16Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County https://www.creativemoco.comSuzan.Jenkins@creativemoco.com(301) 565-3805

801 Ellsworth Dr
Silver Spring, MD 20910
United States

Jessica Krash
Jessica Krash is a composer and pianist who grew up in Maryland. She was awarded the 2010 "Wammie" for Classical Composer (Washington Area Music Association's version of a Grammy). Her work has been presented in both traditional and experimental settings in New York City, Germany, Austria and most ofthe major performance venues and museums in Washington, DC, including a work for dance and saxophones on the C & O Canal in a thunderstorm.
Robert Baker
Robert A. Baker is a composer, theorist and conductor of new music. His compositions have been programmed on concert series, conferences and at festivals in North America and Europe, including: the St. Magnus, the York Spring New Music, and Didsbury Arts Festivals (UK); Jihlava 2001 lnternational Choral Festival ( Czech Republic); Canadian Contemporary Music Workshop, and Canadian Music Centre Professional Readings Series; Society of Composers, lnc., College Music Society, and FSU Biennial Festival of New Music, and Miami New Music ISCM Festival (USA).
Javier Farias
Composer and classical guitarist Javier Farias (b.1973) is a recent recipient of a New Music USA award, Chilean Council of Culture and the Arts, and a Fromm Music Foundation Commission from Harvard University.
Fernando Benadon
Praised by The New York Times as a composer of "ear-grabbing invention," Fernando Benadon has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Tanglewood's Fromm Foundation Award, Copland House's Aaron Copland Award, the League of Composers/IscM composition prize, MSAC's Individual Artist Award, and UC- Berkeley's Ladd Prize (which funds a two-year residence in Paris). Ensembles that have performed his music include Talea, New York New Music Ensemble, Les Jeunes Solistes, Empyrean, and Continuum.
Rasha Abdulhadi
Rasha grew up between Damascus and rural south Georgia and cut their teeth organizing on the southsides of Chicago and Atlanta. They are a member of the Radius of Arab American Writers and Alternate ROOTS. Their work appears in online and in print, including the anthologies Halal if You Hear Me (Haymarket Press, 2019) and Letters to Octavia E. Butler (Twelfth Planet Press 2017).
Michael Winch
I come from an artistic family. One of my earliest memories is of my mother teaching me how to play piano in our living room, where I first learned how to make music. ln the 3rd grade, I had to choose an instrument for school, and that instrument was the violin. I began private lessons with an instructor who gave me direction in classical technique but who also nurtured any curiosity I held in regard to other genres. My father plays the accordion, and from him I gained an interest in Irish music, the music him and the rest of his side of the family plays.
Dani Cortaza
Dani Cortaza has three decades of artistic life to his credit. This talented musician specializes in Brazilian, Latin jazz and South America folklore, in both nylon and electric jazz guitar. ln addition, he also performs, composes and arranges Latin American folk music. He has appeared in many prestigious concert venues around the world, namely in Japan, Europe, South America and the United States.
Rimi Basu
"My art aims to traverse the distance between traditional and contemporary, East and West, planned and spontaneous. As an American of Indian descent, my dance and music represent a hybrid of my two cultures - an effort to preserve the ancient cultures of India by interpreting them in a modern language and context. My artistic practice means, to me, acting as a conduit for the beauty of lndia's cultural arts in the West. I consider myself on the fringes between two worlds, floating somewhere in between, trying to act as a bridge between them.
Karen Ashbrook
For 40 years Karen Ashbrook has been an international pioneer and advocate for the hammered dulcimer. With Silver Spring, Maryland as home base, she has brought magic of the 76 resonating dulcimer strings to a wide audience, from the young children who attend her summer hedge schools in Irish culture to the elderly and infirm with whom she engages as a certified music practitioner in the healing arts. She has entertained at the John F. Kennedy Center, the Smithsonian Institution and the White House, as well as concert halls and festivals in the U.S. and around the world.
John Deamond
John Deamond, labeling himself an autotype artist, deconstructs photography to investigate the meeting of the human and natural world. He links this border to the borders of what is photographic, breaking the medium into its constituent parts (direct capture, reproducibility, use of light, etc.). In this way, John simultaneously gains insight into how we can redefine the place of photography and our place in nature in the twenty-first century. While his artwork often takes on the appearance of sculpture and installation, its essence is photographic.
Subscribe to Montgomery