Mazz Swift (she/her) is violinist, vocalist, composer and conductor working at the intersection of composition, improvisation, and performance. She engages audiences with her signature weaving of improvisation and composition, combining elements of classical, folk, rock, jazz, free improv and electronica to create a rich, unique and diverse musical experience. As a violinist, Mazz plays electric and acoustic instruments and has performed and recorded with a wide range of artists from Butch Morris to Bruce Springsteen and Idina Menzel, and with her own band, MazzMuse. As a composer, Mazz has received commissions from the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity, and others. As an improviser, Mazz plays with Nicole Mitchell, The Silkroad Ensemble, and her collaborative trio HEAR in NOW. She is active as a conductor and educator, and has performed and taught workshops in free improvisation and Conduction (conducted improvisation) on six continents. Mazz lives in Brooklyn.

Fellowship Statement

I believe fiercely in the power of improvisation to improve people's lives. As a violinist, vocalist, conductor, and composer, I incorporate improvisation into everything I create and have witnessed its transformational force in performances, workshops, conversations, and collaborations. Practicing, hearing, and witnessing improvisation creates profound human experience.

I revel in the art and craft of composition—conjuring textures and moods, generating vibes and grooves, constructing a whole from many parts. My practice of mindfulness and compassion through meditation—in music and in life—compels me to use whatever power I have to foster awareness: in myself, in my music, and in the world, with an aim toward radical change. I want to uplift anyone who is willing to listen. In every area of my life, I aspire to transform and be transformed.

Photo by Nisha Sondhe Photography.

Dameun Maurice Strange (he/him) is a sound artist, multi-instrumentalist, and award-winning composer whose conceptual chamber works, choral pieces and operas are focused on stories of the African diaspora, often exploring Afrofuturist themes. In 2011, he partnered with award-winning choreographer Erinn Liebhard to present Railing Forward, a suite inspired by the legend of John Henry. The following year he was commissioned by the contemporary dance ensemble Alternative Motion Project to compose music for their premier program, Prometheus, Fire bringer and Lost in My Mind. This relationship would last 5 years and include NTimeBeautyN, HeartBeatRed, Penumbra|Corona.



In 2013, Dameun presented his first composition recital of new works, New Constellations at the Baroque Room in Saint Paul. In 2015 he presented his third composition recital which featured a cantata for Chamber Choir, Poet and Soprano, Resonant Frequencies: Love and Revolution. Strange was awarded the Minnesota Emerging Composers Award by the American Composers Forum in 2015 which led to the development his first opera, Mother King.

Fellowship Statement

I am a sound artist, multi-instrumentalist whose conceptual chamber works, choral pieces and operas are focused on stories of the African diaspora, often exploring Afrofuturist themes. I am compelled to express through sound and poetry, the beauty and resilience of the Black experience, digging into a pantheon of ancestors to tell stories of triumph, while connecting the past, present, and future. While my sound experiments have many dimensions, I use West African polyrhythms, with classical music forms, contemporary jazz harmonic explorations, along with found sounds and historic recordings to create modern Afrofuturist performances that disrupt the notion of genre and what Black music is and can be and moreover what Blackness is and can be.

Photo by Jim Nihart.

Walken Schweigert (he/him) is a performer, composer and director from Saint Paul, MN. He is the founder and artistic director of Open Flame Theatre, an all queer/trans ensemble that creates surrealist and queer-centered work. Walken is a 2009 graduate of the Dell’ Arte International School for Physical Theatre, and a 2006 graduate of the Perpich Center for Arts Education (Theatre Major). He has worked with the Taller Xuchialt and Ronda de Barro in Leon, Nicaragua; toured with and been mentored by the internationally renowned Double Edge Theatre in Ashfield, MA; and has busked on the streets of 11 countries. A classically trained violinist, he has been part of over a dozen musical ensembles of varying genres, from klezmer to metal. Walken was recently the recipient of a JFund award from the Jerome Foundation via the American Composers’ Forum for the composition of his second opera, The Garden, to be produced by Open Flame Theatre and Philadelphia Community Farm.

Fellowship Statement

I see my role as an artist as someone who crosses, transgresses and thrives in between boundaries. My mission is to create original, multi-disciplinary performances rooted in the queer/trans experience. Through exploring the surreal and fantastic, I seek to liberate the imagination which I recognize as a vital part of the larger struggle for justice and freedom.

What is the relationship between ritual and performance? Between song and story? How do we celebrate together? How do we grieve together? How can we harness the power of story and song to liberate our imaginations and expand our creative potential? What new traditions/rituals/rites of passage can we make for and with each other that affirm and express who we truly are? This is what I hope to explore in my fellowship. I hope at the end of it I will have made an honest contribution to a transforming cultural fabric.

Photo by Connie Chang.

Alicia Hall Moran’s (she/her) critically-acclaimed albums (Heavy Blue, Here Today) embrace Opera, Soul, Jazz, Theatre, and Visual Art. Shows/explorations include “the motown project”; “Black Wall Street: Tulsa Race Riot of 1921”; and “Breaking Ice: Battle of the Carmens.” Further collaborations live inside the artworks of Carrie Mae Weems, Adam Pendleton, Joan Jonas, Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, Simone Leigh/Liz Magic Laser, Carl Hancock Rux, and Ragnar Kjartansson, and are exhibited worldwide.



Residencies/commissions include Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, National Sawdust, MoMA, ArtPublic, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, The Kitchen, and River to River. Her contemporary sensibilities were tapped for Broadway’s Tony-winning Porgy and Bess, starring as Bess on National Tour. Her artistry with husband/pianist Jason Moran has yielded Bleed/Whitney Biennial, Work Songs/Venice Biennial, Two Wings: Music of Black America In Migration/Carnegie Hall; and the Ford Foundation’s Art of Change fellowship. Ongoing, Alicia balances composition with solo vocalism in symphonic works: through 2020 in Gabriel Kahane’s emergency shelter intake form and Bryce Dessner’s Triptych.

Fellowship Statement

As a mezzo-soprano and composer, my sense of harmony, evidenced in film, recorded output and stage performances, both entices and subdues established notions of Performer and Performance. Profound historical divisions are the jump-off points for my previous musical investigations. Class difference in the review and catalogue of Black Music is another interest. My practice is non-hierarchical and plainly observes the music of the West.



In my forays, textual and sonic, Voice itself is an embodiment. My aim has been to find a new harmony inside of my work between Performance, Performer, and Practice. The Jerome Fellowship enables deeper exploration of venues previously off limits, collaborations too impractical to previously entertain, and visual realms that were technically unavailable. Traveling to Natural settings will sharpen specificity in my work. I will re-engage my recent work on ice to continue the investigation: metaphors for expressions of fragility and civility in critically trying Times.

Photo by Charles Roussel/Prototype Festival.

Composer/Pianist/Producer Migiwa Miyajima’s (she/her) career path began on a very different trajectory from composing music—she worked as a director of real estate ads, an IT engineer, and an editor-in-chief of a travel magazine in Tokyo. But in 2004, at the age of 30, she decided to become a musician. Five years later, the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, a historic New York-based ensemble, invited her to join their team. She was the associate producer for two Grammy Award-nominated albums by the orchestra in 2011 and 2014. In 2012, having received a Japanese government scholarship as a composer and a Japan-US Friendship Commission Fellowship, Migiwa made her move to New York. Her ensemble Miggy Augmented Orchestra’s debut album Colorful was released by ArtistShare in 2018. She is one of the recipients of the 2020 New York City’s NYC Women’s Fund For Media, Music and Theatre.

Fellowship Statement

Experiencing the massive 2011 earthquake in Japan transformed my approach to my life’s work as a composer. I witnessed the inconceivable ability music has to speak to us as a people during chaotic times. Since then, I am most interested in music as a language that speaks to our emotions directly. After moving to the United States and seeing fear and lack of happiness turned into hatred and division, it feels that this is the time for me as a composer/musician to cultivate what I learned in Japan. In my upcoming project, I am practicing how to make my music work on fear or insecurity and how to cultivate positive energy through it. I am delighted to be inspired by this amazing community while I am tackling this profound theme.

Photo by Hayato Sakurai.

Anthony Jones (he/him) grew up in a hotbed of jazz education in Berkeley California where he was steeped in music at home and trained in some of the earliest jazz education programs in the nation, including Berkeley High School and UC Berkeley’s Young Musicians Program. While still in high school, Jones was part of an innovative cooperative quartet that performed bold experimental music around the Bay Area and on an East Coast tour where they were exposed to the still thriving loft jazz scene. Jones co-founded the Jessica Jones Quartet and the Pitch, Rhythm and Consciousness Trio and subsequent configurations with Charlie Burnham; both groups record and perform extensively. He has appeared as sideman with Don Cherry, Muhal Richard Abrams, Peter Apfelbaum, and Joseph Jarman, among others, including in national and international jazz festivals.

Fellowship Statement

There is a natural geometry and architecture to my hearing that I try to explore and reveal through my improvisation and composition. The use of contemplative silence and restrained placement by the musicians is the kind of language I am developing with my band as a unit, and what I am exploring in my compositional direction. My compositions and playing call on all aspects of the African-American music continuum, including the intersection of free improvised music with R&B and jazz. The resulting music has an exploratory, modern searching bent. The current focus of my work consists of the use of certain musical phrases, gestures, and forms from, but not limited to, this music. I seek to develop this both as a composer and a player, in different ensembles but with a particular focus on Pitch, Rhythm and Consciousness.

Photo by Marc Greene.

Jessica Jones (she/her) leads the pianoless group, the Jessica Jones Quartet, which features her original music and has several critically acclaimed recordings. The group has played festivals and major clubs on the East and West Coasts of the U.S. In addition, Ms. Jones is active as a sideman and has worked with Joseph Jarman, Cecil Taylor, and Don Cherry as well as a variety of Haitian, Caribbean, and African bands. She composed an opera with poet Arisa White, as well as a varied body of additional compositional work. Jones is an innovative jazz educator and consultant, working with children on improvisation, composition, and oral traditions for Jazz at Lincoln Center, Stanford Jazz Workshop, the Vision Festival, Brooklyn Friends School, and others. Currently, Jones is an Artistic Director for REVA, Inc, a non-profit created to use creative arts to inspire, educate and heal people and communities.

Fellowship Statement

I play tenor saxophone and compose. My primary body of work is for my two-tenor saxophone, pianoless jazz quartets. I write for the strengths of the band, creating frameworks for free improvisation. This celebration of diversity represents my deep belief in listening for the strengths of individuals as a key to stronger unity. Voices are a strong influence on my compositions, which often incorporate spoken or sung music, or lines that are phrased based on speech patterns. I am currently working on a “poetry opera” with poet Arisa White, as well as continuing to expand my compositions for vocalists in a jazz context, and continually developing repertoire and rapport with my Quartet. I continue to study deeply in the jazz tradition, mining the great jazz improvisers and composers to strengthen my skills as a player and composer.

Photo by Cheryl Richards.

Stylistic polyglot deVon Russell Gray’s (he/him) compositions evoke soulful meditations, the envelopment of anxiety in a nurturing sonic cocoon. As a new music performer and mood scholar, he channels celestial fascination manifested in aural familiarity. deVon intuits through clairaudience a direct connection to our collective musical legacy, as guided by Bach, Beethoven, Threadgill, and Mumford.



Born and raised in the Rondo Neighborhood, the composer is a member of Saint Paul’s hip hop stalwarts HEIRUSPECS, celebrating twenty-two years of music-making and hometown-repping, as well as a decade of funding scholarships at their alma mater Saint Paul Central High School.



deVon is an omnipresence with bands, artists, scholars, and other creators. In addition, he touts music direction for new theater (Sandbox Theater’s Queens), Afrofuturistic interdisciplinary works (Joe Horton’s A Hill in Natchez), and visiting artist residencies (Cedar Cultural Center’s Midnimo Residency Program). In 2016, the Cedar Cultural Center awarded deVon funds from the Jerome Foundation to create a work for a quartet of violas and cellos plus electronics called Fractious Child, Op. 1 No. 1. In 2017, he became a McKnight Foundation fellowship recipient.

Fellowship Statement

The novelist Annie Dillard says, “How can you as a writer expect to create extraordinary work on what is likely an ordinary Tuesday?” I don’t know, yet that’s who I am. A seeker of the extraordinary. What I know, is that revelations and epiphanies come when they’re needed, no sooner.

I’ll use my skills. I will continue to create artful music that allows listeners to dream, to feel rooted, and to access the cosmos. In my art and life I aspire to achieve a level of clarity that allows me to answer simply simple questions such as, “Who are you as an artist and what do you aspire to do in your work?” Truthfully, I’m a pretty heady composer that’s always trying to dress it down. Ultimately it’s the blues. Earthy, music of the dirt. Comprised of basic elements. I will continue to keep a keen eye on my mentors where joy and mental health are concerned. This work can take its toll.

Presently and for a while now, I’ve been dreaming up an opera.

Photo by Katie Mae Dickinson.

Rafael Gonzalez (he/him), better known by his stage name Tufawon (2 for 1), is a Dakota/Puerto Rican hip hop artist/activist from Minneapolis. His name represents his mixed identity. He has traveled the world through the intersection of music and fighting for social causes. He was recently interviewed on The Breakfast Club and Hot 97 promoting Indigenous People's March in DC, and he performed at the official concert. In the fall of 2018, he completed his first headlining hip hop tour in Europe with Nataanii Means and Michel Be called “Resilience.” In January 2019, he went to Cuba through Minneapolis based nonprofit US Cuba Artist Exchange with a delegation of music producers from the states to collaborate with pioneering Cuban hip hop artists. They performed at a showcase and created two collaborative songs. Tufawon has released 4 EPs: Self Care, The Homecoming, The Send Off, and Schwag.

Fellowship Statement

With hip hop being the foundation, my music is an honest reflection of my life experiences and personal struggles/growth, my hopes and dreams for the future, spirituality and connectedness to the land, love, and the realities of the world we live in. My style is an embodiment of intricate lyricism with complex vocabulary balanced by a very clear, smooth, and concise delivery. With a socially aware approach, I touch on topics such as Indigenous resiliency, politics, health, defending Mother Earth, and fighting against oppressive systems. The underlying message in my music is always connected to freedom—the continual transformation I am experiencing is profound. You can hear it with earlier works like Schwag, where there is a bit of an egotistical and raunchy element. Compare that with later releases like The Homecoming or Self Care where themes of fighting for freedom and unlearning/denouncing patriarchy are common, you see the contrast and ultimately, the growth and transformation. I aspire to bring the vibrations of his ancestral roots into his future music projects, fusing them with contemporary production styles.

Photo by Tommy Ellis.

Mobile since her birth in Singapore, composer, and saxophonist Caroline Davis (she/her) lives in Brooklyn, New York. Her debut album, Live Work & Play, was featured on All About Jazz’s best releases, and she was named one of JazzTimes’ Best New Artists in 2012. Her second album, Doors: Chicago Storylines, is an audio documentary that uniquely sets stories from Chicago's jazz scene from the 80s and 90s alongside her original music. In 2018, she won the Downbeat Critic’s Poll “rising star” in the alto saxophone category. Caroline’s third album, Heart Tonic, was released on Sunnyside Records to much acclaim in NPR, the New York Times, and DownBeat. Davis’ self-titled Alula, featuring Matt Mitchell and Greg Saunier, will be released on New Amsterdam Records in May of 2019.



She has shared musical moments with a diverse group of musicians, from jazz to improvised and composed music, recently including Matt Wilson, Lee Konitz, Angelica Sanchez, Matt Mitchell, and Billy Kaye. Her regular collaborations include Maitri, Whirlpool, and Persona (with Rob Clearfield). She has participated in several mentorship programs, including the International Association for Jazz Education’s Sisters in Jazz and the Kennedy Center’s Betty Carter Jazz Ahead. In March of 2019, she will be a composer-in-residence at the MacDowell Colony to write a set of new works based on the electrical activity of neurons in the brain.

Fellowship Statement

For all my projects, I take care to design the music, hire the right performers, and work towards a message. My process involves reading articles, scribble stream-of-consciousness notes about the compositional tools, shape, and forms of each piece, and sitting down to write. For Heart Tonic, I focused on various types of arrhythmia to write the music after seeking out recordings of irregular heartbeats and speaking with patients who have this condition.



In May, I’m releasing an album of trio music (alto saxophone, synthesizers, drums) that was written in response to the vortex generator structure on most birds. I have developed a keen interest in the movements of birds, especially patterns of takeoff, flight, and landing, and the way the alula structure affects them. This work is continuing at a deeper level for the next album, which I am writing music for now.



In the immediate future, I intend to immerse myself in the study of neuron function in the brain and to improve my ability to hear/perform complex rhythms. My interest in the first topic developed when I received my PhD in Music Cognition in 2010. I want to understand how neuronal networks communicate, especially with respect to timing and motion, and develop music based on my findings. For the latter, I have been taking classes at Chhandayan Center on Indian systems of tonality and rhythm. With the help of the Jerome fellowship, I’ll be able to take private lessons and improve my abilities.

Photo by Jacob Hand.