Hear Here Festival

Composer / Musician

Amanda Dannáe Romero (she/they) is an experimental artist and musician based in Albuquerque, NM. She was born and raised in Santa Fe, NM. Her work incorporates sound, coding, colcha embroidery, tinsmithing, video, and performance. She weaves technology and traditional art practices together to create sound and video pieces and performances. They are also an educator and a founding member of fourteenfifteen gallery. They teach music and art at the Metropolitan Detention Center and work with the community and the incarcerated population on social justice projects. She play drums and guitar in Karen and plays solo as Madrina. Amanda has exhibited both nationally and internationally and recently completed a Residency with Artists At Work and CABQ Department of Arts and Culture.

www.amandadannae-art.com

Dancer / Aerialist

court (they/them) is a multi-disciplinary artist originally from the midwest. Their focus is on aerial movement and photography. they often explore the interconnectedness of intersections at which they sit as a Mad queer + trans person.

@shourt_court

Composer / Musician

Keely Mackey-Gonzales (Celloquacious), is the Creative Director of Amused LLC, an award-winning cellist and composer, and she’s also an interdisciplinary artist. Drawing upon four decades of classical training, and performing across many genres, Mackey plays electroacoustic and electric cello, while utilizing live looping and effects, sounding like a virtual cello orchestra.  Mackey’s music, inspired by Nature and aligning with the Five Elements, is healing, expansive and emotive music from “futuristic-antiquity,” which evokes “images of sound” from her listeners. Furthermore, Mackey creates evocative ceremonial performances, while collaborating with visual artists, movement artists and musicians, to capture audience members’ senses and imagination.

www.keelymackey.com

Poet / Dancer

Tara King is a writer, choreographer, and performer, who explores the overlap and conflict between embodied and linguistic experience.  King has been writing poetry and fiction for over twenty years. She has published in DASH Literary Journal, Avatar Review, and Jersey Devil Press. Her collection of poetry, #100daysoflittlepoems, documented summer 2017 in real time. King co-founded the award-winning, Minneapolis-based, dance-making collective Mad King Thomas in 2005 and has performed in Minneapolis, Miami, Albuquerque, and Australia. She lives in Albuquerque and is working on her first novel. Her poem “New Orleans” is forthcoming in Stance on Dance.

www.tara-king.com

Composer / Musician

Zachariah Julian is a singer/songwriter, composer, and producer from the Jicarilla Apache Nation. He studied music theory & composition at the University of New Mexico. Zachariah is an artistic producer for We Are the Seeds, a Philadelphia based non-profit that elevates contemporary Indigenous artists. Through Seeds, Zachariah has worked with the Philadelphia Orchestra for their YouTube series Our CIty, Your Orchestra, he has directed, produced, and composed music for a documentary filmed at an Indigenous owned farm in Rhode Island, and he is currently working with The Library Company of Philadelphia on a project premiering in September of 2024.

www.zachariahjulian.com

Composer / Musician

Elizabeth Capra is a composer/performer/teacher residing in New Mexico, whose work has been featured in many films and documentaries. She is the winner of the 2019 International Piano Composition Competition Special Category Award. Awarded 2nd and 3rd prizes in the Golden Key International Composition Competition, Capra performed at the historic Ehrbar Hall in Austria in the World Composer’s Concert in 2018 and 2017. She will perform at the 2019 Women Composers Festival of Hartford, at Trinity College. Her work has been commissioned by the Santa Fe High Desert Saxophone Quartet. She scored the 2019 NM Women in Film annual charity project, a PSA for Enlace Communitario and mentored young composers on a making-of-film. She was the composer/ mentor on the 2017 George R.R. Martin grant project, NM Girls Make Movies. Capra founded the NM Composers Showcase, now in its inaugural year. She created the Nob Hill Community Concert in the Park series, now in its third year. Classically trained, Capra won the MTNA Honors Piano Competition for NM at the age of sixteen. Theatre and piano performance studies at the University of New Mexico plus extensive world travel paved the way for rediscovery of a childhood passion for composition, now a major component of her performance and teaching studio. Her students have garnered national and international awards in composition and performance. Influences ranging from Chopin, Debussy, Granados and Dvoȓak to Sinatra, Cesaria Evora, and Sting can be seen in her “neo-classical” compositions.

Composer / Musician

Lauren V. Coons is an interdisciplinary composer, performer, and artist from Albuquerque, New Mexico. Lauren synthesizes her unique background in multiple art forms through the composition of intermedia performance pieces which often include instrumental or vocal music, dance, poetry, and visual art within a single work. She has composed numerous musical works for a broad range of instrumentation, voice, and electronics, many of which incorporate movement, spoken word, and visual art. A strong believer in the power of creativity as a positive means to connect people and share ideas, Lauren has composed works which invite performers and audiences to participate in the creative process either through improvisation, collaborative interpretation of non-traditional notation, or contributing material via social media. She has composed musical works by invitation from the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center Orchestra and New Music New Mexico and on commission from the University of New Mexico Art Museum, Abrepaso Flamenco, and several Albuquerque-based performers. She has had her work performed at the John Donald Robb Composers’ Symposium in 2016 as the recipient of the Scott Wilkinson Composition Award and in 2019 as a featured composer. In addition to her background in music, she has studied numerous forms of classical and contemporary dance including ballet, jazz, contemporary, modern, tap, hip hop, and African dance for over twenty years. Her body of work also includes musical composition for dance, choreography, composition of movement and sound-based works, and performance in a variety of formal and community contexts. Lauren holds a dual concentration Master of Music degree in Music Theory & Composition and Musicology from the University of New Mexico where she specialized in American experimentalism, improvisation and indeterminacy, post-tonal music theory, interdisciplinary, and social practice art. Her current work focuses on composition as a platform for interdisciplinary exchange, innovative approaches to improvisation, collaboration, and performance in social and community contexts both inside and outside of the concert hall.

Dancer

An Adelphi University scholarship graduate majoring in dance, Alicia’s training includes; Martha Graham Center, Alvin Ailey’s summer intensive and Mark Morris.  In her professional career, performances include BAM New Wave festival, Spike Lee’s “She’s Gotta Have It”, and Whitney Museum’s Art Party.

Poet

Manuel Gonzalez, poet Laureate 2016-2018 of Albuquerque, NM, is a performance poet who began his career in the Poetry Slam. Manuel has represented Albuquerque four times as a member of the ABQ Slams team at the Annual National Poetry Slam Championships. Manuel has appeared on the PBS show, ¡COLORES!: My word is my power and again on ¡COLORES! 9/23/2017. Manuel was one of the founding members of the poetry troupe The Angry Brown Poets and People of the Sun-Performance Art Collective. He teaches workshops on self-expression through poetry in high schools and youth detention centers. Also facilitating art therapy programs to help at-risk and incarcerated youth find an outlet through art, Manuel has coached and mentored multiple youth slam teams throughout northern and central New Mexico. Manuel’s connection to his poetry and culture helps him connect with students. By teaching poetry, his students are given the opportunity to explore their own culture. Building up, finding something to say, figuring out how to say it eloquently, and letting their voice be heard. These are just some of the benchmarks in Manuel’s workshops. Manuel was born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His mother’s family is from the historic Barelas neighborhood in Albuquerque and his father’s family is from the small Northern New Mexico town, Anton Chico. Manuel’s father (Manny González) was the founder of the band Manny and the Casanovas, pioneers of traditional New Mexico music. Manuel’s Chicano roots, history, culture, and spirituality are among his inspirations for his work and poetry.”I’m proud to be from New Mexico!” says Manuel. “And to me, it’s more than just green chile and desert. It’s seeing the value of our familas, our community, our traditions, and our culture. It’s the Rio Grande Valley and Santuario de Chimayo. It is feasts, dance, poetry and prayer.”

Dancer

Romy Keegan, like many dancers, began ballet at age 3, and then went on to dance with the New Mexico Ballet Company under the direction of Suzanne Johnston. Romy continued ballet studies at UNM, until becoming a ballet teacher at Hayden School of Ballet, under the further guidance and inspiring instruction of Celia Dale and Joanne Emmons. African dance studies began in 1990 with a variety of teachers from both the US and Africa, including Sarah Brown, Kim Vetter, Rujeko Dumbutshena, Mary Nakigan, and visiting teachers, Mabiba MBenge, Titos Sompa, Youssef Koumbassa, Djenba Sako, Assane Kouyate & Abdoulaye Camara, among others. Since 1998, Romy has enjoyed a diverse and rewarding career as a dance teacher having taught both ballet and African dance. In 2012 she began exploring and developing her own unique movement technique, Ballet-Afrique. It is intended to capture the spirit of the open, accessibility of a community African dance class, as well as its organic and natural movement, while harnessing the focus, flexibility, strength, and grace inherent in basic ballet technique. The creative utilization of both styles of movement produces a playful, dynamic, and exuberantly graceful contemporary fusion, suitable and accessible, for all ages and experience levels. Romy has also presented,choreographed, improvised and performed in any number of local ensembles, companies, venues and community events. In the last several years collaborating on various cross disciplinary creative projects with artists and creatives connected through Women & Creativity, and performing with jazz vocalist, Marietta Benevento. Together with singer Diane Richardson, Marietta Benevento and Romy Keegan are founding members of the Jazz Performing Arts Collective, whose aim is to educate and keep energized, the appreciation for historical jazz greats through collaborative performances.

Musician

Sabine Shannon has a diverse background in movement and music. Through dance she has explored ballet, contemporary, jazz and aerial acrobatics as well as conscious/ ecstatic dance. Her energies now focus more on music where through the years she has ventured from the electronic world into the acoustic. Her current project, The Deathe Family, explores dreamscapes and archetypal symbols through the lens of acoustic folk music. A self-taught instrumentalist, Shannon’s current instrument of choice is the banjo. Through her songwriting, the diverse possibilities of this instrument are exposed. The banjo becomes more ethereal and mysterious as it is taken outside of the traditional bluegrass and old time contexts. Shannon’s interests are in bringing the folk traditions of the past into a new focus by joining them with more contemporary, electronic compositions.