2006 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.

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

Grand Hallway is a chamber pop band from Seattle, Washington. Led by singer/multi-instrumentalist Tomo Nakayama, Grand Hallway has released 3 full-length albums since 2007. They have toured throughout the U.S. and Japan, including performances at SXSW, Sasquatch, CMJ, Bumbershoot, and Capitol Hill Block Party. Their music has been featured on NPR, KEXP, and Amazon. Tomo also contributes music and acts in the new Lynn Shelton film “Touchy Feely” with Ellen Page, Rosemarie DeWitt, and Scoot McNairy.

Artist Support Program 2006 : Recorded their music album Yes Is the Answer

Clarinettist Sean Osborn has performed on four continents since his recital debut at the age of seventeen at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Appointed over nearly 300 other applicants to a position with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra in 1989, Osborn was the youngest clarinetist in the history of the Met.

A student of Stanley Hasty at the Eastman School of Music, Sean Osborn is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music and the Interlochen Arts Academy where received its highest honor – the Young Artist Certificate, while studying with Dr. Frank Kowalsky. In 1999 he received his Master’s Degree from Southern Illinois University, where he studied clarinet with Dr. Eric Mandat and composition with Dr. Frank Stemper. He has also given numerous master classes throughout the country, including those at The Eastman School of Music, Rice University, Florida State University, and The Manhattan School of Music. From 2006-2009, Sean taught clarinet and chamber music at the University of Washington.

Artist Support Program 2011: Bits and Pieces, an album of solo clarinet music, including standards, rarely recorded, and never-before-recorded works.

Artist Support Program 2006: 32 Etudes for Clarinet, by composer Cyrille Rose.

Jim Page was born in California in 1949 and grew up in the heyday of the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1960’s. The political and social awareness of those times was a part of all artistic expression and it has stayed that way in Jim’s music ever since.

Jim arrived in Seattle, where he now lives, in 1971. When the last folk club closed he took the whole city to be his stage. In 1974, after being threatened with arrest for singing on the street without a permit, Jim took on the Seattle city government to overturn the law and to legalize street performing. He sang his testimony to a packed council hearing and the streets were opened by unanimous decision. It was a landmark case and Seattle is now an internationally famous city for buskers of all styles.

In 1975 Jim recorded his first album of original music, a vinyl LP called A Shot Of The Usual, released on his own label. Two other albums followed in rapid succession. In 1977 he journeyed to the UK to perform at the Cambridge Folk Festival. The response was instant and overwhelming and he walked away with a feature in the national music press, two booking agents, and a European tour.

Jim returned to the States in ’83 and began reestablishing himself as a solo artist and as a player in the northwest music scene. In ’85 he recorded an album in Portland, OR, produced by the great Irish musician Mícheál Ó Domhnaill. 1987 saw the creation of the legendary electric band Zero Tolerance, named after George Bush’s draconian anti drug campaign. It was a tight four piece rock band with the focus on the songs. They shared stages with The Dinosaurs and Alice In Chains, made one recording and broke up, as rock bands often do, leading Jim to more experimentation, this time with the internationally famous spoon player Artis the Spoonman, who was himself the subject of a Grammy award winning song by Seattle grunge rockers Soundgarden.

Artist Support Program 2006 : Recorded Folkpunch in collaboration with  spoon player Artis

Del Rey, a guitarist since age four, became fascinated with the ukulele about six years ago, after being surrounded by ukesters chanting “Four strings good! Six strings bad!” at the Ukulele Freedom Front. She and Matt Weiner played in the old-time jazz group the Yes Yes Boys and she plays uke in a duet with Austin’s Steve James.

Artist Support Program 2006 : Recorded At the Ukeshack #1, a collection of bass and ukulele duets, with Matt Weiner.

Matt Weiner lives in Seattle where he plays bass with Casey MacGill and the Blue 4 Trio, Miles and Karina, Holotradband, and others.  In the past, he has played and recorded with many fine musicians and bands including Danny Barnes, The Yes Yes Boys, and Rani Arbo.

Artist Support Program 2006 (with Del Rey): At the Ukeshack #1

Wu Ziying 吳自英 is a private student of many of the foremost Chinese guqin masters of the twentieth century. Of particular influence on his playing were the great guqin masters and teachers: Wang Jiru, Wu Jinglue, Zha Fuxi, Sun Zongpeng, Xu Lisun, and Gu Meigeng. Wu Ziying maintains a strong link to past masters in his musical interpretation, eschewing much of the newer techniques and Western influences and preserving a strong lyrical line. The Mei’an and Wu schools of guqin music are predominant in his performance repertoire.

Before immigrating to the United States, he was a professor of traditional Chinese Music at Shanghai Normal University and was the director of the Shanghai Qin Association. In 2001-3, he was a Visiting Artist-in-Residence in the Ethnomusicology Division of the School of Music, University of Washington, Seattle. He resides in the Seattle area where he teaches the guqin and pipa and repairs traditional Chinese instruments.

Artist Support Program 2010: Record a CD of traditional Chinese pipa music.

Artist Support Program 2006 : Recorded The Art of the GuQin, Volume I, an album of traditional Chinese music for the guqin.

Jason E Anderson is a sound and visual artist from Seattle. His work includes live performances, recorded sound works, sound installations, graphic art, collage and video works. Anderson’s recorded work and live performances combine a sense of logical and intuitive approaches to music improvisation and experimentation. Through the use of electronically generated, processed and natural sound, his work fits into the more abstract realm of electronic music. He performs with guitar, sampler, computer and/or turntable. Anderson has released several recordings, including B**F’s (BNSF) release Object 6 on Locust Music. In 2005, he founded the label make jet silent. He is currently working on his first solo record, creating a multi-disciplinary art project/personal mythology known as path of the elk, and co-presenting the 12 Hour Play with fellow improviser and dance collaborator, Beth Graczyk.

Artist Support Program 2006: Record music and sound effects to press onto vinyl dub plates for use in live turntable improvisations.

Trombonist and composer Monique Buzzarté is an avid proponent of contemporary music, commissioning and premiering many new works. Her recordings include Zanana’s Holding Patterns (Deep Listening 30), John Cage’s Five³ with the Arditti Quartet (Mode 75: John CAGE: Vol. 19 – The Number Pieces 2), and Dreaming Wide Awake with the New Circle Five (Deep Listening 20). Since 1983 her New Music from Women: Trombone project has supported the expansion of the trombone repertoire. Her advocacy work for women in music included coordinating efforts which led to the admission of women members into the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in 1997. Buzzarté is certified to teach the meditative improvisation practices of Deep Listening.

Artist Support Program 2006: Album of compositions for trombone, conch shell, didjeridu, and live electronic processing

The daughter of a Sicilian meat cutter and a cool blonde Norwegian beauty, Julie Cascioppo grew up in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood and attended Western Washington University. She originally intended to have a career as a teacher, but the call of the stage proved too strong. “I was on holiday [in the Caribbean] and a French father and son heard me sitting in with the hotel band and said I should come to Paris. So I did.” She stayed for four years, performing at a variety of venues. In 1985 she returned to Seattle, the “home port” from which she’s since traveled the world, performing in such places as Istanbul, Rio de Janiero, Istanbul, Bangkok, Hong Kong, London, Hamburg, Sicily, Brussels, New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Whenever she was back home, she starred in “The Julie Cascioppo Experience,” a weekly musical cabaret revue at the Pink Door restaurant in Seattle’s historic Pike Place Market.

When not entertaining and collecting international admirers on her globe-trotting itineraries, Julie is working on her forthcoming memoir, I Love Being Abroad: Tales of a Globetrotting Chanteuse.

Artist Support Program 2019: Produce a podcast based on 10 specific stories from her memoir, I Love Being Abroad.

Artist Support Program 2006: Produce a CD of original cabaret songs composed in collaboration with various Seattle jazz artists.

Karin Kajit is a jazz and classical pianist who has made her home in the Northwest for most of her life. She graduated from the University of Washington with degrees in music, piano performance and music education. Karin is the recipient of two Milnor Roberts scholarships, two Bainbridge Music and Art scholarships, and an Artist Support Grant from Jack Straw Productions.

Karin works with jazz vocalist Emily McIntosh, bassists Clipper Anderson and Jeff Davies, flute/sax legend Mark Lewis, trombonist Marc Smason, the Murphy Tyler Band, the David George 10tet and with her own hard bop group, the Karin Kajita Jazz Quintet.

Watch: Karin Kajita live at Jack Straw

Artist Support Program 2006 : Recorded the album Letting Go with her jazz quintet

Shulamit Kleinerman is a teacher and musician in Seattle. She maintains a violin studio for children and adults, performs on medieval vielle and Renaissance violin, directs Seattle Historical Arts for Kids and its Early Music Youth Academy, and enjoys occasional forays into scholarly music history through writing and lecturing.

Artist Support Program 2006: New New Nothing, a CD of 17th century English country dances for solo violin.

One World Taiko, founded in 1990 in San Francisco, is led by founding members Gary Tsujimoto and Nancy Ozaki. OWT presents a contemporary style of Japanese drumming that incorporates dynamic and fluid movement. Their repertoire includes traditional pieces, which were taught to them by the world-renowned groups Kodo and Ondekoza from Japan, and their own original compositions infused with contemporary rhythms from their love of jazz and world music.

Artist Support Program 2006: Record a CD of original compositions for traditional Japanese drum ensemble with koto and shamisen.

Tiny Manhood are Kendra Wight on ukelele and vocals, Jenessa Wight on bass and vocals, Blaine Sizemore on drums, and Aaron Long on trombone, toy instruments, and backing vocals. They are based in Seattle, Washington.

Artist Support Program 2006: a CD of original pop songs performed on unusual acoustic instruments and toys.

Christa Wells has been a performer for many years. She has played electronic/DnB/Dubstep music with KJ SAWKA (Destroid, Pendulum, Impossible Records) and released several records featuring songs she wrote under that name. Christa has recorded music with The Afghan Whigs, Carrie Akre (Hammerbox, Goodness), The Long Winters, C-Leb and the Kettle Black, Trick Deck, & sung in Give (w/Rick and Chris Friel of Shadow), The Diamond Hand (w/ Shawn Smith of Brad, Pigeonhed and Satchel), Green Apple Quick Step (Ty Wilman, Mike Squires, Dana Turner, Geoff Redding). Provided backing vocals for Darrius Wilrich and performed live vocals (down tempo and House DJ sets) in clubs and lounges. She was a rotating player in Das Rut (a residency at The Scarlet Tree featuring Reggie Watts, Thaddeus Turner, Davis Martin & PK). Christa was the front person for Love Slap (a weekly live House night) that featured Kevin Sawka, Sean Horton (Decibel Festival), PK, Steve Scalfati.

Artist Support Program 2006: Record original songs with a band of well-known local musicians.