Kelle Jolly
Kelle Jolly—known as the “Tennessee Ukulele Lady”—is a celebrated musician, vocalist, and storyteller who blends academic training with lived artistry. A graduate of South Carolina State University (B.S. in Music Education) and East Tennessee State University (M.A. in Communication and Storytelling Studies), she has become a leading voice in Appalachian music and culture.
Kelle is the founder of the Women in Jazz Jam Festival and Ukesphere of Knoxville Ukulele Club, and her career spans international tours, theater productions, festival stages, and film soundtracks.…
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.…
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.
A. Van Jordan
Morning Workshop Faculty
A. Van Jordan is the author of five collections of poetry, including Rise (Tia Chucha Press, 2001), winner of the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Award; M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A (W.W.…
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.…
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.…
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.
Anna Kaufman
Anna Kaufman is an artist and environmentalist originally from Los Angeles, CA. Currently based in Portland, OR, Kaufman explores art as a means of information sharing, connection, and empowerment in the era of anthropogenic climate change and intensifying environmental crises. She holds a BA in Environmental Studies with concentrations in earth science and visual arts from Vassar College.
Mara Kaye
Voice
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.
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.…