Jack Straw Artist Support Program

Originally formed in August 2006 to perform a student composition by Sune Smedeby, Eye Music has continued to focus on playing graphic scores since that time. Graphic scores are written music compositions that rely on visual information rather than standard notation to convey musical ideas. Often these scores are as beautiful to look at just as they are intriguing to play. In addition to graphic scores, Eye Music has also plays text scores which consist of verbal instructions for music making. In all cases, the scores used by the ensemble allow for a certain amount of openness in interpretation. These are musical pieces selected for the possibilities they inspire. They often require improvisation on the part of each performer because much can be interpreted differently each time a piece is played. However, they maintain a sense of form in one or more areas making the pieces a group activity in reaching a common goal. The openness of these compositions allows Eye Music to draw its membership from a wide range of musical backgrounds, instrumentation, and musical skill. Whenever possible, the ensemble works with guest composers on their pieces to gain a greater appreciation for possible approaches and considerations in performance of these works.

Artist Support Program 2010: Produce a recording of Toshi Ichiyanagi’s Sapporo.

Gregory Fields is a professor of philosophy who specializes in Native North Pacific Coast culture, history, philosophy, and language preservation/revitalization. He is the founding faculty advisor of Southern Illinois University’s minor in Religious Studies and he teaches courses for the minor in Asian Studies.

Artist Support Program 2013: Produce a media companion to the book Sacred Breath: Pacific Northwest Culture and Medicine Teachings by Johnny Moses.

Artist Support Program 2010: Record songs, cultural knowledge, and biographical information of two Coast Salish culture-bearers, Pauline Hillaire and Johnny Moses.

Artist, teacher, native-arts conservator, author and storyteller, Pauline Hillaire works to carry on the heritage of Washington’s Lummi Nation and is one of the most knowledgeable living resources of the Northwest Coast’s arts and culture. Known as Scälla or “of the Killer Whale,” Hillaire is a member of the Lummi tribe of Washington State’s northern coast. As a young child, Hillaire was sent to stay with various elders of the Lummi Nation, or Lhaq’temish — “People of the Sea” — to learn tribal arts, traditions, stories, songs and dances that reflected her family’s and her tribe’s value system. For weeks at a time, Hillaire learned whatever tradition that particular elder had to teach her. Her grandfather, Frank Hillaire, was the last chief of the Lummi and a spiritual leader. Her father, Joseph, was a renowned orator as well as a master carver of totem poles. Hillaire learned artistic traditions such as basket-making and Lummi songs from her mother Edna. Throughout her life, Hillaire has worked to preserve these traditions and share them with the next generations.

Hillaire is also well known for her decades of work in carrying on the efforts of her father and grandfather, who founded the song-and-dance group Setting Sun Dancers in order to preserve the art form and to educate both Native and non-Native communities in this tradition. The group has performed for more than a century in Native communities in the northwest United States and nationally at tribal gatherings and public institutions. Hillaire has taught classes on Lummi arts and culture at the Northwest Indian College as well as public schools, museums, and cultural organizations in Washington.

Hillaire was a part of Jack Straw Heritage Project: Native American Stories of Washington and the recordings made by her were released as an album, which includes 6 traditional Lummi legends as told to Pauline by her father, Kwul-Kwul-‘tu (Joseph Hillaire). Subsequently in 2010, Hillaire worked with Jack Straw ASP artist Gregory Fields for audio and DVD productions as a resource on the arts and culture of the Northwest Coast.

In 2005, the Seattle Art Museum honored her for her work as a culture-bearer and featured her work in the exhibition Song, Story, Speech: Oral Traditions of Puget Sound First Peoples. She also has two books with media: A Totem Pole History and Rights Remembered: A Salish Grandmother Speaks on American Indian History and the Future (both from University of Nebraska Press). In A Totem Pole History, Hillaire tells the story of her father’s life and the traditional and contemporary Lummi narratives that influenced his work. Hillaire is the recipient of three apprenticeship awards from Washington State Arts Commission and in 1996 was presented with the Governor’s Heritage Award.

Johnny Moses is a Tulalip Native American master storyteller, oral historian, healer and spiritual leader.

Moses was raised on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada in the village of Ohiat. He learned tribal traditions from his grandparents and has the traditional name Whis.stem.men.knee (Walking Medicine Robe).

In addition to speaking English, Moses is fluent in eight native languages and can also tell stories in traditional sign language.

Artist Support Program 2013: A media companion to the book Sacred Breath: Pacific Northwest Culture and Medicine Teachings by Johnny Moses was produced by Gregory Fields.

Artist Support Program 2010 (with Gregory Fields and Pauline Hillaire): Produce recordings of songs, cultural knowledge and biographical information of two Coast Salish culture-bearers.

Susie Lee is a practicing artist based in Seattle. Born in Hershey, Pennsylvania, she then spent her formative years in Grand Forks, North Dakota; the community connection and Plains approach to life profoundly informs her perspective and minimalist aesthetics. Her work explores intimacy, time and connection through technology, fluidly embedding new media across many platforms. Recognized as Emerging Artist of the Year for the “intelligence, emotion and sensuality” of her work, Lee is committed to the amplification of authentic human connection through technology.

Her unique background as scientist, educator, and artist feed into a rhizomatic and restless intellectual curiosity that is ultimately grounded in a strong sense of vocation to impact the world positively and concretely. She cared for patients at a long-term care facility during a residency that resulted in the award-winning Still Lives portraits. She explored the world of fracking to shine light to the small-town, blue-collar stories of oil workers who wondered out loud why anyone would care about their stories.

Her recent endeavor, Siren, tackles business and entrepreneurship as mediums, and gained significant attention in the public imagination and press. She discussed Siren with a group of Pakistani women on the issue of gender rights, presented at the Grace Hopper conference, partnered with Durex on a 37M view campaign about technology and intimacy, won Geekwire’s App of the Year (over Starbucks and Alaska Airlines), and spoke about fluidity and possibility at TEDx Rainier. And Siren directly created numerous real connections, including long term relationships and marriages.

Artist Support Program 2010: Develop and record the audio component of For These Unclosings, a multi-media performance piece/sculpture/installation.

Joy Mills, on acoustic guitar and vocals, is joined by Lucien LaMotte on electric guitar and pedal steel, Tom Parker on bass and vocals, Jack Quick on keys and Mike McDermott on drums to form the Joy Mills Band. It’s a well-grooved blend of roots, rock ‘n’ roll, folk and country. Songs explore modern themes and characters that filter world-weariness through a lens of self-awareness.

Joy Mills continues to push the edges wider to incorporate classic sounds of early rock ‘n’ roll, country and soulful songwriting. The band’s repertoire maintains an urban country style filled with melodic interplay and layers of pedal steel and electric guitar set against the backdrop of the Pacific Northwest.

In both her solo career and with The Starlings, Mills has garnered extensive reviews, chart-listings and favor both here and abroad. Trick of the Eye landed on Seattle Weekly’s Best Country Albums for 2012, and she was called by The Stranger’s Paul Constant, “Seattle’s liveliest country-flavored act since Neko Case.”  She has supported such artists as Todd Snider, The Avett Brothers, Fred Eaglesmith, The Wood Brothers, and Eilen Jewell.

Artist Support Program 2010: Recorded Trick of the Eye, a full-length solo album of original songs.

Doreen Mitchum works at 4Culture, where she manages the annual Group Arts Project program, the Touring Arts Roster and produces 4CTV, documentaries about 4Culture supported arts and cultural organizations in King. She has served on advisory committees such as the Langston Hughes African-American Film Festival and the Central District Forum for Arts & Ideas and currently serves on King County’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day Celebration committee and the Washington State Arts Alliance Cultural Congress planning committee. Doreen received her BA from The Ohio State University and an MFA in Film Production from Howard University in Washington D.C. and previously taught at Seattle Central Community College.

Artist Support Program 2010: Record poems for an audio-book anthology focused on love poetry and praise songs from the African Diaspora.

Steve Peters makes music and audio for a variety of contexts and occasions using environmental sound, found/natural objects, electronics, instruments, and voices. Elements of improvisation and formal structure are combined to create place-based works that encourage a contemplative state of listening focused on subtle sonic details of the world around us. His work has been released on such labels as Cold Blue, Palace of Lights, Sirr, Dragon’s Eye, 12k, and Present Sounds. He performs with the Seattle Phonographers Union and is Director of Nonsequitur, a non-profit organization that presents concerts of innovative music through the Wayward Music Series at the Good Shepherd Center Chapel in Wallingford.

Artist Support Program 2016: Cancoes Profundas (Deep Songs), a soundscape composition for field recordings and improvising musicians.

Artist Support Program 2014: Record interviews with Seattle-area composers and sound artists in order to assemble individual portraits and a collective oral history of experimental music activity in the city and surrounding region.

New Media Gallery 2012-13: Lições dos Antepassados (Lessons from the Ancestors)

Artist Support Program 2010 (with Steve Roden): Not a Leaf Remains As It Was, a series of experimental songs using Japanese jisei as lyrics.

New Media Gallery 2009-10: Chamber Music 8: Particles/Waves

Steve Roden is a visual and sound artist from Los Angeles, living in Pasadena. His work includes painting, drawing, sculpture, film/video, sound installation, text and performance.

Roden’s working process uses various forms of specific notation (words, musical scores, maps, etc.) and translates them through self invented systems into scores, which then influence the process of painting, drawing, sculpture, and composition. These scores, rigid in terms of their parameters and rules, are also full of holes for intuitive decisions, failures and left turns. The inspirational source material becomes a kind of formal skeleton that the abstract finished works are built upon.

In the visual works, translations of information such as text and maps, become rules and systems for generating visual actions such as color choices, number of elements, amounts of time and form building.

In the sound works, singular source materials such as objects, architectural spaces, and field recordings, are abstracted through humble electronic processes to create new audio spaces, or possible landscapes. The sound works present themselves with an aesthetic Roden has described as lower case – sound concerned with subtlety and the quiet activity of listening.

Roden has been exhibiting his visual and sound works since the mid 1980’s, and has had numerous solo and group exhibitions internationally. In 2010, curator Howard Fox organized the exhibition “steve roden / in between: a 20 year survey”, which opened at the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena, and was accompanied by a full color catalog.

Roden has performed his soundworks at various arts spaces and experimental music festivals worldwide. Recent performances include John Cage’s Cartridge Music with composer Mark Trayle at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, and a tribute to Rolf Julius at the Hamburger Banhof Berlin. Since 1993, Roden has released numerous CDs under his own name as well as under the moniker “in be tween noise” on various record labels internationally.

He has created numerous site-specific sound works for spaces such as MOCA at the Pacific Design Center in response to a group of paintings by Mark Rothko, the Henry Art Gallery’s James Turrell Skyspace, the Mak center for Art and Architecture/Schindler House in Los Angeles, a live collaboration with Stephen Vitiello in a room of 50 pieces of sculpture by Donald Judd at Chinati, Daniel Libeskind’s Run Run Shaw new media building at City University of Hong Kong, a sound/sculpture/drawing installation for Thomas U. Walter’s 1848 building at Girard College Philadelphia for the Hidden City festival, and a permanent public artwork at Hayvenhurst Park, in West Hollywood California.

In 2011, the Atlanta based record label Dust to Digital published Roden’s  “I Listen to the Wind that Obliterates My Traces” – a 250 page hardback book containing hundreds of music related photographs from 1860-1930, along with 2 discs of rare recordings of early American music culled from Roden’s archive, and an essay on archives, collecting and listening. The book has received praise from the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Reader, Record Collector, Pitchfork, and others.

From 1979-82 Roden was the lead singer of the Los Angeles Punk band Seditionaries. The band performed at numerous clubs and non-club spaces in the Southern California area including the Troubador, Cathay de Grande, T-Bird Rollerdome, Godzillas, HJ’s, LA Press Club, and numerous garages. The band performed with many immortals such as the Damned, TSOL, Sacharine Trust, Minutemen, Alley Cats, 45 Grave, Urban Gorillaz, Social Distortion, Circle Jerks, Adolescents, DOA, Mau Maus, etc.

Roden received his MFA from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA in 1989, and his BFA from Otis Parsons in Los Angeles in 1986. Over the past 15 years he has taught both graduate and undergraduate courses at numerous Southern California institutions including: UCLA, Art Center College of Design, Otis College of Art, Claremont Graduate University, UC Santa Barbara, Cal State Long Beach, and others.

Roden’s works are in the permanent collection of the following institutions: The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, San Diego, CA; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; The Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, WA; The Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas, Austin, TX; The Palm Springs Museum, Palm Springs, CA; The Pomona College Museum of Art, Pomona, CA; The ASU University Art Museum, Tempe, AZ; The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece.

Artist Support Program 2010 (with Steve Peters): Not a Leaf Remains as It Was, an album of experimental songs using Japanese jisei as lyrics.

Lee Redfield enjoys creating a personal and meaningful artistic statement that expresses beauty and humanity through sound. His unique approach to jazz saxophone has its roots in rock and the blues but his arrangements and compositions are a fusion that reflect all he has absorbed in his musical studies and travels through Asia and South America.

By the age of nineteen he was performing consistently at many local venues and his recordings and compositions could be heard on regular rotation on local college radio. In his early twenties he began exploring the contra-bass clarinet and attending the University of Washington where he studied jazz and music education.

In 2007, after graduating with two music degrees and a Washington State teaching certificate,  Lee traveled to India to study saxophone with Karnatik master Dr. Kadri Gopalnath. When he returned to the United States he began his teaching career in the Bellevue School District teaching electronic music composition at Bellevue High School and jazz at Interlake and Newport High School. During summer vacations he continued to travel the world collecting melodies, scales, and rhythms to expand his repertoire. In 2008 he performed free jazz and blues in Thailand and in 2009 and 2010 he lectured at some of the most prestigious music institutes in Peru. From 2007 to 2012 Lee led his own group and ran the jazz at the Decca Hotel on Thursdays and Mondays.

In 2012, Lee began attending The University of Texas at  Austin as a graduate student in ethnomusicology while performing on weekends in the local Austin music scene. UT Austin has employed him as a teaching assistant for Music History of the 20th Century, History of Rock as well as Music difference and Identity. In 2014, he was funded by UT Austin and the U.S. Department of State to lecture and perform at The National Academy of Performing Arts in Karachi Pakistan (NAPA).

In October 2015 Lee returned to Karachi as the featured artist for the Daniel Pearl World Music Day Concert and completed his Master’s of Music at UT Austin. In 2016 and 2017 he performed with Sangat in Karachi and Islamabad. He is currently teaching as an adjunct at Huston Tillotson University.

Artist Support Program 2010: Record a jazz album of instrumental standards and originals.

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.

Originally from New York, Gerald “Jerry” Diamond became a Metallurgical Engineer at the University of Cincinnati in 1953. Since that time, he practiced as a research metallurgist in the development of new aircraft alloys, as Professor of Metallurgy in the U.S. and in Colombia, as Technical Editor of a research journal, as a specialist in information research, and as a translator of five languages. He was invited to Seattle in 1989 and began serving with RSVP/REV in 1993, helping nonprofit groups to reach their goals.  Around 2000, he taught himself to play piano, going on to entertain retired people in greater Seattle with 500 piano pieces. He played for about 40 retirement communities, nursing homes, assisted living and convalescent centers, senior centers, hospitals, food banks, a community kitchen, Fremont Sunday Market and the Swedish Cultural Center.

Jerry died in spring 2011, before he was able to finish his 2010 Artist Support Program project, to record a CD of arrangements of early 20th century popular songs for piano. See this Seattle Post-Intelligencer obituary for more on his life.

Chenoa Egawa is Coast Salish of the Lummi and S’Kallam Nations of Washington State. She is a ceremonial leader, singer, speaker, environmental activist and artist dedicated to bringing healing to our Mother Earth, and to people of all cultures, backgrounds and origins through recognition of our shared experiences as human beings.

Chenoa has long been active in local, and international work for Indigenous peoples, children and the environment. For over 20 years, she has worked in Washington State schools, creating programs that integrate Native American culture and history, often teaching through songs and storytelling, empowering Native youth and bringing greater appreciation for cultural diversity to all children in the public school system. Over the past 25 years, she has traveled throughout North, Central and South America facilitating communication among indigenous peoples with the intent of protecting and preserving cultural heritage, languages and homelands.

As a vocalist, Chenoa has released five CD’s – Sacred Fire (Sound of America Records), Road of Life (Swan Clan), Heartbeat of Life (Swan Clan), Songs of Strength and Beauty (Cool Runnings), and Spirit of Salishan (Swan Clan). In 2013, Chenoa and her brother, Keith Egawa, released their first children’s book, Tani’s Search for the Heart.

Artist Support Program 2010: compose and record new, all original Native American Church songs with Alex Turtle.

Artist Support Program 2005: Heartbeat of Life, a collection of Native American prayer songs together with Alex Turtle

Waverly Fitzgerald was a writer and teacher, reader and student, author and publisher, passionate researcher and urban naturalist. She collaborated with her friend, Curt Colbert, on a series of humorous mystery novels about a talking Chihuahua. In 2007, Waverly published Slow Time: Reclaiming the Natural Rhythms of Life, which helps readers shift their relationship with time.

Waverly taught writing since the publication of her first novel. She taught writing classes online for Creative Nonfiction and throughout the Seattle area for organizations like Richard Hugo House. She presented at international, national and regional conferences, including the Sam Miguel de Allende Writing Conference, AWP, PNWA, Chuckanut, and Write on the Sound.

2010 Artist Support Program: Record an audio book of original essays.

2008 Writers Program

​Dr. Sharad Gadre was an engineer, scientist, and Hindustani musician. He was selected for the 2010 Artist Support Program to record original compositions of Indian classical music, but he passed away before he was able to complete his project. See this obituary in the Seattle Times for more information on Dr. Gadre’s life.

Award-winning composer/keyboardist Victor Noriega has been described as having “the sensitivity of Bill Evans, the propulsion of Horace Silver and the experimentation of Thelonious Monk,” while his compositions have been characterized as “layered, complex, interesting and rhythmic,” “introspective at times, energetic and boundary-stretching at others… seamlessly blend[ing] jazz and modern classical influences.”

Victor has been a featured artist in the Vancouver International Jazz Festival, the Earshot Jazz Festival, Bumbershoot, the Filipino American Jazz & World Music Festival, and the Philippine International Jazz Festival.  His commissioned original work for the Oakland East Bay Symphony, Generations, Directions, which premiered in April 2012, musically addresses three generations of ethnicity in North America.

Noriega’s albums – Stone’s Throw (2004), Alay (2006), and Fenceless (2008) — each recorded with his trio, earned critical acclaim, and Victor was honored with three Golden Ear awards (2005 Emerging Artist of the Year, 2006 Instrumentalist of the Year, and 2006 Album of the Year by Earshot Jazz, recognizing the best of the Pacific Northwest jazz scene.  His latest recording, 2 Trios (2013) features a collection of unique improvisatory sketches with long-time Seattle collaborators.

Born in Richmond, British Columbia and raised in the Pacific Northwest, Noriega obtained a Bachelor of Music in Jazz Studies at the University of Washington.  Victor continues to work on a diverse set of original projects and collaborates with artists from a wide range of musical backgrounds.

Jack Straw Artist Support Program 2010

Artist Support Program 2005

Jason Parker is a Seattle-based jazz trumpet player, educator and writer. His band, The Jason Parker Quartet, was hailed by Earshot Jazz as “The next generation of Seattle jazz.”

Jason has been involved in the jazz world all his life, after a concert by Dizzy Gillespie at his elementary school prompted him to pick up the trumpet for the first time. He’s been playing jazz and other music ever since, has a long history in radio, and is currently teaching jazz to middle and high school students at University Prep.

Artist Support  Program 2010: Five Leaves left, a jazz tribute to Nick Drake.

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.

James Whetzel is a Seattle based sarod player, palm wine guitarist, beat maker, percussionist, composer, producer, recording engineer, teacher.

Whetzel is a DJ for the International Fountain at Seattle Center and a part of Mean Deep with Deepayan Acharjya AKA Shree Dee. He also plays the guitar for palm wine group Who Is John Smith with Yaw Amponsah.

Artist Support Program 2010: Record original music inspired by South Asian and African classical and folk styles.

Through poetry, artist books, installations, and mixed media, Carletta Carrington Wilson discovers answers to questions she did not know to ask. This artist finds each artistic endeavor to be an act of excavation and a revelation. Her work is described as “decorative with a message.”  Her poems continue to appear in local and national publications. Carletta’s mixed-media collages have been described as “decorative with a message.” Textiles, found objects, beads and paper revolve around a central iconic image. These elements serve the purpose of enhancing, highlighting, inferring and interrogating the image and the ideas it presents and portrays.

Her work can be found in the Book Art Collections of the Allen Library (University of Washington), Collins Memorial Library (University of Puget Sound) and in the Central District Forum for Arts and Ideas. She has exhibited at ArtXchange Gallery, Gallery 110, the Northwest African American Museum, Coalition Art Gallery, Gallery Rene, Columbia City Art Gallery, Onyx Fine Arts Exhibition, University of Puget Sound, Seward Park Audubon Center, Festival Sundiata, Harem, Aljoya and University House Wallingford.  In 2011, she was artist in residence at the James W. Washington Foundation. The exhibit book of the bound debuted at the Northwest African American Museum 2012-2013. letter to a laundress was featured at the Onyx Fine Arts Annual Exhibit of 2017.

2024 Jack Straw Alumni Poetry Series:

Poem of Stone & Bone:  The Iconography of James W. Washington Jr. in Fourteen Stanzas and Thirty-One Days documents four installations created on the grounds and studio of the artist in 2011. Using objects, land, and literature, Wilson created a nuanced perspective of the life and work of the noted sculptor.

Excerpt from “Poem of Stone & Bone”

Along civilization’s trail
Something went wrong
What to say
If they come in the morning
Kingsblood royal
Monkey on a string
Substance and shadow
The uncalled
Yesterday, today and forever
Bearing witness to the truth
The way of the wizard
Mystics and Zen masters
Journey into light
Souls on fire
Born to rebel

Note: This poem is composed of titles from books in the library of James W. Washington Jr.

Artist Support Program 2010: Record sunlight clenched like tiny roots and veins that migrate, a CD companion to the book Harvest of the Hoe.

2000 Writers Program