MEET THE ARTISTS
Performing Arts Discovery Showcase: artists on the rise and ready to tour internationally.
PAD SHOWCASE IS LIVE!
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2023 PAD SHOWCASE ARTISTS
Introducing the 2023 PAD Showcase artists! This year’s cohort of 25 artists/ensembles receivesupport from our expert video production team to create a professionally-produced live performance video, available to view here. The showcase videos will be promoted to international markets as part of the PAD program.
American Patchwork Quartet
Music | Brooklyn, NY
Barron Ryan
Music | Tulsa, OK
Blato Zlato
Music | New Orleans, LA
Catharsis
Music | Forestburgh, NY
Dayton Contemporary Dance Company
Dance | Dayton, OH
Dendê & Band
Music | Philadelphia, PA
Dorian Wood
Multidisciplinary | Los Angeles, CA
EUNBI KIM
Music | New York, NY
Extra Ancestral
Multidisciplinary | Los Angeles, CA
Janinah Burnett
Music | Bronx, NY
Jin Hi Kim
Music | Bridgeport, CT
Jussi Reijonen
Music | Lincoln, MA
Kinetic Light
Dance, Los Altos, CA
Magos Herrera
Music | New York, NY
Music From The Sole
Multidisciplinary | New York, NY
Nejla Yatkin
Dance | Chicago, IL
Queen Esther
Music | New York, NY
Rennie Harris Puremovement
Multidisciplinary | Sharon Hill, PA
Rini
Music | South Orange, NJ
Robert Moses' KIN
Dance | San Francisco, CA
Sprig of That
Music | Portland, OR
TAIKOPROJECT
Music | Los Angeles, CA
Third Coast Percussion
Music | Chicago, IL
Todd Marcus
Music | Baltimore, MD
Yang and Olivia
Music | Oak Forest, IL
American Patchwork Quartet
NYC-based American Patchwork Quartet (APQ) is on a mission to reclaim the immigrant soul of American Roots Music. Grammy-winning vocalist Falu Shah, two-time Grammy-winning guitarist/vocalist Clay Ross, three-time Grammy-winning drummer Clarence Penn, and Grammy-nominated bassist Yasushi Nakamura showcase the dynamic diversity of contemporary culture by reimagining timeless songs from America’s past. APQ draws on a repertoire of centuries-old American folk songs that highlight America’s immigrant roots. They showcase America’s dynamic present by combining the diverse talents of four U.S. citizens, each with a unique cultural background. In this quartet, old songs are made new through creative arrangements that highlight the exceptional and well-honed skills of each band member.
Image credit: Jack Randall
Barron Ryan
Barron Ryan’s love for music has always been divided. The son of two musicians, he grew up in a house filled with the sounds of artists ranging from Mozart to Michael Jackson. So when it comes to his own work, he’s not content drawing on just one influence. He combines them all into a musical adventure that’s vintage yet fresh, historical yet hip, classic yet cool.
Barron is following in his favorite composers’ footsteps by publishing his original works in the public domain. He offers his work as a gift to the world, and as a chance to collaborate with artists from around the globe.
Image credit: Andrew Saliga
Blato Zlato
Blato Zlato is a contemporary folk ensemble in the lineage of Eastern European traditional music, with particular focus on Bulgarian folk songs and Bulgarian language compositions. Their music embodies the evolution of folk music as it intersects with the immigrant experience of building a new life in America while retaining the cultural practices and traditions of the old world. Blato Zlato’s mission is to reconnect listeners with their Eastern European ancestry and heritage, as well as to spark exploration and curiosity of the music of the Balkans.
Image credit: Sarrah Danziger
Catharsis
Led by Ryan Keberle, Jazz Times’ 2020 Trombonist of the Year, Catharsis has been hailed by the LA Times for its “potent blend of cinematic sweep and lush, ear-grabbing melodies.” The highly-acclaimed group brings together elements of chamber music, South American folk, and indie rock within a traditional jazz framework, resulting in a sound that has thrilled audiences across the globe for close to a decade. In Catharsis, the potent frontline rapport of Keberle alongside vocalist/guitarist extraordinaire, Camila Meza, and the unshakable rhythm of bassist Jorge Roeder and drummer Eric Doob combine in a sound full of drama and intrigue.
Image credit: Amanda Gentile
Dayton Contemporary Dance Company
Dayton Contemporary Dance Company (DCDC) was founded in 1968 to create performance opportunities for dancers of color. Five decades later, the tenth largest modern contemporary dance company in the nation remains rooted in the African-American experience and committed to the development of diverse movement artists on the global stage. A co-recipient of one of the dance world’s highest honors, the 2016 Bessie Award for Outstanding Revival, DCDC has been presented by American Dance Festival, Paul Taylor American Modern Dance, and Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, and supported by National Endowment for the Arts and New England Foundation for the Arts, among others.
Image credit: Jeff Sabo
Dendê & Band
Dendê is a percussionist, singer, composer, bandleader, teacher, and multi-instrumentalist. He’s been a professional musician since the age of 14, when he appeared in the frontline of Timbalada, Carlinhos Brown’s superstar percussion ensemble. Since 2001, he’s been splitting his time between the US and Bahia, focusing his efforts on his own ensembles.
His flagship group, Dendê & Band reflects his deeply rooted traditional sensibility with his eclectic musical appetite where Afro-Brazilian traditions like samba de roda and Candomblé meld seamlessly with other global rhythms like rumba, afrobeat and mbalax.
Image credit: Leslie Macedo
Dorian Wood
Dorian Wood (b. 1975, pronouns: she/her/they/them) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Los Angeles. Her intent of “infecting” spaces and ideologies with her artistic practice is born from a desire to challenge traditions and systems that have contributed to the marginalization of people.
Image credit: Larah Sosa
Eunbi Kim
Eunbi Kim (pronounced OON-bee, like book) curates programs that compel audiences to meditate on the parts of themselves that are deeply buried. Creating performances expressing dreamlike “liquid elegance” (Times Union), her intimate performances draw from collaborations with composers, filmmakers, and theater directors to create experiences beyond the boundaries of the traditional piano recital format.
Kim’s recent album It Feels Like debuted at #2 on Billboard Classical Charts. It features world premiere recordings of works written for her by Daniel Bernard Roumain, Pauchi Sasaki, Angélica Negrón, and Sophia Jani. Drawing from the album and its themes, Kim created a four-night performance and conversation series, also titled It Feels Like as an artist-in-residence at WNYC’s The Greene Space.
Image credit: Shervin Lainez
Extra Ancestral
Founded by Kahlil Cummings in 2017, Extra Ancestral is a cultural movement dedicated to educating and entertaining audiences through the fusion of different cultural manifestations of the African Diaspora. Audiences experience the group's unique application and blend of artistic genres such as Afrobeat, Reggae, Jazz, Salsa, and many traditional musical and dance forms of the African Diaspora. Narrated through powerful ancestral dancing, Extra Ancestral provides an in-depth education of temporal and geographic borders from Africa to the Americas and back, illustrating lessons from the past that hone tools for the future. Music and dance are the ensemble’s healing tools and are led by some of the Los Angeles area's most dynamic and culturally validated artists.
Image credit: Farah Stop
Janinah Burnett
Janinah Burnett’s artistry is profoundly carving her place as a preeminent soprano of this generation. Most recently making appearances on Broadway as Carlotta Giudicelli in the iconic musical theater masterpiece, Phantom of the Opera, Ms. Burnett has performed on some of the world's most notable stages including the Metropolitan Opera. In concert, she breaks fresh ground and ever so naturally transcends traditional genres and parameters in marrying jazz and classical music styles in a term she calls “CLAZZ”. On her debut recording project entitled Love the Color of Your Butterfly, Ms. Burnett collaborates with some of the world’s finest jazz musicians in order to reimagine the boundless musical elements of her life and career including opera, art song, oratorio, and the American indigenous music genres: spirituals, blues, jazz, and soul.
Image credit: John Keon
Jin Hi Kim
Jin Hi Kim, Innovative kŏmungo soloist, is a 2022 USA Fellow and 2010 Guggenheim Fellow composer. She is known for introducing the Korean komungo into the American
contemporary music scene and for extensive solo performances on the world’s only electric kŏmungo in her large-scale multimedia performance pieces.
As a soloist, Kim has performed in her own compositions at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, Smithsonian Freer Gallery of Art, Asia Society, Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), Royal Festival Hall (London), and many international music festivals around the world.
"Virtuoso Jin Hi Kim promises thoughtful, shimmering East-West amalgams in combinations that are both new and unlikely to be repeated." — Peter Watrous, The New York Times.
Image credit: Livia Sa
Jussi Reijonen
In award-winning Finnish fretted/fretless guitarist and oud player Jussi Reijonen’s transcultural compositions, the open spaces of Arctic Lapland converse with the maqamat of the Arab world, the rhythmic richness of Africa and the improvisatory spirit of American jazz.
Described as “unlike anything in memory… a new, genre-less, form” by AllAboutJazz and “a single, unified, diverse, overwhelming statement” by JazzTimes, his latest album Three Seconds | Kolme Toista brings together an all-star nonet from Finland, Jordan/Iraq, Palestine, Turkey, Japan and the United States whose credits include Herbie Hancock, Roy Haynes, Simon Shaheen, Danilo Pérez, Terence Blanchard, Snarky Puppy and Yo-Yo Ma.
Image credit: Juan Carlos Villarroel
Kinetic Light
Kinetic Light (KL) is an internationally-recognized disability arts ensemble founded in 2016 by Alice Sheppard and led by disabled artists. Working in the disciplines of art, technology, design, and dance, Kinetic Light creates, performs, and teaches at the nexus of access, queerness, disability, dance, and race.
KL’s work speaks to and emerges from disability aesthetics and disability culture, and is connected to the rich traditions and exciting contemporary conversations of disabled artists in all artistic fields.
In KL’s work, disability is not a deficit — it is a powerful, intersectional creative force that is essential to their artistry, and access is integral to KL’s art and creative process.
Image credit: Robbie Sweeny
Magos Herrera
Born in Mexico City and currently based out of New York City, Magos Herrera is a dazzling jazz singer-songwriter, producer, and educator declared as "One of the greatest contemporary interpreters of song” by The Latin Jazz Network.
With a sultry voice and an unparalleled presence in the contemporary Latin American jazz scene, Magos is best known for her eloquent vocal improvisation and her singular bold style, which embraces elements of contemporary jazz with Ibero-American melodies and rhythms in a style that elegantly blends and surpasses language boundaries.
Image credit: Jill Steinberg
Music From The Sole
Music From The Sole is a tap dance and live music company that celebrates tap's Afro-diasporic roots and its lineage to forms like house dance and passinho (Brazilian funk.)
Led by Brazilian dancer/choreographer Leonardo Sandoval and bassist/composer Gregory Richardson, their work embraces tap’s unique nature as a blend of sound and movement, incorporating wide-ranging influences like samba, passinho, Afro-Cuban, jazz, and house.
As part of their mission to bring tap to new audiences, the company appears as both a dance company and percussive-led band at dance and music venues. They partner frequently with organizations like the National Dance Institute and Lincoln Center Education, engaging with communities across NYC and beyond through dance and music activities.
Image credit: Titus Ogilvie Laing
Nejla Yatkin
Born and raised in the walled city of West Berlin, Nejla Yatkin comes from a lineage of nomadic tribes of a crossroads culture in Anatolia, and her work expresses the tradition and poetics of interchanging places, races, rhythms, and histories.
Multi-disciplinary and wide-ranging in form, Nejla’s dance-making spans solo performance, choreography for theater and dance companies, performance in public places, creations for film and augmented reality, writing, and more. In the center of her creations is a curiosity for the eloquence and expressive power of dance and movement — no matter the subject, space, and place.
Image credit: Nejla Yatkin
Queen Esther
Queen Esther’s creative output musically is the culmination of several critical Southern elements, not the least of which are years of recording and touring internationally as front-woman for several projects with her mentor, harmolodic guitar icon James ‘Blood’ Ulmer, including a stint in his seminal band Odyssey.
Raised in Atlanta, Georgia and rooted in Charleston, South Carolina’s culturally rich and enigmatic Lowcountry, a region with African traditions and Black folkways that span centuries and continue to inform her work, she embraces a deep and abiding love of lost American history along with her wide-ranging
and ever changing sonic influences, as she leans heavily on the bluing of the note.
Image credit: Catherine Hancock
Rennie Harris Puremovement
Lorenzo ‘Rennie’ Harris was born and raised in an African American community in North Philadelphia. In 1992, Harris founded Rennie Harris Puremovement, a street dance theater company dedicated to preserving and disseminating hip-
hop culture through workshops, classes, lecture demonstrations, longterm residencies, mentoring programs, and public performances. Harris’s work encompasses the diverse and rich African American traditions of the past, while simultaneously presenting the voice of a new generation through its ever-evolving interpretations of dance.
Hailed by The London Times as “the Basquiat of the U.S. contemporary dance scene” and voted as one of the most influential people in the last 100 years of Philadelphia history, Harris’s awards include honorary doctorates from Bates College and Columbia College.
Image credit: Nikki Lee
Rini
Chennai born, New Jersey Based Harini ‘Rini’ Raghavan brings strains of ancient Southern India to the clubs of modern day metropolis with a powerful electronic fusion sound creating her own version of ‘Indian Electronica’. Rini draws from her formal training in Carnatic music and work at Berklee College of Music, to create epic music that sways a heroic overture, a catchy bhangra riff transposed to trip-hop, knifes-edge Middle Eastern themes, a menacing, wah-driven psychedelia and a galloping mini-raga. Backed by a dynamic band, she has released 3 albums and 2 EPs that have won an Independent Award nomination and a feature in Rolling Stone India. Rini is also a part of the Grammy nominated album 'Shuruaat' by The Berklee Indian Ensemble.
Image credit: Mukesh Babu
Robert Moses' KIN
Robert Moses founded Robert Moses KIN (RMK) in 1995 to explore his humanistic approach to dance as a unifying art form.
RMK is known for its eclectic movement vocabulary, demanding choreography, ferocious dancing, and provocative themes. Moses’s work explores topics ranging from oral traditions in African American culture, contemporary urban culture, and the complexities of identity, to the simple joys and expressive power of pure movement. The company has collaborated with racially and culturally diverse artists and organizations of varying social and economic status for over twenty-eight years. The company is considered by many to be one of the most prolific and exciting contemporary dance companies in the nation and is an influential and vital contributor to the vibrant cultural life of the SF Bay Area and beyond.
Image credit: RJ Muna
Sprig of That
Sprig of That is a tabla, fiddle, and acoustic guitar trio making a hearty stew of contemporary acoustic music. Founded out of friendship and personal respect, the group aims to fuse three musical and personal identities into a cohesive musical statement. While the group draws most obviously from American bluegrass, contemporary jazz, European fiddle styles, and Hindustani drumming, the resulting sound is both all of and none of those.
With projects like a tour of Minnesota elementary schools in partnership with Carnegie Hall and Minnesota Public Radio, and 8 Threads — a project commissioning eight diverse Minnesotan music makers, the group's mission always comes back to building and supporting community.
Comprising LGBTQ, women, first-generation American, and multi-lingual perspectives, the group’s music is a reflective of its identities: not quite any one thing, fusing to form something new.
Image credit: Maya Bolduan
TAIKOPROJECT
TAIKOPROJECT was founded in 2000 in LA, California by a group of young, emerging taiko drummers led by Bryan Yamami and Masato Baba. The ensemble continues to define a
modern American style of taiko, blending traditional forms with an innovative and fresh aesthetic.
TAIKOPROJECT first made waves when they became the first American taiko group to win the prestigious Tokyo International Taiko Contest in 2005. That year, they were cast in the Mitsubishi Eclipse commercial, the first and still only national advertising campaign to prominently feature taiko.
The group’s televised appearances include the Academy Awards, the Grammy Awards, NBC's The Voice, Jimmy Kimmel Live, the Late Late Show with James Corden, among others.
Image credit: Knocking Bird Creative
Third Coast Percussion
Third Coast Percussion is a Grammy-winning Chicago-based percussion quartet and Grammy-nominated composer collective. For over fifteen years, the ensemble has created exciting and unexpected performances that constantly redefine the classical music experience. The ensemble has been praised for “commandingly elegant” (New York Times) performances, the “rare power” (Washington Post) of their recordings, and “an inspirational sense of fun and curiosity” (Minnesota Star-Tribune). A direct connection with the audience is at the core of all of Third Coast Percussion’s work, whether the musicians are speaking from the stage about a new piece of music,
inviting the audience to play along in a concert or educational performance, or inviting their fans around the world to create new music using one of their free mobile apps.
Image credit: Saverio Truglia
Todd Marcus
Bass clarinetist, composer, and bandleader Todd Marcus is one of the few jazz artists worldwide to focus their work primarily on the bass clarinet.
His music swings hard with both a fiery and introspective intensity while maintaining a strong lyrical sensibility.
Self-taught in jazz theory and composition, Marcus’ compositions draw largely on straight-ahead jazz and classical influences, and over recent years have also increasingly explored the Middle Eastern sounds of his Egyptian-American heritage.
Marcus’s work includes regular performances in Baltimore, Washington DC, New York, and Philadelphia as well international performances, clinics, and radio play. He was a featured artist in 2017 Jazz Tales Festival in Egypt, 2015 Cairo Jazz Festival in Egypt, and in 2005 at the 1st World Bass Clarinet Convention in Rotterdam, Holland.
Image credit: Efrain Rebeiro
Yang and Olivia
Global Music silver medalist Yang and Olivia is a dynamic violin-piano duo. They create unforgettable storytelling events, featuring Chinese folk and western classical.
Violinist Yang Liu is the first prize winner of the 2021 International Artists Award Competition, the Medici International Music Competition, China's 5th National Competition, and prize winner of the 12th International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. Pianist Olivia is a frequent presenter of MTNA, CMS, and other music festivals and conferences, promoting music of Chinese and Taiwanese heritage.
The duo has performed and taught across the U.S. as well as in China, Portugal, Brazil, and Taiwan. They are both faculty at the VanderCook College of Music.
In 2018, they founded the Yang and Olivia Foundation, advocating diversity, equality, and inclusion through music of different cultures.
Image credit: Yang Liu
2022 PAD SHOWCASE ARTISTS
30 artists/ensembles were selected for the 2021 - 22 PAD Showcase program cycle. View their 15-minute showcase videos and learn more about their work.
Ananya Dance Theatre
ANIKAYA
Ballet Folklorico de Los Angeles with Mariachi Garibaldi de Jaime Cúellar
Boca Tuya
Cary Morin
Catalyst Quartet
Degenerate Art Ensemble
Ensemble Mik Nawooj
Gayelynn McKinney
Grupo Rebolu
Guy Mendilow Ensemble
Jalen Baker
Jamison Ross
Kenny Endo
Las Cafeteras
LaTasha Barnes
Lee Boys
Lone Piñon
Mali Irene
Michela Marino
Mythili Prakash
Nai Ni Chen
Olivia Komahcheet
PUBLIQuartet
Quinteto Latino
Ragamala
Revivals of Blackness
Staycee Pearl Dance Project & Soy Sos
Sunny Jain
Versa-Style Dance Company