Jack Straw Artist Support Program

arx duo is dedicated to the expansion of the percussion chamber music repertoire through the creation and presentation of new works, the educating and inspiring of young artists, and exciting performances inviting audiences to engage with new works and artists from all over the world. They have had premiere performances throughout the globe, conducted workshops on three continents, and worked with a variety of composers and artists to bring new creations to life for communities everywhere.

Just before the COVID-19 pandemic, the duo had given their Royal Albert Hall Debut in London with British Composer of the Year (2018) Dominic Murcott’s “Harmonic Canon”. They were also scheduled to have their Carnegie Hall Debut in April of 2020. Through the Pandemic, the group has continued to commission and workshop new pieces with composers, and engage with students and audiences across the globe. Honing their recording skills, they have released numerous videos and full online concerts, and are preparing to release their first album in the spring of 2022 in collaboration with Jack Straw Cultural Center.

With a repertoire ranging from established masters to today’s newest compositional voices, arx duo has worked closely with composers such as Jonathan Bailey Holland, Ted Hearne, Steven Mackey, Juri Seo, and many more. They have worked with a performed with renowned chamber ensembles such as the Dover String Quartet, Aeolus String Quartet, Bergamot String Quartet, Amy Yang, Henry Kramer, The Percussion Collective – Robert van Sice, among many others.

As educators, arx duo has held guest positions at Peabody Conservatory, Michigan State University, and are currently faculty at Curtis Institute of Music Young Artist Summer Program. They’ve also given masterclasses to young musicians on three continents, including many locations in the states. Mari and Garrett have also given residencies (both in person and virtual) for the composition departments of Princeton, Boston Conservatory, and more in the coming seasons.

The name “arx duo” comes from the artists’ desire to forge new connections and artistic pathways or “arcs” within the genre, expanding the opportunities for their music to reach new audiences.

Mari and Garrett both proudly endorse Adams Instruments, Pearl Drums, Zildjian Cymbals, Evans Drumheads, and Vic Firth Sticks and Mallets.

Watch: arx duo live at Jack Straw

Artist Support Program 2021: Recording two brand new commissioned works for marimba and vibraphone.

Ebo Barton is a Black and Filipino, Transgender and Non-Binary, poet and educator. Currently residing in Seattle, Washington by way of Los Angeles, California. For the past 12 years, they have participated in national and international poetry slam competitions as a representative of Seattle. Their most notable poetry slam accolade is placing 5th in the world in 2016. You may have seen Ebo’s work in Adrienne: A Poetry Journal by Sibling Rivalry Press, Thriving While Trans: A Love Manual, Natasha Marin’s Black Imagination, Write About Now, Button Poetry, and All Def Poetry. They and their work have been featured in Seattle Weekly, Seattle Gay News, Seattle Review of Books, and Crosscut. Their work touches on political issues from a personal point of view and often is birthed from the struggles of living in the identities that they are. Ebo believes in the power of language and art as a tool for revolution.

Watch: Ebo Barton live at Jack Straw

2021 Artist Support Program: Insubordinate audio book

2020 Writers Program

EarthtoneSkytone is a multidimensional electro-acoustic songwriting duo from Seattle. Carlos Snaider and Kelsey Mines’ layered polyrhythms, angular jazz harmonies and expansive quiet create mysterious sound worlds where immersive listening can happen. A product of Seattle’s creative music scene, Mines and Snaider bring their varied influences from world creative music traditions, dance music, pop culture and meditative philosophies into a singular space, celebrating their convergences and differences. At once urban and meditative, ritual and playful, ETST shatters assumptions about when and where sacred music can happen.

Watch: EarthtoneSkytone live at Jack Straw

2021 Artist Support Program: Produce an album of original, experimental songs that find comfort amidst uncertainty and change.

Reggie Garrett has performed throughout the US and Canada for many years, presenting mostly original songs mixed with pop covers and traditional folk ballads.  His music is quite diverse, tapping into urban acoustic Folk music, Gospel, Latin rhythms, Blues, Celtic and many other forms.  He performs both solo and with his group Reggie Garrett & the SnakeOil Peddlers.  Since its inception Reggie has carved out his own unique sound.  He has been compared to acoustic legends Richie Havens and Bill Withers by the national folk publication Dirty Linen. He doesn’t consider himself to be a Bluesman – even so Living Blues  magazine featured him in an article in the August 2018 issue.

Mr. Garrett was trained and educated as an artist, receiving his Bachelor of Arts in Fine Arts from Williams College, and a Masters in Painting from SUNY Albany.  Since then he has spent time as a starving artist in New York City, worked as a Systems Engineer for IBM, worked in computer center planning and disaster recovery planning and taught English, History and Math at the high school level.  For a number of years he also taught in a college level program at that guided high school dropouts into and through college.  Through it all he has worked as a musician, as a bassist and vocalist in several rock bands, more recently as a vocalist and guitarist, both solo and with his own ensembles.  He has six CD releases to his credit and has had songs included in a number of compilations over the years.

Watch: Reggie Garrett live at Jack Straw

2021 Artist Support Program: Compose and record a collection of songs dealing with the experiences of Black Americans throughout the nation’s history.

Sylvia is an editorial fellow at Shenandoah literary journal. She also serves as a first reader for The PEN America Prison Writing Program and a poetry reader for the journal Ploughshares. Her work has appeared in DIAGRAM, Ponder Review, Spilt Milk, Allegory Ridge, The Santa Clara Review, and elsewhere. She has received support from the Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts, PEN America, Topical Cream, The Emerging Artist Initiative, Poets at the End of The World Collective, Creative Capital, and The Maryland State Arts Council. Before the pandemic she worked as a GED educator for incarcerated adults in Jessup, Maryland and as a civil rights tester with the National Fair Housing Alliance. She recently earned her MFA at American University in Washington D.C.where she served for three years as a poetry reader for the literary journal Folio.

2021 Artist Support Program: An audio version of “Buzzard,” a debut collection of poems that deal with notions of class inequality, ancestral memory, and loss.

karinyo (they/them) is an independent singer-songwriter and producer of Filipinx, Salvadoran, and Mexican diaspora. karinyo’s powerful and chilling voice is attributed to their roots busking in the streets of Seattle and performing in community. Their sound features complex vocal layers, catchy melodies, reverb heavy electric ukulele, and punk basslines. Their single “When I Was Young” is out now and their self-titled EP “karinyo” was released on May 31st, 2021.

2021 Artist Support Program: A four-song EP about Filipinx history and Diaspora identity, a music video featuring interviews, & Release Party with a discussion aspect.

Kaliane Van (They/Them, She/Her) (pronounced: Call-Lee-Anne) has a penchant for conducting catchy chaos and a predilection for alliteration and synthesized syntax. They have lived 24 years around the sun, and do so to the beat of their own drum. As a self-taught multi-instrumentalist who studied audio technology through Fairhaven College at Western Washington University, they continue a self-directed aural education by recording/mixing/mastering/producing/composing at home and with mentors and collaborators. Kaliane composes music aleatorically and incorporates intuitive tunings and tempos that are improvised and influenced by the magic of recording into Reason and Pro Tools. They weave digital and analog realms of freaky folk ad-libbing and textural tones into sonic landscapes and sound design for fantasy worlds and spoken word poetry. Kaliane is an avid writer, visual artist, and dancer who recognizes and relishes the immense honour, pleasure, and privilege it is to be an artist. The arts are an essential form of cosmic relief. Kaliane invokes freedom and offers uniquely channeled aggregates of whimsical sonder to inspire and provide imaginative information for entities to experience as they navigate through, across, atop, below, within, without, and beyond realms of existence.

2021 Artist Support Program: Tracking for a Cambodian Psych project that simultaneously transforms and caresses traditional folk songs with new life.

Chester was born in Detroit, one of the great centers of American music, and, at a particularly exciting time, raised on a steady diet of Motown soul, early 60’s folk, neighborhood garage bands, jazz, and the rock explosion of the counterculture 60’s. However, within this wide range of styles he was beginning to learn how strong and important the African-American component was. Chester came to the playing of music relatively late, after he’d graduated from Kalamazoo College as an English Literature major. Drum set, saxophone, and flute were early interests. After moving to Seattle in 1978, he had my first experiences of playing professionally. During that time Chester was attracted to the University of Washington Ethnomusicology Dept., where he studied both Filipino Kulintang and Turkish Ottoman classical music. He played ney in the UW Ottoman Ensemble from 2000-2004 under the direction of Munir Nurettin Beken, with whom Chester also studied style and repertoire on an individual basis. In 2002, he began my study of West African kora music with Kane Mathis, later traveling to Gambia in both 2004 and 2007 to study with the great kora master Malamini Jobarteh while living in his compound. Since then he’s played in and around Seattle in various venues, forming my first trio in 2015, Trio Abaraka. As a retired chef, he is now increasingly able to devote the time and energy required to achieve a fair amount of mastery on the instrument, and to pursue those elements of African musical culture that have always been so attractive to him.

2021 Artist Support Program: Recording original music combining the kora with different musical contexts and instrumentations.

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.

Building upon Seattle’s history of bringing gritty, underground rock music to the surface, local female duo Kitty Junk is leaving their mark with the unique brand they call “junk rock.” Kitty Junk throws glam on top of grunge and brings a feminist perspective to hard rock. They are both educators and musicians in the local scene. After many sexist encounters in the music industry, Dane and Lee set out to create more gender-inclusive and POC-friendly spaces in heavy music. Their nonprofit organization Womxn and Audio provides classes, workshops, interviews, and a community for audio engineers, of which only about 5% are women. They also home make zines for each show to highlight various marginalized voices in Seattle.

Artist Support Program 2021: Produce a new album of original songs.

“We are the real ones, no one can take that. It’s written in our stars.” Seattle’s Medejin (pronounced meh-deh-JEAN) creates lush, ethereal, dreamwave that evokes a sense of nostalgia and melancholy. Led by songwriter Jenn Taranto (vocals/guitar/keys) with Rebecca Gutterman (guitar), Ramsey Troxel (bass), and Matthew Cooke (backing vocals/drums), their sound is euphoric with a disarming intimacy that tends to leave listeners quietly, beautifully, devastated.

Garnering attention from KEXP with the release of their debut EP “Eleni” in 2018, Medejin has performed live in-studio on “Audioasis” with Eva Walker and were featured on Larry Rose’s “Music that Matters” podcast.

Named after Jenn’s birthplace in Colombia, Medejin formed in 2016 after moving cross country from the east coast to Washington. Living most of her life in New York, she was in search of change. Rebecca, Matthew and Ramsey were involved in other projects when the four met in Seattle. Among the band’s biggest influences are PJ Harvey, Cocteau Twins and Tori Amos.

Watch: Medejin live at Jack Straw

Artist Support Program 2021: The Garden

Maggie McClellan has spent the last or last 20+ years in Seattle. Though she wound up her long career as an elementary school music teacher, she continues to direct the Phinney Neighborhood Community Chorus, which she founded in 1999.  Maggie’s training includes an exciting two year period studying methods and choral conducting at the Kodály Institute in Kecskemet, Hungary, She has degrees in dance and music composition, and in Music Education. She is very interested in building community, she’s an animal and vegetable lover, a member of the Bahá’í Faith, and she is currently engaged in establishing her mother’s musical legacy by digitizing scores and recordings of her mom’s musical compositions and making these available to the public for the first time.

Kate Olson is an improvising saxophonist and music educator based in Seattle, WA. Since moving to Seattle in 2010, she has done her best to infiltrate the local, regional and international improvised music scenes. She can be heard performing with her own projects KO SOLO and KO ELECTRIC, and as a collaborator with Syrinx Effect, Ask the Ages, the Seattle Rock Orchestra, the Royal Room Collective Music Ensemble and Electric Circus (led by Wayne Horvitz), the Seattle Jazz Composer’s Ensemble and with such Seattle staples as the Seattle Men’s and Women’s Choruses and cabaret producers Can Can Presents and Verlaine & McCann. Kate has a BA in Music (Jazz Emphasis) from the University of Wyoming and an MM in Improvisation from the University of Michigan.

Kate’s international resume continues to grow, including performances in Russia, Latvia, Turkey, Switzerland, South Korea, Cuba, and Slovakia. She has appeared on stage with Terry Riley, Stuart Dempster, Pauline Oliveros, Allison Miller, Bobby Previte, Skerik, Patricia Barber and pop music icons Elvis Costello, Brandi Carlile, Sir Mix-a-lot, Matt Cameron, and Big Star’s Third (featuring members of REM, the Posies, and Nada Surf) among others. Kate was nominated in 2011 and 2013 for the Earshot Golden Ear Award in the Emerging Artist category, and in 2014, 2016, and 2020, she was nominated for the Best NW Instrumentalist Category, and in 2016 her band KO Ensemble was also nominated as best NW Alternative Group.  The KO Ensemble finally won a Golden Ear award in 2019.

Gavin Reub is the Artistic Director of The Seagull Project, which is a Gregory Award-winning company with an ensemble of 26 actors. Also, he has helped develop more than 20 local plays as the Director of Creative Development for The Umbrella Project, which exists to develop and advocate for diverse new theatrical work by demonstrating radical dramaturgical support. He also teaches podcasting and acting with Path with Art and Coyote Central.

Artist Support Program 2021 (with Maggie Lee): Production of a theatrical audio drama podcast retelling historical events in the Pacific Northwest with a fantastical horror twist.

Maggie Lee is a Gregory Award-winning playwright who has had over 40 productions in Seattle since 2006, with an emphasis on genre storytelling, such as horror and fantastical science fiction. She is currently the Resident Playwright with Macha Theatre Works, a board member for Rain City Projects, an organization that supports PNW playwrights, and a member of the Dramatist Guild of America.

Artist Support Program 2021 (with Gavin Reub): Production of a theatrical audio drama podcast retelling historical events in the Pacific Northwest with a fantastical horror twist.

Byron Schenkman believes in the power of music to bring people together for healing and joy. By the time they went to their first music camp at the age of eleven, Byron knew that playing chamber music would be an important part of their life’s work. They have since been a founding member of several ensembles, including the Seattle Baroque Orchestra which they codirected until 2013. In addition to performing live on piano, harpsichord, and fortepiano, Byron can be heard on more than forty CDs, including recordings on historical instruments from the National Music Museum, Vermillion, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. A recipient of the Erwin Bodky Award from the Cambridge Society for Early Music “for outstanding achievement in the field of early music,” Byron was voted “Best Classical Instrumentalist” by the readers of Seattle Weekly, and their piano playing has been described in The New York Times as “sparkling,” “elegant,” and “insightful.” A graduate of the New England Conservatory and Indiana University, Byron currently teaches music history at Seattle University, and has been a guest lecturer in harpsichord and fortepiano at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music.

Artist Support Program 2011 (with Seattle Baroque): Record a CD of chamber works by Antonio Vivaldi.

Born and grown on a small farm between Puget Sound and the Cascade foothills, Amanda Winterhalter makes songs at once elegantly crafted yet unafraid to show blood. Her songs walk the edges of unavoidable aches, desire and flirtation, and the uneasy paradoxes we carry. Amanda is a frequent performer with Seattle’s Bushwick Book Club, writing and presenting original music inspired by books. Her song “Shirt” won first place in the 2016 Jane Titland Songwriting Contest at the Tumbleweed Music Festival. Her debut album, Olea, released in November 2016, presents her range of styles from gothic Americana to grit rock. Her second album will release in the fall of 2018, as she begins work on a third project – a collaborative anthology of songs inspired by Pacific Northwest stories and heritage.

Artist Support Program 2018: Produce an album of songs inspired by historical stories of death, extinction, theft, relocation, and loss in the Pacific Northwest.

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