Faculty

Centrum Faculty

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

Photo of Claudia Castro Luna

Claudia Castro Luna

Afternoon Workshop

Claudia Castro Luna is an Academy of American Poets Poet Laureate fellow (2019), WA State Poet Laureate (2018 – 2021) and Seattle’s inaugural Civic Poet (2015-2018). She is the author of Cipota Under the Moon (Tia Chucha Press, 2022); One River, A Thousand Voices (Chin Music Press); the Pushcart nominated Killing Marías (Two Sylvias Press) also shortlisted for WA State 2018 Book Award in poetry, and the chapbook This City (Floating Bridge Press).…

Photo of Claudia Castro Luna

Claudia Castro Luna

Morning Workshop Faculty

Claudia Castro Luna is an Academy of American Poets Poet Laureate fellow (2019), WA State Poet Laureate (2018 – 2021) and Seattle’s inaugural Civic Poet (2015-2018). She is the author of Cipota Under the Moon (Tia Chucha Press, 2022) and Killing Marías (Two Sylvias Press, 2017) both shortlisted for the WA State Book Award in poetry, 2023 and 2018 respectively.…

Photo of Conrad Cayman

Conrad Cayman

Ukulele

Conrad Cayman is a Los Angeles-based multi-instrumentalist who teaches and plays ukulele (tenor, baritone, and U-bass), and also performs on guitar, plectrum banjo, and bass (upright and electric). An artist for Ohana Ukuleles, Conrad has performed at the Los Angeles Ukulele Festival and UkeCon San Diego, and taught and performed at the Reno Ukulele Festival and the Centrum Foundation’s Acoustic Blues Festival in Port Townsend, WA.…

Photo of Dawn Cerny

Dawn Cerny

Dawn Cerny was born in Carpinteria, CA and currently lives in Seattle, WA.  Cerny’s sculptures begin with the notion that “furniture” and “mother” are figures that secure a value (to others) for their potential to hold, display, or be absent-mindedly left with things. Putting form and color to work and entrusting no small part to contingency, these works behave as something like gestural understudies for a play about the day-to-day grinding weariness and joyful slapstick absurdity of human relationship—about trying to Work It Out…or not.…

Photo of Sabrina Chacon-Barajas

Sabrina Chacon-Barajas

Faculty

Sabrina Chacon-Barajas graduated from Seattle Pacific University with a BA in Studio Art and is currently working on her M.Ed at UW Bothell. Her artwork incorporates multi-media art to represent the intersectional identity of being a woman of color from immigrant parents. Sabrina is a teaching artist that cares about representation in the classroom through the power of the arts.…

Photo of Neal Chin

Neal Chin

Award winning artist and Maui, HI native Neal Chin, has been both an ‘ukulele educator and performer over the course of his musical career. His clear and direct enthusiasm for music has come to life in countless workshops, concerts, and private instruction. While his heart is in jazz, Neal has played with many musicians of different genres including Hawaiian, folk, rock, and hip-hop.…

Photo of Daniel Ching

Daniel Ching

Violin, Miró Quartet

Daniel Ching, a founding member of the Miró Quartet, began his violin studies at the age of 3 under tutelage of his father. At age 5, he entered the San Francisco Conservatory Preparatory Division on a full twelve‐year scholarship, where he studied violin with Serban Rusu and Zaven Melikian, and chamber music with Susan Bates. At the age of 10, Daniel was first introduced to string quartets.A graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Daniel studied violin with Kathleen Winkler, Roland and Almita Vamos, and conducting with Robert Spano and Peter Jaffe.…

Photo of Cláudio Rabeca Band

Cláudio Rabeca Band

Cláudio Rabeca is a fiddle player, composer, singer, teacher, music producer and luthier from the Northeast of Brasil. For more than 20 years he has fiddled, sang, and played percussion with multiple Brasilian groups, including 11 years with the forró group Quarteto Olinda. After he dedicated himself fully to the fiddle, he found that the instrument informed his creative process and is the basis for his singing.…

Photo of Gerald Clayton

Gerald Clayton

Faculty

Piano

Gerald Clayton searches for honest expression in every note he plays. With harmonic curiosity and critical awareness, he develops musical narratives that unfold as a result of both deliberate searching and chance uncovering. The four-time GRAMMY-nominated pianist/composer formally began his musical journey at the prestigious Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, where he received the 2002 Presidential Scholar of the Arts Award.…

Photo of John Clayton

John Clayton

Former Artistic Director, Jazz Port Townsend

Bass

Bassist, Composer, Arranger and Producer, John Clayton, is a busy man. With a Grammy on his shelf and nine additional nominations, artists such as Diana Krall, Paul McCartney, Regina Carter, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Gladys Knight, Queen Latifah, and Charles Aznavour have had spots on his crowded calendar.

In 1985 John, co-founded the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra and rekindled The Clayton Brothers Quintet.…