2022 #PHCCF Artists
2021 #PHCCF Artists
Annie Darlin Gordon
Annie Darlin Gordon is the Winds Teaching Artist at MYCincinnati, where she teaches flute, oboe, clarinet, and bassoon. Annie earned her Bachelor's and Master's in Music from Oberlin Conservatory and Carnegie Mellon School of Music, respectively. She is a freelance flutist in the Greater Cincinnati area where she plays with regional orchestras, Queen City Opera, and her Wind Quintet, Wayside Winds.
In 2018 Annie completed an AmeriCorps service year with Habitat for Humanity of Greater Cincinnati, after which she worked for a private design and build company. In the summer of 2020, Annie founded Do It Yourself Darlin, a handy-woman service by women, for women in the Price Hill area.
Matthew McAllister
Matthew McAllister is a drummer, percussionist, and composer. Originally from St. Louis, Matthew moved to Cincinnati to attend the University of Cincinnati, College-Conservatory of Music (CCM). He earned a degree in Jazz Studies for Drums in 2013. He then went on to complete a master's degree in Composition at CCM in 2019. In 2012, Matthew studied for one semester at the Universidad de Brasília, where he learned about Brazilian music, native percussion instruments, and learned to speak Portuguese.
While living in Cincinnati, Matthew has performed in a wide variety of jazz music ranging from Big Band, traditional Dixieland, Brazilian jazz, experimental improv, and everything in between. Matthew also directs two of his own original music projects. His trio, Animal Mother, has recorded three studio albums, toured in over twenty-five cities and opened for acts such as Morris Day & The Time, Boney James, Bob Mould (of Husker Dü), and Kamasi Washington. Matthew’s other group, Tough Friend, is a jazz octet that attempts to bridge the gap between classical chamber music and avant garde jazz, mixed with a rock band aesthetic.
When he isn’t writing music for his jazz ensemble, Matthew also enjoys writing music for various classical ensembles. He has written music for saxophone quartets, brass quintets, string instruments, percussion ensembles, and for classical voice.
Matt’s Artist-in-Residence project will be an instrumental composition work shop. Through a series of questions, creative thinking, and decision making, MYCincinnati students will co-create their own original music!
2020 #PHCCF Artists
Elizabeth A. Baker
Eschewing the collection of traditional titles that describe single elements of her body of work, Elizabeth refers to herself as a “New Renaissance Artist” that embraces a constant stream of change and rebirth in practice, which expands into a variety of media, chiefly an exploration of how sonic and spatial worlds can be manipulated to personify a variety of philosophies and principles both tangible as well as intangible. Elizabeth has received international recognition from press, scholars, and the public for her conceptual compositions and commitment to inclusive programming. Fanfare Magazine proclaimed in Fall 2019 “Perhaps Baker will be the Pauline Oliveros of her generation, and perhaps she will be more than that.”
FOR #PHCCF: MYCincinnati musicians, in collaboration with new renaissance artist Elizabeth A. Baker, will embark on a journey of expression using the soundscapes of present realities, self-analysis, research into experimental music, field recording, music composition, and journaling, which will culminate an interactive multimedia digital exhibition released via the Internet for worldwide public consumption. This project focuses heavily on creating and fostering healthy dialogue about creative work product as well as thoughtful interpretation of content developed by others. MYCincinnati musicians will through this project take on a variety of roles including composer, performer, producer, curator, recordist, author, visual artist, and more.
Thanya Iyer
Thanya Iyer is a multi-instrumentalist (violin/piano/voice), composer, arranger and band leader. She grew up submerged in the art of Indian Carnatic vocals, violin and dance. Thanya’s multicultural curiosity led her to collaborate with a variety of artists whether its experimental free jazz, country-blues or Indian fusion. Iyer has performed at festivals across Canada and the U.S., including the Montreal International Jazz Festival and the True/False Film Festival as well as toured across Europe. Thanya’s main projects include Thanya Iyer, a genre-bending experimental pop future folk/jazz collective; and MAWMZ, a 5-piece chamber choir. She has also collaborated as a side-musician and recording artist with many diverse musicians in the thriving art and creative music scene in Montréal such as Common Holly, Corey Gulkin, Raveen, Justin Wright, No Cosmos, Sea Moya, Nick Schofield, Paper Beat Scissors and more. Thanya’s passion for helping others led her to teach music to youth as well as collaborate with INPATH, an organization that connects artists with Indigenous youth across Canada for a teaching/artist residency, where she worked on songwriting and the creation of a visual album with Indigenous Youth. She is currently working on her own visual album and feature film, KIND, a journey of self-love.
FOR PHCCF: Remember when Beyoncé released Lemonade? Have you seen Tierra Whack’s latest video? Did you think…what is a visual album and when can I make one? What are the pieces that we need to create a visual EP? Well now is the time! In this multimedia project, MYCincinnati Youth will explore their own personal voice through songwriting and bring all the pieces together to collectively build a mini Visual Album! We will create lyrics, themes, free write-ideas, create chords and melodies, collage them into a soundtrack and then piece everything with visuals, stop motion, archival footage and create our very own mini film!
Danny Clay
Danny Clay (he/him/his) is a composer and teaching artist whose work is deeply rooted in curiosity, collaboration, and the sheer joy of making things with people of all ages and levels of artistic experience. Working closely with artists, students, and community members alike, he builds worlds of inquiry, play, and perpetual discovery that integrate elements of sound, movement, theater, and visual design. Games, speculative systems, cognitive puzzles, invented notation, found objects, imaginary archives, repurposed media, micro-improvisations, and happy accidents all make frequent appearances in his work. Recent projects include the Bell Ringers, a community music piece for 100+ musicians and non-musicians in collaboration with Third Coast Percussion and the People’s Music School of Chicago, and Echoes, a spoken-word opera created with Kronos Quartet, the Living Earth Show, and six poet-performers from Youth Speaks. Other collaborators include Eighth Blackbird (in partnership with the Modlin Center for the Arts at the University of Richmond), the San Francisco Girls Chorus, 826 Valencia, Volti, Wu Man, Sarah Cahill, Phyllis Chen, and printmaker Jon Fischer.
FOR PHCCF: Danny will collaborate with MYCincinnati musicians to build an immersive public sound installation rooted in the idea of musical games. In addition to creating an experience that can be visited online or recreated remotely offline by members of the community, the team will create a series of DIY activities based around their musical discoveries to share with curious minds of all ages.
Isaac Selya
A musician of remarkable versatility, Isaac Selya has extensive experience as a conductor, pianist, vocal coach, cellist and entrepreneur. He is the founder and Artistic Director of Queen City Opera, where he has led acclaimed performances at the intersection of high-caliber classical opera and social justice, including the world premiere of the critical edition of Weber’s Der Freischütz with a focus on evidence-based approaches to gun violence prevention, a production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni that featured workshops on sexual assault and consent, and the Ohio premiere of Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta in collaboration with the Cincinnati Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired. Equally at home in the symphonic repertoire, Isaac made his German debut conducting the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen in the fall of 2018. He is currently a finalist candidate for the Music Director post at both the Ashland Symphony Orchestra and the Sheboygan Symphony Orchestra, whom he will guest conduct in 2021. Isaac’s work can also be heard on the soundtrack to the award-winning video game, Masquerada: Songs and Shadows. He Holds a doctorate from the University of Cincinnati, where his research focused on depictions of masculinity in Mozart’s operas. He has two cats, named Tosca and Aida.
FOR PHCCF: This project will focus on Holocaust education to start a discussion about the universal lessons we can learn from humanity’s dark hours, as well as the power and importance of the arts in even the most harrowing times. Young musicians from MYC will relate the events of the Holocaust to other historical and contemporary events. The young musicians will also learn about the musical culture that arose at the Ghetto-Concentration Camp of Terezín, where Jewish artists used the music of Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi as an act of defiance. The Young Musicians will compose and record their own responses inspired by the historical material, as well as a section of Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem recorded virtually alongside the professional instrumentalists and singers of the Queen City Opera.
*This project is part of MYCincinnati’s Creative Action Residency, supported by Carnegie Hall’s PlayUSA.
Matthew McAllister
Matthew McAllister is a drummer, percussionist, and composer. Originally from St. Louis, Matthew moved to Cincinnati to attend the University of Cincinnati, College-Conservatory of Music (CCM). He earned a degree in Jazz Studies for Drums in 2013. He then went on to complete a masters degree in Composition at CCM in 2019. In 2012, Matthew studied for one semester at the Universidade de Brasília, where he learned about Brazilian music, native percussion instruments, and learned to speak Portuguese. While living in Cincinnati, Matthew has performed in a wide variety of jazz music ranging from Big Band, traditional Dixieland, Brazilian jazz, experimental improv, and everything in between. Matthew also directs two of his own original music projects. His trio, Animal Mother, has recorded three studio albums, toured in over twenty-five cities and opened for acts such as Morris Day & The Time, Boney James, Bob Mould (of Husker Dü), and Kamasi Washington. Matthew’s other group, Tough Friend, is a jazz octet that attempts to bridge the gap between classical chamber music and avant garde jazz, mixed with a rock band aesthetic. Matthew is a Percussion Teaching Artist at MYCincinnati. Matthew is also an adjunct professor at University of Cincinnati, College-Conservatory of Music and Miami University.
FOR PHCCF: This project will explore dance music from various cultures throughout the Americas, learning about their cultural, political, and social contexts and interpreting them through a contemporary experimental lens. The group will compose new music and dance inspired by existing traditions, and also study how composers throughout history have incorporated these dance forms in their work.
*This project is part of MYCincinnati’s Creative Action Residency, supported by Carnegie Hall’s PlayUSA.
Sabrina Ali
Sabrina Jamal-Eddine is an Arab Spoken Word Poet and musician from Cincinnati currently pursuing her PhD at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Sabrina is focusing her dissertation on the use of ‘Spoken Word Poetry as an innovative form of narrative pedagogy to educate healthcare students, educators, and practitioners about identity-based oppression and the consequential identity-based health inequities.’ Just outside of Columbus, Sabrina founded a spoken word poetry-hiphop literacy program for incarcerated male youth at a juvenile correctional facility as well as a music program at an affirmative action preschool, both of which still thrive today. Sabrina performed a TEDxTalk at The Ohio State University on “Societally-Induced Self-Hatred of Minorities.' Sabrina is passionate about harnessing creativity, innovation, and the power of the narrative to progress toward societal equity.
FOR PHCCF: Sabrina Ali, Malik Kamagte, and Nella King will work together to create and produce a Spoken Word piece in an accessible subtitled-video-audio format that delves into the current state surrounding the various interlocking systems of oppression which the COVID-19 pandemic has uncovered about our “norm”.
Nela King
Nella King is a Black queer musician, artist, yogi, barista, and bartender from Clifton. Nella is an alum of Cincinnati's School for Creative and Performing Arts and has experience with sound engineering, video editing, captioning, and artistic directing. Nella became the youngest euphonium player to be placed in the Symphonic Band and also plays guitar and piano and sings. Nella is currently pursuing her Yoga Instructor Certification in order to hone her skills and give back to her community. Nella is passionate about art in all of its mediums and eventually aspires to open her own business.
FOR PHCCF: Sabrina Ali, Malik Kamagate, and Nella King will work together to create and produce a Spoken Word piece in an accessible subtitled-video-audio format that delves into the current state surrounding the various interlocking systems of oppression which the COVID-19 pandemic has uncovered about our "norm."
Malik Kamagate
Malik Kamagate is a film-maker, photographer, and graphic designer born from African immigrants in Harlem, New York and raised in Westwood in Cincinnati. Malik graduated from Walnut Hills and will be graduating with his Bachelor of Arts from The Ohio State University this coming fall. Malik lives in Cincinnati and specializes in documentaries and photo shoots. Malik hopes to pursue his masters in architecture to fuse and apply concepts of accessibility, quality, and American and African design to create unique and equitable environments and additionally aspires to become a full-time film-maker. Malik is passionate about engaging with diverse communities to create an awareness of social issues and important events.
FOR PHCCF: Sabrina Ali, Malik Kamagate, and Nella King will work together to create and produce a Spoken Word piece in an accessible subtitled-video-audio format that delves into the current state surrounding the various interlocking systems of oppression which the COVID-19 pandemic has uncovered about our "norm."
Dani Clark
Dani Clark is a Cincinnati-based writer, interviewer, and artist whose words often find themselves housed by local writing consultancy, Untold Content, and other times by the publication, Women of Cincy. Dani is part of Continuance, a community arts collective that takes memories and turns them into art.
FOR PHCCF: Our place-based memory performance, Directions to Here: Price Hill, celebrates and honors the physical places and not-so-physical memories of Price Hill residents. It is a collaboration between the Continuance Collective (Dani, Mak, Myra), Cincinnati-based photographer, Catie Viox, and the residents of Price Hill. We’ll be presenting a video memory tour that blends recorded audio memories collected from community members, map imagery, and photographs of the people and places of the Price Hill neighborhood—a dynamic virtual walking tour with community memories as the tour guide. Once viewers click “play” they will slowly travel through the map of Price Hill and will see images of neighborhood landmarks as they hear the residents’ personal memories at each location. During a time when staying at home is strongly encouraged, we’re offering the community another way to engage with the people and places within their neighborhood, and the memories made there.
Catie Viox
Catie Viox is a Cincinnati-based photographer and image-maker whose work can be seen in various local media outlets including Cincinnati Refined and Venue Magazine. She recently completed a collaborative portrait series, titled People of Price Hill, and exhibited her collection Synthetic at the Clifton Cultural Arts Center. Catie is part of Continuance, a community arts collective that takes memories and turns them into art.
FOR PHCCF: Our place-based memory performance, Directions to Here: Price Hill, celebrates and honors the physical places and not-so-physical memories of Price Hill residents. It is a collaboration between the Continuance Collective (Dani, Mak, Myra), Cincinnati-based photographer, Catie Viox, and the residents of Price Hill. We’ll be presenting a video memory tour that blends recorded audio memories collected from community members, map imagery, and photographs of the people and places of the Price Hill neighborhood—a dynamic virtual walking tour with community memories as the tour guide. Once viewers click “play” they will slowly travel through the map of Price Hill and will see images of neighborhood landmarks as they hear the residents’ personal memories at each location. During a time when staying at home is strongly encouraged, we’re offering the community another way to engage with the people and places within their neighborhood, and the memories made there.
Makenzie Vail
Makenzie Vail is a creative communicator who finds new ways to share thought and information daily. She is currently unemployed and living for it and the freedom it allows her to create art whenever she wants. Makenzie is part of Continuance, a community arts collective that takes memories and turns them into art.
FOR PHCCF: Our place-based memory performance, Directions to Here: Price Hill, celebrates and honors the physical places and not-so-physical memories of Price Hill residents. It is a collaboration between the Continuance Collective (Dani, Mak, Myra), Cincinnati-based photographer, Catie Viox, and the residents of Price Hill. We’ll be presenting a video memory tour that blends recorded audio memories collected from community members, map imagery, and photographs of the people and places of the Price Hill neighborhood—a dynamic virtual walking tour with community memories as the tour guide. Once viewers click “play” they will slowly travel through the map of Price Hill and will see images of neighborhood landmarks as they hear the residents’ personal memories at each location. During a time when staying at home is strongly encouraged, we’re offering the community another way to engage with the people and places within their neighborhood, and the memories made there.
Myrah Morehart
Myra Morehart is an oral historian steeped in the changing landscape of Cincinnati who has collected interviews for the OTR Museum and currently works for Everything But The House. She also has led audio and video projects for the Women of Cincy’s Multimedia Team. Myra is part of Continuance, a community arts colective that takes memories and turns them into art.
FOR PHCCF: Our place-based memory performance, Directions to Here: Price Hill, celebrates and honors the physical places and not-so-physical memories of Price Hill residents. It is a collaboration between the Continuance Collective (Dani, Mak, Myra), Cincinnati-based photographer, Catie Viox, and the residents of Price Hill. We’ll be presenting a video memory tour that blends recorded audio memories collected from community members, map imagery, and photographs of the people and places of the Price Hill neighborhood—a dynamic virtual walking tour with community memories as the tour guide. Once viewers click “play” they will slowly travel through the map of Price Hill and will see images of neighborhood landmarks as they hear the residents’ personal memories at each location. During a time when staying at home is strongly encouraged, we’re offering the community another way to engage with the people and places within their neighborhood, and the memories made there.
David Abraham
A native Portlander, David Abraham is devoted to seeking new ways to explore percussion as a performer and teaching-artist.
David is a founding member of All of the Above ensemble. After several appearances at Carnegie Hall, the new music ensemble’s debut album, Double Portrait, was released in 2020. He also co-founded “dosa” with saxophonist Om Srivastava - a saxophone-percussion duo formed from their close friendship and common adoration of music, film, basketball, and chai.
David has performed alongside members of Eighth Blackbird, Bang on a Can All-Stars, and Percussion Group Cincinnati, and has also previously been selected as a Fellow at the Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival, Cortona Sessions for New Music, and SICPP.
Currently residing in Boston, David earned his Doctor of Musical Arts degree (DMA) from CCM. Expect him to be enthusiastic about Manchester United, The Los Angeles Lakers, The Denver Broncos, South Park, and Metallica.
FOR PHCCF: This performance consists of a video dedicated to the of the legacy of non-violent civil disobedience. Visuals consist of textual story-telling via recorded quotes and rallying cries throughout various eras of non-violent resistance from the Indian Independence movement through Martin Luther King Jr's civil rights movement, to our present crisis. An original, electronic score composed and performed by dosa accompanies the film.
Om Srivastava
Om Srivastava is the Adjunct Instructor of Saxophone at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and Xavier University. He is a passionate performer of contemporary and world music.
Om has been named finalist in the international Coleman Chamber Competition and semi-finalist in the North American Saxophone Alliance Competition. In 2017 he released his solo debut Antara on Teal Creek Records. Om was awarded a 2015 IndianRaga Fellowship for world music and in 2017 was named a Fellow at the New Music Sessions in Cortona, Italy.
Notable collaborations include performing alongside Fareed Haque at the Lincoln Center, and the RagaTone Ensemble at The Public Theatre in New York City. Om’s most recent recording is 7th Life, recorded with tabla virtuoso Jim Feist available on vinyl. Along with percussionist David Abraham, Om is a founding member of dosa, a multimedia, electro-acoustic duo. Om holds a Doctor of Musical Arts from CCM.
FOR PHCCF: This performance consists of a video dedicated to the of the legacy of non-violent civil disobedience. Visuals consist of textual story-telling via recorded quotes and rallying cries throughout various eras of non-violent resistance from the Indian Independence movement through Martin Luther King Jr's civil rights movement, to our present crisis. An original, electronic score composed and performed by dosa accompanies the film.
Lexie Bean
Lexie Bean is a queer and trans multi-media artist from the Midwest. Their work in film, literature, and curation revolves around themes of bodies, homes, cyclical violence, and LGBTQIA+ identity. Lexie is a Lambda Literary Award Finalist and passionate about creating honest and complex trans narratives that “transition and grow” alongside them. They speak on trans inclusion in the #MeToo movement at universities and their work has been featured in Teen Vogue, Them, The New York Times, Bust Magazine, Kirkus Reviews, and more. The Ship We Built with Penguin Random House is their debut novel supported with residencies at the Sundress Academy, Paragraph New York, and the Santa Cruz Bookshop.
FOR PHCCF: Our performance is first and foremost a resource for people who are isolated in unsupportive homes. It presents self-preservation strategies to those who rely on media and imagination to withstand in potentially abusive environments
The composition is based on Lexie’s experience growing up in Michigan and Ohio, which we’ve all processed through our respective art forms. These iterations of inspiration and reformation ultimately led us to a video collage and soundscore that seek to buoy the main text: an ode to imagination, a scavenger hunt, a survival guide. Our hope is to bolster the viewer’s capacity for imaginative resilience.
Daniel Lobb
Daniel Lobb is a Louisville-based songwriter and multi-media artist working within vernacular traditions to unravel binaries. His work seeks to illuminate the culture of dominance that structures our society, and ways that it can be subverted. He is the songwriter behind So It Was, who released their debut album in 2019 on Daniel Martin Moore’s OK Recordings. After appearing alongside great Kentucky artists (Bell Hooks, Jim James, Wendell Berry, etc) on The Pine Mountain Sessions (a benefit album to protect wild lands), Lobb is motivated to continue finding creative ways to collaborate on artistic responses to local and global challenges.
FOR PHCCF: Our performance is first and foremost a resource for people who are isolated in unsupportive homes. It presents self-preservation strategies to those who rely on media and imagination to withstand in potentially abusive environments.
The composition is based on Lexie’s experience growing up in Michigan and Ohio, which we’ve all processed through our respective art forms. These iterations of inspiration and reformation ultimately led us to a video collage and soundscore that seek to buoy the main text: an ode to imagination, a scavenger hunt, a survival guide.Our hope is to bolster the viewer’s capacity for imaginative resilience.
Alexis Marsh
Alexis Marsh: is a film and television composer with credits ranging from shorts on Sesame Street to the television series, Animal Kingdom on TNT, to the feature film, Next Gen, on Netflix. Her score work has been heard at the Sundance, Cannes, SXSW, and Tribeca Film Festivals, and her songwriting has been featured on the television shows Lucifer, Better Things, Jessica Jones, Impulse, and Truth Be Told. She performs her songs as DYAN, and resides in Cincinnati with her partner and son.
FOR PHCCF: Our performance is first and foremost a resource for people who are isolated in unsupportive homes. It presents self-preservation strategies to those who rely on media and imagination to withstand in potentially abusive environments.
The composition is based on Lexie’s experience growing up in Michigan and Ohio, which we’ve all processed through our respective art forms. These iterations of inspiration and reformation ultimately led us to a video collage and soundscore that seek to buoy the main text: an ode to imagination, a scavenger hunt, a survival guide.Our hope is to bolster the viewer’s capacity for imaginative resilience.
Dan Dorff Jr.
Dan Dorff Jr: (Dan Junior, Daniel Joseph Dorff), is an American musician and composer who has toured and recorded with DYAN, Jim James, Ray Lamontagne, Over the Rhine and many others. He has released three albums under his own name, NOW!, Living Room, and Cover.
FOR PHCCF: Our performance is first and foremost a resource for people who are isolated in unsupportive homes. It presents self-preservation strategies to those who rely on media and imagination to withstand in potentially abusive environments.
The composition is based on Lexie’s experience growing up in Michigan and Ohio, which we’ve all processed through our respective art forms. These iterations of inspiration and reformation ultimately led us to a video collage and soundscore that seek to buoy the main text: an ode to imagination, a scavenger hunt, a survival guide.Our hope is to bolster the viewer’s capacity for imaginative resilience.
KNOTTS
KNOTTS has hints of an indie dream pop band but is hard to put your finger on. Knots are shape shifters, that can be untied, cut free and started again. That same pleasant unpredictability is found in KNOTTS. The band seamlessly weaves through art pop, folk and R&B sensibilities. The band is composed of Cincy locals, CJ Eliasen (drummer), Jordan Wilson (guitarist) Antoine Franklin (keyboardist) and Adalia Powell-Boehne (songwriter, vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist). Adalia Powell-Boehne’s songwriting and honest and tender vocals carry the endeavor. Adalia creates beautiful melodies filled with the most earnest of thoughts. That might sound like faint praise, but in a world full of boastful lyrics and show-off vocal hysterics, her music always feels intimate, thoughtful and real. Adalia possesses a truly one-of-a kind plaintive voice that grounds all her songs with a strong sense of someone searching for her place in the world. On many of her compositions, when she's singing over a simple arrangement on the electric guitar or harmonizing with herself, you get this amazing paradox of music that manages to be forceful and delicate at the same time. The melodies are tender, but always delivered in the voice of someone who knows exactly what she wants to say.
Louis Rideout
Louis Rideout (or Rideout) is a self taught photographer and event curator residing in Cincinnati by way of Detroit. Rideout’s focus is primarily on people, music, and events. His goal is to either find or create Beauty in places you forgot to look.
FOR PHCCF: Rideout will be presenting his photography and narration attributed to the current social uprisings against anti-Black violence.
2019 #PHCCF Artists
Shara Nova
Born in "The Diamond state" of Arkansas to a family of musical traveling evangelists, Shara Nova (formerly Worden) moved across America throughout her youth, then went on to study classical voice at The University of North Texas. After moving to New York City, she assembled her chamber pop band, My Brightest Diamond in 2001, subsequently releasing four albums on Asthmatic Kitty Records and most recently releasing A Million And One, a dance pop tribute to Detroit where she currently lives. Nova has composed works for yMusic, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Young New Yorkers' Chorus, Brooklyn Rider, Nadia Sirota and Roomful of Teeth among others. Her orchestrations have been performed by the Aarhus Symfoni, North Carolina Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony, American Composers Orchestra and the BBC Concert orchestra. Her baroque chamber p’opera “You Us We All” premiered in the US in October 2015 at BAM Next Wave Festival. Many composers, songwriters and filmmakers have sought out Nova’s voice, including David Lang, David Byrne, The Decemberists, Bryce Dessner, Steve Mackey, Sarah Kirkland Snider, Sufjan Stevens and Matthew Barney. Nova is a Kresge fellow, a Carolina Performing Arts Creative Futures fellow, a Knights Grant recipient and a United States Artists fellow.
Jennie Wright
Sankofa Experience
45 year old Cincinnati native, Jennie "Black Budda'fly" Wright, is devoted to delivering truth inside imaginary experiences. She is the creator, director and producer of Coochie Chronicles: The Spoken Word Stage Play. A groundbreaking work that explored the stereotypes and realities of women of color and enjoyed an 11 year run in the tri-state and the black college circuit.
A former nationally ranked slam poet, she was a member of the first slam team to represent Cincinnati. She also served as the slam master for the city of Cincinnati leading a team to Poetry Slam International twice and the college slam team she founded and advised to the Academy of College Unions International Poetry Slam.
Cosplay meets cosmic possibilities. Using the power of the mind and harmonics you will don the dress of the day and travel through time and space to 1920-1940s Harlem, New York, Planet Earth. We will observe, interact and retrieve lost artistic and cultural legacies from the Harlem Renaissance through scavenger hunts and docent interactions. This unique excursion is chock full of amazing live music, history and the art of the Harlem Renaissance.
Byda Circo
¡El vecindario es un circo!
BYDA Circo is a homemade Mexican circus group formed in 2016 by Glenda Livier and brothers Bruno and Diego Alvarez. The term BYDA (sounding Bee-Da, just like "Vida" the word for life in Spanish) represents our choice to join the circus life as a way to dedicate ourselves to art. Juggling, riding unicycles, doing acrobatics, going from one place to another and becoming silly clowns are some of the things we enjoy about this lifestyle.
What is a circus?? It all goes back to the circle... like the circular shaped stage. But this also has a much more profound meaning: a whole. Circus is a whole!! It is complete!!! We believe neighborhoods are like circles and every person in the community is equally valuable and important as everyone else. We are all interconnected somehow and only by working together can we make the greatest show on Earth possible.
Roberto
The Last Day of Summer
Hip Hop artist Roberto has filled rooms in Cincinnati, Ohio and across the country with his poetic lyrical stylings, accompanied by self composed, golden-era-meets-jazz influenced backtracks since 2016, steadily building a sizable audience through SoundCloud along the way. Often performed and/or recorded with a mix of live, improvisational instrumentation and classic hip hop production techniques, much of Roberto’s music encapsulates a different element with each listen, drawing influence from all of the artist’s musical endeavors, whether it be playing in a drumline in the Grand Parade de Paris, or studying guitar in a dingy practice room in rural Ohio.
The Last Day of Summer will overall be an empathetic learning experience through music, with the goal of understanding the importance and impact of a singular, fleeting moment, as well as a tribute to Roberto’s late, intermittent mentor, Scott Woolley. Through conversation and collaboration the artist will learn what inspires the students and vice versa, combining the strongest and most fitting elements of these to create a uniquely stylized composition with the purpose of depicting and reflecting upon the lasting impression of a bittersweet memory.
2018 #PHCCF Artists
Tomeka Reid
Intro to Improvisational Concepts and Composition Techniques for Mixed Ensemble
Recently described as a "New Jazz Power Source" by the New York Times, Chicago cellist and composer Tomeka Reid has emerged as one of the most original, versatile, and curious musicians in Chicago's bustling jazz and improvised music community over the last decade. Her disctinctive melodic sensibility, usually braided to a strong sense of groove, has been featured in many distinguished ensembles over the years. Reid has been a key member of ensembles led by legendary reedists like Anthony Braxton and Roscoe Mitchell, as well as a younger generation of visionaries including flutist Nicole Mitchell, singer Dee Alexander, and drummer Mike Reed.
Students will develop, compose, and perform their own collectively composed compositions, will lead their own ensemble using conduction and be exposed to the language music principles based on the work of Anthony Braxton.
Collaborative
Collaborative: [col] + [labore]
Collaborative is a group of artists whom have never worked together before and as a result have no bio of past successes or failures. Each artists in the collaboration has their own personal history with their selected discipline(s) and a variety of interests; including, but not limited to, art therapy/mental health, performance/interdisciplinary art, social activism, human experience, composition, and sound art.
Collaborate, a verb used to represent working together, can be clouded in action by worry and pride. Are we able to live the verb and do it justice - reflect the roots of the word, [col]+[labore] which translate to: to labor together". Collaborative raises questions about artist residencies, collaborations and artists for hire by organizations. Can artists work for one another rather than compete for a few coveted positions?
In this residency artists may change their involvement during the course of the project, invite others to contribute, or decide to work with a medium they are less experienced with:additionally, all students will be considered artists in residence, rather than participants. Collaborative is an opportunity for adult and student artists to reflect on the action of "collaborating." The large amount of people, varying opinions and lack of predetermined structure will ask for all involved to implement high levels of compromise, forgiveness and compassion.
The group will create a new interdisciplinary project for the festival that incorporates interactive D.I.Y activities and an interdisciplinary performance combining movement, new compositions, sound art, visual art, puppetry, sculpture/installation, spoken word, performance art, and whatever else the group decides. Follow us on Instagram @col_labore and if you have the desire to indeed collaborate - drop a message and let us know!
Jarrod Cann
The Last Day of Summer
Jarrod Cann is a filmmaker and music lover. He often keeps two avocados and a copy of Air Bud 3D in his backpack in preparation for Y2k. Jarrod is currently struggling to escape The Internet. In 2016, his film GOOD WHITE PEOPLE: A Short Film About Gentrification won several awards including the Camden International Film Festival’s Best Short Doc of 2016. In early 2018, Jarrod launched Potentiator -- a media company dedicated to exploring stories about identity, culture, and activism in America. He continues to work on his first feature-length documentary titled, Let The Gods Dance, the story of a teenage boy who challenges caste prejudice with the power of percussion in post-colonial Himalayas of Uttarakhand, India. A film that currently needs your support!
What do we mean when we use terms like “urban renewal”, "revitalization", and "gentrification"? Who do these practices serve and who has the power to access to the tools of development? Whose stories and who's visions are at risk of erasure? How do the residents of a city determine and influence the agents of change in their own neighborhood? Eyes on the Hillside is a team-driven audiovisual storytelling project driven by these questions resulting in a live score influenced by and synchronized to a short film made by the students of MYCincinnati. By documenting the personal narratives of Price Hill residents the project will help to start a conversation about racial identities, class conflicts, and their relationship to the geography of power in one of many neighborhoods in Cincinnati experiencing “urban renewal”.
Josiah Wolf
One Plutonian Year
Josiah Wolf graduated from CCM in 1999 and has been performing and recording ever since. Some of his musical projects include WHY? and dream tiger. More recently he found a passion for astronomy. The question of perspective and scale have always been of interest and in 2015 he received a People’s Liberty grant to construct a scale model of the solar system entitled SPACE WALK. Last year, again through PL, Josiah and his wife, Liz, constructed a sound/light installation entitled Orbital Resonance. This was the prototype for One Plutonian Year which will be performed by the MYCincinnati Cosmic Ensemble.
This piece’s goal is to give the audience and performers a real sense of how the orbital periods of Pluto, the eight planets and the seven largest moons in our solar system relate to one another through a series of musical themes and moving lights. The performance begins with Pluto's theme then each planet and moon enter one at a time until they are all playing together creating a 360 degree emersion of competing yet harmonious sounds, rhythms and lights. After pluto has completed one orbit around the sun the piece finishes with Pluto's theme once again.
2017 #PHCCF Artists
Elese Daniel
Caller ID
Elese Daniel is a poet. She is a board member of Chase Public and currently the Writer in Residence at WordPlay Cincy. She often rides a bicycle, mostly to play bike polo. She has three poems forthcoming in soft magazine.
Caller ID is a poetic concert discussing identity, culture and communication through family relationships, inquiry and (re)discovery. Local poet Elese Daniel and MYCincinnati musicians will collaboratively weave through a poetic narrative and soundscape inviting us into their worlds and our own. Knowing more about ourselves and others can often start with hello.
Siri Imani
Lost Generation
Siri Imani is quickly emerging as one of the Midwest’s young, black voices. Her poetry is infused with hard truths, tough love and visions of a better tomorrow.
Never has an artist been more open and honest on the stage than Siri Imani. She weaves together song and poetry to tell powerful stories of love and liberation; state and personal violence; social/ environmental/racial and sexual justice; women’s empowerment and human transcendence.
She openly, poetically reflects on her life as a lesbian, black, inner city youth and former college athlete. Siri Imani is a boundary-breaking soul sister who has sharpened her art as a tool for popular education, community organizing and personal transcendence. She is a warrior woman writer not afraid to tell her personal truths and making biting social commentary on the world we live in.
Lost Generation will be a mixed genre production using spoken word poetry, visual art, dance, and music. A frank, melodic exploration into the lives, stereotypes, and realities of what so many called a “Lost Generation” (millennials and generations Y & Z). Featuring a youth collective of poets, lyricists, dancers, and musicians, all under the guidance of Siri, the performance will explore issues of mental health, fluidity in sexuality, spirituality, bullying, homelessness, acceptance, and personal transcendence.
Kaneza Schaal
Jack&Jill
Kaneza Schaal is a New York City based artist. She came up in the downtown experimental theater community, first working with The Wooster Group, then with other companies and artists including Elevator Repair Service, Richard Maxwell/New York City Players, Dean Moss, Claude Wampler, Jay Scheib, Jim Findlay, New York City Opera, and National Public Radio. This work brought her to over 18 countries and venues including Centre Pompidou, Royal Lyceum Theater Edinburgh, REDCAT, The Whitney Museum, BAM, The Kitchen, St. Ann’s Warehouse, and MoMA.
Schaal received a 2016 Creative Capital Award to develop her next work, JACK&JILL. Schaal was an Artist-in-Residence at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, and received a 2014 Princess Grace Award grant, LMCC Process Space residency, Bogliasco Fellowship, Nathan Cummings Foundation grant, Foundation for Contemporary Art Emergency Grant, and Princess Grace George C. Wolfe Award. She was a member of Kara Walker’s 6-8 Months Space and her video work appeared in Visionaire.
JACK&JILL is a comedy of errors structured on social codes and trainings from prison re-entry programs to debutante balls. The performance considers the metric-less damages of being in prison; not the time one has served but the measure of one’s dreaming that is given to the state. Aspirational class stories found in 1950’s sitcoms like the Honeymooners and Amos and Andy intersect with real and imagined entering-society ceremonies like debutante balls. Directed by Kaneza Schaal and starring Cornell Alston, the artists explore markers of transition and transformation, and the liminal ritual spaces that bridge worlds. MYCincinnati musicians will collaborate with Schaal to present an in-progress performance. The complete work will be premiered at the Contemporary Arts Center during the 2017-18 Black Box Performance Series season.
Jordana Greenberg
Music & Changing the World
Jordana Greenberg is a multi-genre musician who has performed on five continents as a violinist and singer. Dubbed "one of the finest lyricists in the Americana world" (No Surf Review), Jordana is also the primary songwriter and founder of the internationally touring chamber-folk trio Harpeth Rising. She studied with Miriam Fried at both Indiana University and New England Conservatory in Boston. Jordana once won first place in her age division at a really hilly 5k race in Bedford, Indiana. She loves dogs, cooking and crocheting. A resident of of Price Hill since November 2016, Jordana already loves Cincinnati a LOT.
Music and Changing the World: Protest Songs from the Folk, Blues and Spiritual Traditions, Volume 1 // Music has been the sustaining life-force of peoples throughout history, and protest songs have served as a reminder that whatever else is taken from us, our voices will find a way. This program strives to celebrate the music of several different cultures and social movements - songs that inspired action, soothed violence, facilitated discussion, and which continue to influence our lives and our approach to the current world. From condemnation of the government to the demand for freedom to the celebration of life, we examine what it means to stand up for an idea through the power of music.
Intermedio
Zeitgeber
Intermedio is a trio of interdisciplinary artists including Eric Blyth, Sam Ferris-Morris, and Justin West. Often taking on multiple roles as artists, architects, designers, musicians, and programmers, the members of Intermedio collaborate to design and realize immersive environments, performances and installations. Their work has been made for a wide range of events and venues, including museums, DIY spaces, festivals, residential installations, and Maker Faires. Rooting their practice in music composition, they often collaborate with ensembles and individuals to develop interdisciplinary performances which consider and expand the traditional concept of concert experiences.
A Zeitgeber is an environmental cue, such as light, which influences the timing of internal biological clocks that regulate all of the body’s functions. This piece juxtaposes biological time with machine time and explores what happens when they intersect.
Performed in a darkened room, each performer is paired with a free-standing light. The light’s purpose is twofold: to be a visual connection to the music and to react and communicate musical ideas across the ensemble. The light patterns are controlled both by the computer and by the performers generating the musical form through rules which utilize the light as a visual score. Suite-like in conception, different rules will delineate a set of pieces which generate totally new musical features with each performance. The result is an immersive audio and visual experience for both performers and audience.
2016 #PHCCF Artists
Lazy Heart
Music for Bleep Bloop
Lazy Heart is an experimental rock band comprised of MYCincinnati Teaching Artists Stephen Patota, Ben Sloan, and Josh Fink. Known for their lilting melodies, virtuosic instrumental textures, unpredictable rhythms, and subversive lyrics, Lazy Heart is a legend of the Cincinnati underground. Recalling the sounds of Deerhoof, OOIOO, Grizzly Bear, and Dirty Projectors, Lazy Heart lures you in and then spits you out.
Music for bleep bloop is an ever- expanding collection of musical vignettes and experiments. MYCincinnati students joined forces with Lazy Heart to create a series of psychedelic textures and bright melodies, interweaving layers of harmony and jagged rhythm. music for bleep bloop aimed to blur the line between acoustic and electronic sound, while also sharing with MYCincinnati musicians the raw sound and power of amplified instrumentation.
Napoleon Maddox
Recent Sightings of Millie-Christine
A "pillar of positivity" (CityBeat), Napoleon Maddox is a true Hip-hop ambassador. As a producer, human beatbox artist, vocalist, DJ and leader of a Hip-hop band called ISWHAT?!, Napoleon has created and performed music for cable and Public Television programs in the US and for The Arte network in Europe, North Africa and Middle East. He has worked with highly respected Hip-hop, Rock, Jazz and Classical musicians including Chuck D, DJ Spinna, DJ Logic, Archie Shepp, Vernon Reid and Les Paul. He has worked with the US Embassy and Departments of Cultural Affairs in England, France, Estonia, Serbia, Germany and Morocco.
During the 4 week Artist-in-Residence program, MYCincinnati students explored the life stories of Napoleon's great-grand-aunts, Millie-Christine. Born into slavery in the state of North Carolina (1851) Millie-Christine lived to be known as the longest living conjoined twins. They passed away in 1912.
Pulling from those conversations poetry, narrative. and soundscape, the group formed a program of music and spoken word that brought the phenomenal conjoined twins from the 1850's into 2016. This project was also supported by Cincinnati CAC, Festival Banlieues Bleues - Paris, FR, LaRodia - Besançon, FR & The Kampala Biennial - Kampala, Uganda.
Isaac Karns
Starpoke and the Sky Roundup
Isaac Karns is a musician, songwriter and producer currently based in Cincinnati, Ohio. A long time member of acclaimed indie-pop band Pomegranates, Karns is passionate about expanding auditory expression through collaboration and exuberant experimentation. Currently operating a recording studio in downtown, Karns enjoys recording and producing a kaleidoscopic range of artists.
Karns teamed up with visual artist Emiline Sites to create an animated silent film chronicling the adventures of an intergalactic space cowboy. Drawing inspiration from Cincinnati's rich cultural history, the film will was accompanied by a live soundtrack performed by Karns and the musicians of MYCincinnati. Dreamy, funky, spacey, cowboys.
