Faculty

Centrum Faculty

This skilled creative collective could wrap their arms around the globe. Much respect, big hugs.

Photo of Alejandro Jimenez

Alejandro Jimenez

Faculty

ALEJANDRO JIMENEZ is a nationally and internationally recognized poet from Colima, Mexico. He was featured in TIME Magazine as one of 80 Mexican artists shaping contemporary Mexican culture. His work, and story, are the subject of a short documentary for the PBS series, American Masters: In The Making, which highlights emerging cultural icons.…

Photo of Lakota John

Lakota John

Slide Guitar

Lakota John is a musician, producer and songwriter from Southeastern, North Carolina. Influenced by his dads music collection, he picked up the guitar at 7 years old and learned to play left-handed as well as slide guitar in standard tuning. Lakota John blends styles of Folk, Blues, Rock & Jazz with various instruments while mixing in part of his Indigenous heritage with sounds of the Native American flute.…

Photo of Rhys Jones

Rhys Jones

Virginia
fiddle

Rhys Jones has been playing traditional Appalachian, French-Canadian and Irish fiddle music for 30 years. Born in Chicago, he began his fiddling at age 7 in the fertile environment of the Chicago Barn Dance Company. Soon after, his family moved to southern West Virginia where he learned from the older generation of fiddlers, including Ernie Carpenter, Melvin Wine, Glen Smith and Wilson Douglas.…

Photo of Reverend Robert Jones

Reverend Robert Jones

Guitar

Rev. Robert Jones, Sr. is a native Detroiter and an inspirational storyteller and musician celebrating the history, humor and power of American Roots music. His deep love for traditional African American and American traditional music is shared in live performances that interweave timeless stories with original and traditional songs.

Photo of Bettina Judd

Bettina Judd

Morning Workshop Faculty

Bettina Judd is an interdisciplinary writer, artist and performer whose research focus is on Black women’s creative production and use of visual art, literature, and music to develop feminist thought. Her book Feelin: Creative Practice, Pleasure, and Black Feminist Thought (Northwestern University Press, December 2022) argues that Black women’s creative production is feminist knowledge production produced by registers of affect she calls “feelin.” She is currently Associate Professor of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington.…

Photo of Aiden Kane

Aiden Kane

American violist Aiden Kane has performed in North America, Europe, and Asia as a current member of the Viano Quartet, First Prize Laureates of the 2019 Banff International String Quartet Competition.

After leaving violin for the dark side, Aiden first studied viola with Daniel Foster through the National Symphony Orchestra’s Youth Fellowship Program.…

Photo of Shari Kane

Shari Kane

Guitar

Shari started playing guitar at the age of five. By the early 1970’s she had become a devoted blues fan, and learned how to play fingerstyle blues on the acoustic guitar.

Photo of Mara Kaye

Mara Kaye

Faculty

Referred to by Jazz Lives as “one of New York’s great gifts to the world,” blues and jazz vocalist Mara Kaye is “like some lost pocket of the blues that had never been explored in the old days, all wrapped up in a ball of 21st-century Brooklyn-bred attitude.” For over a decade she has traveled internationally and throughout the US, sharing legendary stages with champions of the genre, singing beloved songs of the past with a deep passion and respect for its original storytellers.

Photo of Aaron and Nicole Keim

Aaron and Nicole Keim

Co-Artistic Directors

The Quiet American is husband and wife duo, Aaron and Nicole Keim. In Hood River, Oregon, they live an artistic life: making music, building musical instruments, teaching music, writing books, crafting folk art,and raising their 10-year-old son Henry. Their connection to folk tradition is undeniable, even as they find new ways to sing old songs and incorporate music and art into their teaching and performing.…

Photo of Johnaye Kendrick

Johnaye Kendrick

Faculty

Vocalist

Johnaye Kendrick is a 2-time Grammy® Award-winning vocalist, arranger, composer, orchestrator, and multi-instrumentalist whose work bridges innovation and tradition. With a Master of Music from Loyola University and an Artist Diploma from the Herbie Hancock Institute, Johnaye brings her dynamic artistry to both original compositions and reimagined jazz classics. A committed educator, she serves as Professor of Music at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle.…