James Drake
Artist
Santa Fe, NM
Throughout his more than fifty-year career as an internationally celebrated artist, James Drake has explored the human condition, specifically its emotions and its borders, both material and metaphysical.
Through drawings, sculpture, video, and multi-media installations, Drake maps a space of humanity that moves easily in a singular language of poetry and physics, addressing both current events and cultural history. A master draftsman, his monumentally scaled black-and-white drawings are imbued with power and beauty. Drake is unique among his peers in his understanding that visual art does not operate in a vacuum; he consistently seeks out collaborators to create holistic works of art that resonate universally.
Among his many honors, Drake was featured in the 2000 Whitney Biennial and the 2007 Venice Biennale, Think with the Senses—Feel with the Mind, curated by Robert Storr. He received both a Guggenheim Fellowship and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, and his work is included in major museum and private collections worldwide.
Born in Lubbock, Texas, Drake was raised in Guatemala and El Paso, Texas, and worked for over twenty-five years in Juárez, Mexico. It was in El Paso and Juárez that he embraced the unique cultural divide of the border between the US and Mexico—a topic of almost endless inspiration in his work. His multi-channel video installation Tongue Cut Sparrows (1995), for example, explores the private sign language that female partners of men imprisoned in an El Paso jail used to communicate with their loved ones. By providing them with texts by timeless writers, from William Shakespeare to Cormac McCarthy, to incorporate into their messages, Drake created a meditation on love, loss, and the gap between.
Drake is particularly adept at large-scale charcoal drawings that are replete with historical and contemporary allusions. For example, City of Tells from 2002-04, is a 12-by-32-foot drawing inspired by Raphael’s School of Athens. Drake has worked in collaboration with writer Cormac McCarthy, poets Benjamin Sáenz and Jimmy Santiago Baca, and leading scientists Murray Gell-Mann and David Krakauer
Gabriela Ortiz
Composer
Mexico City, MX
Latin Grammy-nominated Gabriela Ortiz is one of the foremost composers in México today—a vibrant, critically acclaimed artist whose music is commissioned and performed by leading orchestras, ensembles, and soloists worldwide.
Her most recent work for orchestra, Clara, commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, had its world premiere in March 2022, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel. Three other works were recently commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, also conducted by Dudamel. Ortiz’s musical language has been described as achieving an extraordinary synthesis of tradition and the avant-garde by combining high art, folk music and jazz in novel, frequently refined and always personal ways. She has written music for dance, theater, and cinema; has collaborated with poets, playwrights, and historians; and has composed three operas in which interdisciplinary collaboration has been central. Ortiz has been honored with México’s prestigious National Prize for Arts and Literature and many other awards, including the Mexican Academy of Arts; fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations; First Prize in the Silvestre Revueltas National Chamber Music Competition; First Prize at the Alicia Urreta Composition Competition; and the Mozart Medal Award.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Writer
El Paso, TX
Benjamin Alire Sáenz is an award-winning novelist, poet, and author of young adult fiction. His most recent book, Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World, published in October 2021, was a #1 New York Times bestseller.
In 2013, Sáenz received the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for his short story collection, Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club. Among his many other accolades are a Wallace Stegner Poetry Fellowship, a Lannan Poetry Fellowship, an American Book Award for his first book of poems, Calendar of Dust, and a prestigious Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Texas Institute of Letters (2020). Sáenz’s first book in the “Aristotle and Dante” series, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, won numerous awards and was recently adapted into a movie, with Lin-Manuel Miranda serving as executive producer.
Alejandro Escuer
Flutist
Mexico City, MX
Alejandro Escuer is a Mexican flutist, composer, improviser, and multidisciplinary artist who has been a driving force in the consolidation of a new music movement in México.
He has been the artistic director and producer of several hundred concerts, with more than 180 premieres of pieces credited to him, including several flute and orchestra concertos. His awards include the Rockefeller Foundation; the UNAM scholarship (1989, 1991, 1995); a National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures Award (2012); and many fellowships and special recognitions from Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes. Escuer is a tenured member of the Faculty of Music at UNAM. He holds degrees from Conservatorio Nacional de Música and UNAM; a soloist degree from Sweelinck Conservatorium Amsterdam; and he earned his doctorate from New York University. Escuer has recorded more than twenty-two albums as artistic director and/or soloist.
Steve Jiménez
Producer/Director
Santa Fe, NM
Steve Jiménez is an award-winning writer, producer, director, and journalist who divides his time between Santa Fe and his native Brooklyn.
His television work has included documentary films for ABC, Dan Rather Reports, Fox, Nova, National Geographic Explorer, and others. His many accolades include a Writers Guild of America Award, a Norman Mailer Fellowship, the Mongerson Award of Distinction from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, an Emmy Award, and fellowships from the Writers Guild of America, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, MacDowell, and Ucross. Jiménez recently served as Vice President of the Ucross Foundation. He has curated, produced, and hosted live and virtual events and concerts with some of America’s leading artists and writers. Currently, he is in pre-production for Border Child, a limited series for television based on two novels by Michel Stone.
Kate Harrington
C0-producer
Santa fe, NM
Kate Harrington is a co-producer of Can We Know the Sound of Forgiveness. Over her forty year career she has been a magazine editor and style director, consulting producer of feature films, commercials and art photography books.
Harrison Guy
Choreographer
Houston, TX
As a choreographer, teacher, cultural architect and community builder, Harrison Guy uses movement to document, preserve, and honor Black history and culture.
He is the founder of Urban Souls Dance Company, Houston,TX (2004). Harrison has captivated audiences across the nation through his inspirational and unique works of truth, beauty, and activism. Using his personal identity as a Black gay man as a catalyst, Harrison is interested in how Black life and African American traditions might be accessed in the pursuit of healing. He is a Dance/USA Artist Fellow made possible by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation (DDCF).
Luke Bern Carr
Editor and Sound Design
SANTA FE, NM
Luke Bern Carr is a multimedia artist, filmmaker and composer based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His work has received acclaim from Rolling Stone, Brooklyn Vegan, Westword, Southwest Contemporary and many other notable arts-related publications.
Carr is the creator of Storming The Beaches With Logos In Hand, an immersive sci-fi multimedia opera, which debuted at Currents International New Media Festival in 2014 and is currently in its third phase of production. Carr also founded Bernlore Studios in 2020, which has co-produced several award-winning documentary films and internationally exhibited multimedia productions.
Bill Megalos
Videographer
Los Angeles, CA
Bill Megalos is an award-winning documentary filmmaker who has combined a career as a director, producer, and cinematographer with teaching at the university level and leading workshops around the world.
He has photographed over 30 full-length documentaries for PBS, BBC, and Channel 4 (UK) and has filmed in over 60 countries. His series of mini-dramas on family planning won the World Health Organization’s Global Award for Media Excellence. Megalos has served on the faculty of the School of Visual Arts in New York, Brooklyn College, Pepperdine University, and USC’s School of Cinematic Arts. He was a founder and Director of Programming at The Recovery Network, where he created six television series and produced 120 hours of programming. Early in his career, he worked as a roadie and concert lighting designer for Duke Ellington, Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, Aerosmith, The Beach Boys, and other artists.