Creative Team Biographies
Composer
Byron
Au Yong creates ceremonial musical events scored for voices with Asian,
European and hand-made instruments. In 2007, Au Yong was the only American invited to the Jerwood Opera Writing Programme where his chamber opera The
River Museum (libretto by Carola Luther) was performed at Aldeburgh
Music.
Singers
Sound artist, vocalist, and theatre educator
Josie Davis has performed
with the Denver Opera Guild, directed with
The Kitchen in New York City, and trained with El Grupo de Teatro Yuyachkani in
Lima, Peru.
Davis received a Tinker Foundation grant to research education, dance, and media arts sustainability in Argentina.
Emily
Greenleaf has performed with the Seattle Creative Orchestra, the Esoterics, and the Winnipeg-based eXperimental Improv Ensemble. Current projects include a documentary
about a community living in a war zone in Colombia and a libretto about writer and dancer Nellie Campobello.
David Stutz performs as a vocalist and laptop musician in experimental music and sound art as well as early
music and baroque opera. He sings with The Tudor Choir and
Cappella Romana. Stutz collaborates with sound artist Perri Lynch on
site-specific works. He is developing an
opera set in the North Pacific Ocean.
Percussionists
Stuart Scott McLeod created music for Brown Box Productions' HamletX, Wreck the Airline Barrier, and Before It Hits Home. He was curator of Strategic Improv Laboratories and plays drums in the rock band TRANSPACIFIC, as well as the Puget Sound Symphony Orchestra, Federal Way Philharmonic, and Northwest Symphony Orchestra.
Dean Moore is a versatile collaborative and solo percussionist who has performed with the Fisher Ensemble and Animus Orchestra. He is a member of Eye Music, the live foley team for Guy Maddin’s silent film, Brand Upon The Brain, and was a founding member of Circus Contraption.
Ben Morrow won the 2002 Washington-Idaho Symphony Young Artist Competition. Morrow toured the Caribbean playing with the Cardinal Hamilton Trio. He has performed locally with groups such as the Jazz Police, Life in a Blender, the Seattle Children's Theater, and Spectrum Dance Theater.
James Whetzel sings his own West African palm wine guitar songs, recites tabla poetry based on Indian drum beats, and is a skilled Tuvan-style throat singer. His music with percussionist Yaw Asare is featured in the Seattle Art Museum’s Audio Response collection and his DJ mix plays daily in the International Fountain at the Seattle Center.
Librettists
Eugenie Chan is a fourth generation San Franciscan whose forefathers sold slippers in Chinatown, dry goods in the desert, and love in the bordellos. Her plays are published in Lexington Books' Asian American Drama and North American Women Writers and Alta Mira's forthcoming Embodiments of Asian/American and Pacific Islander/American Sexualities.
Bret Fetzer writes plays and fairy tales. He is the Artistic Director of Annex Theatre in Seattle and a board member of Rain City Projects. His new collection of original fairy tales, Eyes Like Stars, will be released in fall 2008.
Aaron Jafferis has performed his hip hop poetry at Madison Square Garden, the Kennedy Center, and the National Poetry Slam Championships. His work Kingdom (music by Ian Williams) won a 2008 Richard Rodgers Award and an award at the 2006 New York Musical Theatre Festival. Jafferis teaches hip hop theatre in high schools, middle schools, and detention centers.
Film director
Vivian Umino received the James Bridges Directing Award, the Women In Film/Paramount Award, and the ABC/Disney New Talent Development Grant. Editing credits include a documentary about director Peter Sellars (PBS, 2005) and the short film What's on Tap? about bottled water.
Choreographer
Edisa Weeks is Artistic Director of DELIRIOUS and a Lecturer in Theater and Dance at Princeton University. Weeks grew up in Uganda, Papua New Guinea and the United States. She has performed with Spencer/Colton Dance, Jane Comfort, Dance Brazil, and Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Co.
Interactive Media Artist
Randy Moss creates installations that explore the fleeting nature of human presence using computers and sensor networks. His installations function as novel recording devices that respond directly to movement with light and sound. Moss' work has been presented at the Center on Contemporary Art and the Jack Straw New Media Gallery.
Researcher, Writer
Erica Howard is an ecologist and assistant professor at Cornish College of the Arts. Her current research looks at the effects of deforestation on waters and wetlands along the Amazon River. Howard has choreographed Along those shores, astir with life and motion… heavily was [the river] breathing and Dancing in the Greenhouse: Come Heat or High Water.