Don Stiernberg
Faculty
Don Stiernberg has been a professional musician for nearly 50 years. Along the way he has been involved in performing, writing, recording, producing, and teaching but is best known for his mandolin playing. His path was set very early on as he grew up north of Chicago. Emulating his older brother, he experimented with playing various stringed instruments, finally landing on the mandolin.
Damon Stone
Blues Dance
Damon has been dancing his entire life, starting with vernacular Jazz/Blues first taught to him at the tender age of six by his grandmother. After nearly a decade of learning at the heels of his elders, he went on and eventually studied numerous dance forms until coming full circle in 1995 to focus primarily on the history and styles of partner dances as his family danced them with a special focus on the Southern Blues styles from the Mississippi Delta region.…
Kelsy Lynn Stone
Blues Dance
Kelsy brings her lifetime of dance training, a passion for vernacular dance, and a sharp eye for technique to the Blues dance world. She has brought her joy and knowledge of Blues idiom dances to some of the most important and high-profile events in the USA and across five continents, including but not limited to: bluesSHOUT!, The Experiment, Muse, Hearken the Blues, and Seoul Blues Dance Festival-serving as faculty, mentor, competition coordinator, and judge.…
Jonathan Stout
Guitar
Los Angeles-based guitarist and bandleader Jonathan Stout is well-known to swing dancers everywhere for the wonderful dance orchestra he leads, but any fan of swing guitar currently stalking the internet knows him for the beautiful touch he brings to relaxed swinging versions of standards played chord-melody style on an array of prized old archtop guitars
Robert Stubblefield
Afternoon Workshop Faculty
Robert Stubblefield has published fiction and personal essays in Dreamers and Desperadoes: Contemporary Short Fiction of the American West, Best Stories of the American West, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Left Bank, The Clackamas Literary Review, Cascadia Times, Oregon Humanities, Oregon Salmon: Essays on the State of the Fish at the Turn of the Millennium, Open Spaces, basalt, High Desert Journal, and The Whitefish Review among others.…
Alexandre Cadarso Suárez
with Kevin Carr
Galicia, Spain
fiddle, gaita, percussion, culture
Alexandre Cadarso Suárez was born in Compostela in 1961. He holds a PhD in Sports Sciences, Physical Education and Healthy Physical Activity from the University of A Coruña. He currently works in the Sports Area of the University of Santiago de Compostela.
Alexandre began his musical training in 1977, learning to play the bagpipes with Maestro Bartolo and later with Manuel Miramontes.…
Kweku Sumbry
Faculty
Drums
Grounded in the traditions of the Djembe Orchestra, Kweku Sumbry is a multi-percussionist from Washington, DC. With the djembe, drumset, and a multitude of West African Percussion instruments, Kweku is bringing forth a new sound to the jazz world. He began his studies as a toddler under the tutelage of Mahiri Fadjimba Keita, Mamady Keita, and Djiali Djimo Kouyate.
Helen Sung
Faculty
Piano
Helen Sung is an acclaimed jazz pianist and composer, and a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow. A native of Houston, Texas, and graduate of its High School for the Performing and Visual Arts (HSPVA), she eschewed her classical piano upbringing after a jazz epiphany during undergraduate studies at the University of Texas at Austin.…
Janu Sung
House
Janu (yah-nū) is a dancer, educator, and performing artist in Seattle, WA. He founded Hustle and Soul in 2022 and has been part of the Club & Street Dance Community since 2016. His earliest movement practices are based in martial arts and his “student-first” mentality has led him to explore and study numerous movement/dance styles. His main style is House dance: a culture and philosophy he loves and feels blessed to know.
Clay Swafford
Piano
Firmly rooted in the blues tradition, Clay Swafford was raised in the small rural community of Providence, Alabama. Born into a musical family; he was immersed in the sounds of Baptist Hymnals, Country and Bluegrass. He took interest in the piano at an early age and, after hearing the music of B.B King and Bobby Blue Bland at age 15, Clay was hooked on the blues.…