Faculty
Centrum Faculty
This skilled creative collective could wrap their arms around the globe. Much respect, big hugs.
Pat Bianchi
Faculty
Piano/Organ
Pat Bianchi has never been afraid to take the concepts of “Jazz Organ” into new directions. His playing draws from a wide range of musical influences including organists Dr. Lonnie Smith and Joey DeFrancesco (both who mentored Bianchi in his early years) but also encompasses other instrumentalists and approaches that stretch beyond the Hammond B-3 world.…
Dave Biller
Faculty
Dave Biller has toured and recorded with Wayne Hancock, Dale Watson, and Deke Dickerson and is mostly known as a professional pedal steel player, but his record, Hot Guitars of Biller & Wakefield, captured the ears of music lovers everywhere.
Dina Blade
Dina Blade is a singer with a deeply relaxed sense of time and swing. She spent her early childhood watching old cartoons with jazz soundtracks and has been enthralled with the music ever since. She has graced stages in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Cuba and Brazil, singing at festivals, jazz clubs, schools, parties and other community events.…
Erin Boberg Doughton
Erin Boberg Doughton, Artistic Director & Curator of Performance at PICA, works collaboratively to curate and produce performance programs including dance, music, theatre, and multi-disciplinary projects as part of PICA’s TBA (Time-Based Art) Festival as well as year-round presentations, commissions and residencies including the Creative Exchange Lab. She also teaches performance as an Assistant Professor and Mentor at PNCA (Pacific Northwest College of Art.) She serves on the advisory council for the National Performance Network (NPN) is a member of the First Nations Performing Arts Working Consortium and a former National Dance Project hubsite advisor.…
Arna Bontemps Hemenway
Past Faculty
Arna Bontemps Hemenway is the author of Elegy on Kinderklavier (Sarabande Books), winner of the PEN/Hemingway Prize, finalist for the Barnes and Noble Discover Award, and long-listed for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Prize.
Bill Brennan
Faculty
Billy is a dynamic songwriter and performer who has been commissioned to create stage shows, produce albums of original music, and star in video projects for prominent environmental organizations such as the National Geographic Society, The World Wildlife Fund, Project Learning Tree, The Cleveland Museum of Natural History, Baltimore Woods Nature Center and the France and Merrick Foundations.…
Eden Brent
Piano
Blues lady Eden Brent is a modern-day piano-pounding, juke-joint hollering powerhouse of American roots music. A legendary performer and southern songwriter, she spent the first two decades of her career under the tutelage of Abie “Boogaloo” Ames, before winning The Blues Foundation’s Challenge and bouncing onto the international scene. Since then she lands steady honors, three Blues Music Awards among them.…
Matt Brewer
Faculty
Bass
Matt Brewer is one of the world’s premier bassists. He was born April 20, 1983, in Oklahoma City but spent most of his youth in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Born into a musical family, Matt was surrounded by music from an early age, both his father and grandfather being jazz musicians, and his mother an avid music lover and radio DJ (who, before Matt was born, would play classic jazz albums for him).…
Marianne Brogan
Marianne Brogan grew up in a musical family and played flute, piano, guitar and drums. In middle age she found her instrument – the ukulele – and that was that.
She founded the Portland (Oregon) Ukulele Association in 2001, and has been happily teaching ukulele, and organizing events for well over a decade.