PERFORMERS
Jesse Myers is a Seattle-based teacher, performer, lecturer, and recording artist with a Master’s in piano performance from the University of Washington. His work with the prepared piano music of John Cage was recently featured on KingFM’s Second Inversion and his live performances of the Sonatas and Interludes are available for free download. He continues to perform lecture-recitals of this music which has lead to him being a visiting artist in the upcoming year at Cornish College of the Arts.
Amy Johnson is a Seattle dance artist who playfully choreographs and directs in both the realms of musical theater and concert dance. After obtaining her BFA in Dance from Cornish College of the Arts (Magna Cum Laude) in 2011 she worked as a collaborator in the multi-disciplinary collective The Eternal Glow Project. She currently makes dance work with her company, AJnC Dance-Theater.
Julia Benzinger is a Seattle-based mezzo soprano who has been a leading soloist in opera houses around the globe and is known as a dynamic interpreter of a wide range dramatic and vocal styles. A former student at Cornish College of the Arts, Julia will be featured this season at Vashon Opera, Pacific Musicworks, and Music of Remembrance.
Nicole Truesdell is a composer and pianist from Seattle. She regularly composes music for people and events in the area. She also enjoys accompanying singers and doing volunteer work through the Ladies Musical Club. Nicole holds a music degree from Cornish College of the Arts.
Bathsheba Marcus has performed throughout the United States in chamber music and solo recitals. A versatile pianist Bathsheba is at home in a wide array of repertoire and is an ardent supporter of music of our time. A graduate of LaGuardia High School of Performing Arts in NYC, Bathsheba holds a B.A. in Music from New York University and Master of Music and Doctoral of Musical Arts degrees from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
ilvs strauss is a queer, mixed race performance artist living and loving in Seattle WA. She enjoys crossing the street slowly and repeatedly at the intersection of language and movement.
Photo credit: Tim Summers
Allison Burke is a dancer and Choreographer making work in Seattle. Originally from Michigan, she recently graduated from Cornish College of the Arts with a BFA in Dance. Allison is currently continuing work with musicians as her main collaborators and exploring the relationship between music and dance.
Maggie Molloy is a music journalist and event coordinator for Classical KING FM 98.1 and Second Inversion, a project dedicated to new, unusual, and otherwise unconventional music from all corners of the classical genre. She studied piano at Seattle University and contemporary composition at the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique in Paris. Maggie is also one of the hosts on Second Inversion’s 24/7 online music stream, and has written an 8-part series on John Cage’s Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse).
Stacey Mastrian, soprano, is a Fulbright Grantee, Beebe Fellow, and Richard F. Gold Career Grant recipient who specializes in 20th-century Italian and contemporary American works. She has sung new music with the Konzerthaus Orchestra, Nova Amadeus Orchestra, and at such venues as the Fondazione Cini with the Experimentalstudio Freiburg, Chapelle historique du Bon-Pasteur, Teatro La Fenice, St. Peter’s, and in collaboration with Nuria Schoenberg Nono at the Conservatorio di Musica Respighi. Dr. Mastrian has performed and lectured across the U.S.
Bonnie Whiting bio coming soon
Ania Ptasznik is a Seattle-based spatial analyst, computer programmer, and experimental artist. She's performed with punk, ska, and jazz ensembles, in addition to working in different corners of the tech and science world. As such, her work lies at the intersection of art, sound, data, and technology.
Jacob Mashak is a composer, conductor and variable performer from Vermont and now residing in Seattle. Among other distinctions, his Beatus Vir for two pianos is often recognized as the longest work for piano on record, at eleven hours in duration. As part of Boston's Weirdstock, he performed John Cage's seminal 4'33" one hundred times over two days in honor of the Cage centenary.
Kerry O'Brien is a PhD candidate in musicology at Indiana University and a percussionist with Nief-Norf. She currently lives in Seattle, where she is writing a dissertation on Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), 1966-1971.
Michaud Savage is a composer, guitarist and performer based in Seattle, WA. As a solo and ensemble guitarist, Michaud is comfortable working in a wide spectrum of musical styles, including but not limited to jazz, classical, tango, rock, blues, rhythm and blues, latin folkloric music, and a variety of other musical frontiers. As a composer, his work includes compositions for chamber ensembles, orchestra, electronics, Max/MSP, and performance art.
Paul Hansen has been active as one of the top percussionists in Seattle's music and theater circles for over thirty years, having performed with many popular talents such as Johnny Mathis, Quincy Jones, and Michael Feinstein to name just a very few. As a concert musician he performs regularly with the Seattle Symphony, the Pacific Northwest Ballet, and Auburn Symphony. In Musical Theater he has been a mainstay in Seattle's top pit orchestras at the Paramount and Fifth Avenue Theaters.
Klint Flentge. Art has an ever-changing face and I accept all that might present themselves to me. Nature is a major influence on my process and I create many contextual sketches deep in the wilderness. The content of my work has been said to carry an organic, untold narrative; there is a common underlining feel to my work that is described as “mysterious”. I see people wanting a definite explanation as to what they may be looking at, however I don’t plan on giving that answer anytime soon.
Mason Lynass is a drummer, musician, and music educator based in Seattle, WA. He has performed as a soloist and as a member
of the University of North Texas Percussion Ensemble, the Santa Clara Vanguard D&BC, and various chamber groups, orchestras, and bands. Mason draws inspiration for his musical ideas from
the people he interacts with and sounds of the environment
around him.
Eye Music was formed in August 2006 to perform graphic scores. Members of the ensemble include Jonathan Way, Dave Knott, Susie Kozawa, Michael Shannon, David Stanford, Carl Lierman, and director Eric Lanzillotta.
Braden Gillispie is a musician from San Martin, California who is currently studying music therapy at Seattle Pacific University. He plays guitar in the local band Further North, records ambient / post-rock music under the moniker TakeMeWithYer, and is currently conducting research on the music of John Cage and its relation to human music perception in fulfillment of his senior thesis.
Greg Kelley has performed throughout North America, Europe, Japan, Argentina & Mexico at numerous festivals, in clubs, outdoors, in living rooms, in a bank, and at least once on a vibrating floor. He has collaborated with a number of musicians across the globe performing experimental music, free jazz and noise, releasing over 80 recordings in the process. He constantly seeks to push the boundaries of the trumpet and of "music."
Michael Schell has had various lives as a composer, intermedia artist, systems engineer and cribbage player, and now enjoys life in Seattle. He has been performing Cage’s music since 1979.
Michael Shannon is a sound/recording artist, musician, photographer, and performer of experimental media, based in Seattle. He began performing in the punk clubs of San Francisco in the late 1970's evolving performance and sound designs through various venues and media, specializing in the use of a variety of string instruments from Asia, percussion, sound objects, and electronics. Presently a member of Seattle-based performing groups Gyre, Eye Music, Echore, Aono Jikken Ensemble, Animist Orchestra, Broken Mask (Bay Area).
Mark Hillard Wilson performs regularly at festivals and concert series through out the Greater Northwest, and has distinguished himself as a unique voice with programs that feature his own transcriptions of new works for the guitar. Wilson's performing career has taken him to Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall with the new music group Ensemble Sospeso, and to many concert halls across the US.
Storm Benjamin is an active percussionist from the Pacific Northwest. As an artist, Storm strives to inspire meaningful change in the world by connecting his performance with current problems that we face in our society.
CW Lott is a fiction writer and musician who goes by Wall Of Ears. His latest album, Hello Beautiful Nothing, is being released by Tomlab in winter 2016.
Tom Baker has been active as a composer, performer, producer and educator in the Seattle new-music scene since arriving in 1994. He is the artistic director of the Seattle Composers’ Salon, co-founder of the Seattle EXperimental Opera (SEXO), an advisory board member of the Washington Composers’ Forum, and founder and president of the new-music recording label Present Sounds Recordings. Tom is currently on the composition faculty at Cornish College of the Arts.
Matt Huff was born in Olympia, Washington on the 30th of May 1988. He began doodling when he was young and by the age of eleven he began drawing portraits from magazines and charcoal sketches of his new born sister. Matt began painting earnestly at the age of nineteen and by the time he was twenty one, had enrolled in Cornish College of the Arts. During the four year BFA program at Cornish Matt studied oilpainting and figure drawing. He continues to practice both disciplines in the professional world as a painter for Level 52 Studios where he uses airbrushing and hand painted techniques to give life to small-scale character prototypes and as a contractor through his business Custom Projects, where he continues to create independently in his studio and collaboratively with other artists, musicians and designers
Eva Stone is a Seattle choreographer/teacher/lecturer who has been an integral part of the dance community for the past 20 years. She is Artistic Director of The Stone Dance Collective, a modern dance company that originated in London, England in 1993. Her work has been presented throughout the US and abroad. Eva currently serves as producer/curator of CHOP SHOP: Bodies of Work, an annual contemporary dance festival, that is currently celebrating its tenth year.
Tiffany Lin, piano player and toy pianist, has been sitting at the keyboard fumbling for the right notes since 1986. Tiffany studied at CalArts with Peter Miyamoto, Leroy Jenkins, and Wadada Leo Smith. Lin holds a Bachelors from Cornish College of the Arts where she studied with Laura Kaminsky and Oksana Ezhokina.
Jordan Curcuruto is a percussionist specializing in contemporary solo and chamber percussion music, speaking percussion, world music, and popular music. She performed as a soloist at the Innagural Transplanted Roots in Montreal and this summer with the Britt Orchestra for the premiere of Michael Gordon’s Natural History at Crater Lake in Celebration of the National Park Service Centennial. Jordan received a B.M. in Instrumental Performance from Chapman University and a Master of Music from Southern Oregon University.