Montalvo Announces 2024 International Music and Composition Fellowships

Montalvo Arts Center’s Sally and Don Lucas Artists Program is proud to announce its first international and national fellowship awards made since the Covid pandemic. Twenty-five musician/composers of exceptional talent from across the U.S. and the world were recently awarded a three-month fellowship in the Lucas Artists Residency Program. This distinguished group includes individuals working in all genres of music including classical, jazz, folk, hip-hop, electronic, experimental, and sound art. These newly selected Fellows were born or reside in the following countries: the United States and Puerto Rico, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, South Korea, and Syria.

Every three years, by discipline, the Lucas Artists Program (LAP) invites each member of a distinguished panel of international nominators to identify up to three emerging, mid-career, or established artists who have the potential to become significant voices of their generation. Applications submitted by these nominated artists are then adjudicated by a panel of jurors to identify twenty-five LAP Fellows. This year’s selection panel consisted of Tommy Aguilar, Luciano Chessa, Jennifer Johns, Edward Simon, and Theresa Wong.

Each Fellow is awarded three months of time in the Lucas Artists Residency which can be used over a three-year period, with the ability to return multiple times. This represents significant ongoing support for artists to develop new work, take risks, and forge collaborative partnerships. The LAP also supports artists as they engage Silicon Valley and their own communities in critical conversations through the presentation of their work in various public program offerings. This approach is grounded in Montalvo’s belief that artists’ voices enrich our world and serve as a catalyst for debate about issues important to us all.

Located within a 175-acre public park and historic property in the heart of the Silicon Valley in California. Montalvo houses the oldest artist residency program on the West Coast of the U.S., hosting artists since 1939. The LAP facility at Montalvo was inaugurated in 2004 and has since hosted over 1,300 artists from more than thirty countries. The LAP’s campus comprises 11 free-standing, state-of-the-art live/work spaces designed by artist-and-architect collaborative teams, a Commons building, and a Library.

“The Lucas Artists Residency Program is the soul of Montalvo,” said Executive Director Angela McConnell. “It is one of the key ways in which we reaffirm our mission to engage the community in the creative process and has gained us international recognition as a creative incubator and a model of curatorial practice.”

Sally and Don Lucas Artists Program Director Kelly Sicat said, “We look forward to welcoming this truly remarkable group of artists into the creative community of the Lucas Artists Program. We are honored to have the opportunity to support each of these artists and their practice, and to be able to share their work with the greater Silicon Valley community.”

Thomas Ramon Aguilar

Thomas Ramon Aguilar, and his sobriquet Chale Brown, is an artist, curator, and DJ based in San Jose. Since 2001 he has presented and promoted visual artists, DJs, filmmakers, literary authors, and musicians from all over the globe under the moniker Universal Grammar (UG). On the music front, he has always produced with a forward-thinking mission to present quality artistry and emerging contemporary voices. UG has helped introduce artists into the Bay Area market and influence music festivals around the country. Since 2007 he has worked with San Jose Jazz to curate performances on the Jazz Beyond Stage at the annual SummerFest and Winterfest. He is also co-founder of the groundbreaking culture hubs Sonido Clash (2009) and POW! WOW! San Jose (2017). From 2010-2013, UG’s “Live at the Pagoda” music series transformed the San Jose Fairmont’s seldom-used Chinese restaurant into “a temple for fine music,” creating an environment for an eclectic lineup of musicians. In 2014 he launched the weekly gathering The Changing Same, an exploration of the black music diaspora focusing on emerging, future, and past influential sounds, through the presentation of DJs and live performances.

Luciano Chessa

Luciano Chessa is an audiovisual and performance artist.

His work includes assemblage, graphic scoring, painting, opera, sculpture and several other media. His works include A Heavenly Act, an opera-installation commissioned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; ‘Piombo’, a work for 2bows cello written for Frances-Marie Uitti and commissioned by NYC’s MAGAZZINO Italian Art, and Cena oltranzista nel castelletto al lago, a 60-hours opera-installation on fasting commissioned by the Festival TRANSART and MUSEION, Bolzano’s Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art. Chessa has been commissioned multiple times by the Performa Biennial, and in 2014 he presented three events at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum as part of the exhibit ‘Italian Futurism, 1909-1944: Reconstructing the Universe’. Chessa’s work appeared more than once in Artforum, Flash Art, Art in America, and Frieze, and has been featured in the Italian issue of Marie Claire and in the September Issue of Vogue Italia, and is found in private and museum collections in the United States and Europe. He has collaborated with artists of the likes of Mike Kelley, Kalup Linzy, Michael Tavioni, Ugo Rondinone, Tarik Kiswanson, Chris Newman, Jacopo Benassi, the collective Canemorto and Terry Berlier; presented his works in such museums as the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Berkeley Art Museum, SFMOMA, MONA in Tasmania, and the MART in Rovereto; and has been artist in residence at CivitellaRanieri, Lucas Artists Residency in Villa Montalvo, the Emily Harvey Foundation in Venice, Djerassi Residency Artist Program, the Harrison House in Joshua Tree, and Tavioni Art Gallery and Vanganga in Avarua, Rarotonga (Cook Islands).

Between September 2023 and October 2024 Chessa was artist in residence at Monaco’s Direction des Affairs Culturelles to create Monaco Mobile, a new installation for artmonte-carlo (July 2024) and Monaco Veloce, a new performance produced by the Théâtre Princesse Grace in collaboration with the Automobile Club de Monaco, the Pavillion Bosio, and the Médiathèque de Monaco (September 2024). In Il Corriere della Sera, Francesca Pini praised Monaco Mobile as an, “installation that acts as a sort of mantra”, with its, “intricate design of vibrating ropes and iridescent lights.”

Jennifer Johns

Jennifer Johns, a beacon of multidisciplinary artistry, stands at the forefront of the global music and arts scene. Renowned as a dynamic vocalist, innovative songwriter, and inspiring producer, her impact transcends these titles, embodying a unique fusion of music, visual arts, and theater. Her work in social, environmental, and food justice cements her position not just as an artist, but as a visionary activist. Johns has captivated audiences worldwide, from Denver to Düsseldorf, Los Angeles to London, with her distinct blend of Afro-diasporic world music. She has shared stages with iconic artists like Ms. Lauryn Hill,  Damian, Stephan and Ziggy Marley, Yasiin Bey, and Meshell Ndegeocello, and graced revered venues such as The Kennedy Center and The Apollo. Her performances are more than entertainment; they are powerful calls to unity and empowerment seasoned with sensuality and sass!

Johns’s artistic journey is marked by significant ventures into performance art and playwriting, notably with “Liv: A Ritual for Humanity” and her debut choreopoem, “reD:zONE”, produced by Kendra Kimbrough Barnes for KKDE. Her art transcends the stage, offering deep reflections on personal healing and societal transformation. As an advocate for environmental and food justice, her influence echoes in her collaborations with thought leaders like Cornel West. Jennifer is also, and maybe most importantly, the founder of The F.U.N. Manifesto, a sustainable ecosystem powered by art and culture.

Edward Simon

Edward Simon, a native of Venezuela, is a distinguished jazz improviser, composer-arranger, and bandleader whose work seamlessly blends jazz with Latin American folkloric traditions. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Simon is a longtime member of the all-star SFJAZZ Collective and a Yamaha artist. Over his illustrious career, he has earned prestigious accolades, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, multiple grants from Chamber Music America’s New Jazz Works program, and an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Jazz Album.

Simon has released 17 albums as a leader or co-leader, earning acclaim for his innovative compositions and profound artistry. His latest release, Femeninas: Songs of Latin American Women (2023), celebrates the music of iconic female Latin American artists, showcasing his ability to reimagine cultural heritage through a contemporary jazz lens. Earlier works, such as Latin American Songbook (2016), praised for its “grand and sophisticated” sound by DownBeat, have cemented Simon’s reputation as a visionary artist.

A 2024 recipient of Chamber Music America’s New Jazz Works grant, Simon continues to expand the boundaries of jazz. His forthcoming multi-disciplinary work, When Dogs Howl, funded by the Zellerbach Family Foundation and Creative Work Fund, in partnership with SFJAZZ, explores the resilience of migrants and refugees through jazz big band, Afro-Venezuelan percussion, storytelling, dance, and immersive video. With a career defined by innovation and cultural celebration, Simon remains a leading voice in modern jazz.

Theresa Wong

Theresa Wong is a composer, cellist, vocalist, and intermedia artist active at the intersection of composition, improvisation, and the synergy of multiple disciplines. Her works include Fluency of Trees for solo cello and voice which premiered at the Other Minds Festival in 2022, She Dances Naked Under Palm Trees, composed for pianist Sarah Cahill for The Future is Female project, As We Breathe, an installed song commissioned by Long Beach Opera for the 2020 Songbook, and The Unlearning, twenty-one songs inspired by Goya’s Disasters of War etchings and released on Tzadik in 2011. Her collaboration with Long String Instrument inventor Ellen Fullman includes Harbors, released on room40 and chosen as one of Wire’s top 50 releases of 2020, and Soundless, which was presented at the Volume Festival in Sidney in 2023 and MOCA Los Angeles in 2024. As a 2024 Guggenheim Fellow in Music Composition, Wong is currently developing Vox Lumina, an intermedia opera and installation which aims to shed light on marginalized identities. Recent commissions include works for San Francisco Girls Chorus, Splinter Reeds, Peninsula Women’s Chorus, and Del Sol Quartet. Wong has shared her work internationally at venues including Fondation Cartier, Paris; Café Oto and The Barbican Centre, London; Asian Art Museum and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco; and The Stone and Roulette in New York City. Wong is the founder of fo’c’sle, a record label dedicated to adventurous music from the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. For more information, please visit theresawong.org