, the only festival worldwide dedicated to durational performance. As a performance curator, Alice has also been in charge of Modern Dance Behind the Pink Door, Under Constructions (Velocity Dance Center) and various smaller events in collaboration with the Satori Group and the NEPO 5K don’t RUN.

Artist Support Program 2015 (with Hanna Benn): Produce audio for How to become a partisan, an immersive five-hour performance at Saint Mark’s Cathedral commisioned, produced, and presented by Velocity as part of the Made in Seattle new dance development program.

Stephen Reed Griggs (b. NYC, 1960) earned certificates in Narrative Non-Fiction and Arts Management from the University of Washington, a Bachelor of Musical Arts in Saxophone Performance from the University of Illinois, and a Master of Business Administration in Management Information Systems from Pace University.

As a writer, Griggs is a member of the Jazz Journalists Association. His work has been published in the Seattle Times, Seattle Weekly, Earshot Jazz, Raven Chronicles Volume 26, Creative Colloquy Volume 3, Stories of Music Volume 2 (2017 International Book Award), and Rhythm in the Rain: Jazz in the Pacific Northwest. Griggs’ historical research has been mentioned in The John Coltrane Reference and Wild Isle in the City.

Musically, Griggs is an award-winning composer, producer, performer, and publisher with six commercial jazz recordings of his music on his independent, self-produced Hip City Music label. NEA Jazz Master Elvin Jones is featured on two of Griggs’ records. He accepted the Jazz Journalist Association 2021 Best Historical Recording award as Associate Producer on John Coltrane: A Love Supreme Live in Seattle for finding the source tape. His live performances of site-specific programs of social justice stories and original music have twice earned an Adventurous Programming Award by Chamber Music America and ASCAP, and The Seattle Channel broadcast Griggs’ music and narrative program based on the police killing of native carver John T. Williams on Front Row: Steve Griggs Ensemble present Seeing John T. Williams. Griggs is the featured saxophone soloist on the soundtrack for the Microsoft video game Halo 3: ODST which sold more than 6 million copies worldwide.

2023 Writers Program

Artist Support Program 2017: Record six songs and narrations for the program Sound in Stone: Music in the Sculptures of James Winston Washington.

Artist Support Program 2015: Record and mix the narrative and music program for A Cup of Joe Brazil, an audio documentary about an important figure in Seattle’s cultural history.

Artist Support Program 2013: Perform oral history recording, digital preservation of historic recordings, and production of audio excerpts for a blog and biography about the life and impact of Joe Brazil.

Artist Support Program 1997

Etsuko Ichikawa is a Tokyo-born, Seattle-based, multi-media artist. She describes her work as “a continuing investigation of what lies between the ephemeral and the eternal.” Her Pyrographs and Aquagraphs are drawings made by fire and water, capturing and eternalizing the immediacy of a moment, while her installations and performance-based work are about ever-evolving states of consciousness.

Ichikawa’s work has been exhibited internationally, including The Ueno Royal Museum in Tokyo, Waterhouse & Dodd in New York City, and Seattle Art Museum. She has received grants from numerous institutions including the Pollock Krasner Foundation, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and National Endowment for the Arts. Her work has been reviewed in national publications such as Sculpture Magazine, NY Arts Magazine, and GLASS Quarterly.

She is a co-founder of Artists for Japan, a Seattle-based grassroots organization to support the relief efforts of Great East Japan earthquake and aftermath, and a member of NOddIN, a Tokyo-based collective of filmmakers who are paying attention to various social, political, and environmental issues.

Artist Support Program 2021: Production for a new podcast, Traveling Clouds.

Artist Support Program 2015: Record and edit sound for the Radiating Echoes film project.

Artist Support Program 2013: Record and produce audio from the decommissioned nuclear plant Satsop for her artwork Echo at Satsop.

John D. Mullen is a short story author and monologist. He has performed at On the Boards, Bumbershoot, New City Theater, Annex Theater and Park West – Chicago, Mercer Island Youth Theater, Richard Hugo House, The Rendezvous and Jack Straw Cultural Center. His writing has appeared in the L.A. Times, Drawn and Quarterly, Modern Odysseys, and I Can’t Tell You Anything (Penguin Press), among others. He was a 2014 Jack Straw Writer. He is currently working on the completion of a book of short stories. He lives in Seattle where he tries not get mad when people steal his tomatoes.

Artist Support Program 2015: Produce recordings of original stories.

Writers Program 2014

Martin Koenig was founder/director of the Balkan Arts Center (later the Ethnic Folk Arts Center, today the Center for Traditional Music and Dance) in New York City. Still an active member of this non-profit’s Board of Directors, he remains a dedicated advocate for community-based traditional artists, especially those active in urban immigrant ethnic enclaves throughout the United States.

His interests extend to all facets of ethnic music and musicians: he has produced recordings, films and videos, and curated concerts and festivals. His ethnographic photographs have been widely published in periodicals, newspapers, magazines, and professional journals.

Between 1966 and 1994, he conducted fieldwork that included audio recording, film and photography in the Balkans, Eastern Europe, the United States, and Canada. Some of his photographic work is on display here.

Artist Support Program 2015: digitize the sound for Balkan Echoes’ archive of 16mm dance films.

Artist Support Program 2013: Produce a master for Playing ‘Til Your Soul Comes Out! Music of Macedonia, a collection of recordings of traditional music collected in Macedonia in 1968 and 1973.

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.

Shin Yu Pai is a poet and essayist. Shin Yu Pai is currently Civic Poet of Seattle (2023-2024). She is the author of 13 books, including most recently No Neutral (Empty Bowl, 2023), as well as AUX ARCS (La Alameda), Adamantine (White Pine), Sightings (1913 Press), and Equivalence (La Alameda). She is creator and host of the chart-topping, award-winning podcast “Ten Thousand Things” for KUOW, Seattle’s NPR station. She studied creative writing at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. Her personal essays have appeared in Tricycle, YES! Magazine, and City Arts. In 2015, she was a Jack Straw artist in residence for her public poetry project HEIRLOOM, which was installed in Piper’s Orchard in Carkeek Park. Shin Yu has received grants from the Awesome Foundation, 4Culture, Artist Trust, and the City of Seattle’s Office of Arts & Culture for her work. She lives in Bitter Lake, Seattle, with her husband and son.

2024 Jack Straw Alumni Poetry Series:

In a collection that is deeply occupied with the notion of voice and who gets to have it, Shin Yu Pai’s No Neutral reaches toward a more authentic and natural voice to represent the poet’s perspective in all its range and concerns.

Monuments for Men (Memory’s Vault), Fort Worden

I can’t deny that beauty is
here, when bullied by design

to turn my back to the bay
and enthrone myself beneath

the shelter, to face a single pale
stone, enshrined within a slab

mausoleum – the permanence
of rock is as persistent as the force

of men, it’s evident in the words
etched onto stone steles, hostile

architectures crafted by those
who saw themselves like gods

who coerced the eyes upward
to poles planted at the site,

that old trope of the man, &
his lover the sea, patiently waiting

for his return, I think why
not turn the gaze back on her

right now – the sea – we have
already seen all there is to see

2016 Writers Program

Artist Support Program 2015: Heirloom, a site-specific installation in Piper’s Orchard that includes an audio recording of a poem mixed with field recordings of the Orchard.

Sumiko Sato is a Composer/Pianist and Japanese native who finished her doctorate at the University of Washington in Composition. She studied composition with Ken Benshoof and Richard Karpen, and piano with Patricia Michaelian. She has also worked with many of her contemporary Seattle musicians in the ’90s. Her music is often inspired by sound in nature. She attempts to create music with colorful language in unorthodox approach. In performing, she explores diverse genres, especially western classical, Japanese folk, jazz, popular, and rock, incorporating free or fixed improvisation. She is a recipient of the Thanatopolis Concert Prize for her chamber orchestra work.

Artist Support Program 2015: Nanbu Sakaya Uta Project Vol. 1, original compositions for solo piano and piano-based instrumentation, inspired by traditional work songs for sake master brewers in northern Japan.

As a 1st grader, who had just learned the art of “Beginning Middle End,” Imani  wrote a story about a tiny elephant, named Tinka, who felt different because she was smaller than all the other elephants. At the time, Imani had no idea that this short story would go on to be the debut work of a poet. Much later in life, as a high school student, she didn’t know that a pesky moment of curiosity would lead to her first performance poem.  As a nosey little sister, she would regularly bother her  older brother as he was doing his homework. On a fateful fall day he taught her to write poetry, and she instantly knew poetry was a great way to alleviate  teenage angst around being younger and smaller than everyone else.

Since then, she has developed an infinitely rippling love for poetry in all of its forms.  She believes in the healing power of words and the transformational nuance of the human story.  Imani is the founder of Split Six Productions, an interdisciplinary art production company that works towards connecting artists and collecting POC stories for production on stage. Her book Twisted Oak is available on Requiem Press and her second collection Beloved:Collision is available via Amazon.

Artist Support Program 2015: Record an album of performance poetry.