CrossSound is dedicated to the pursuit of three artistic priorities: 1) To serve a rising generation of Alaskan, American, and inter-national creative and interpretive artists in the field of musical arts, regardless of cultural tradition; 2) To embrace musicians and audiences from across the state, both engaging them at early stages of their artistic development, and stretching those capacites over time;  and 3) To commission and present new works by local, national, and international composers that take into account Alaska's unique cultural and geographical character, be it real or imagined, and thus create an "Alaskan sound" through newly created repertoire.

Overview: The eclecticism that lies at the heart of CrossSound comes not only from its mission as an organization, but from the diverse array of musicians, composers, and audiences interactively involved in each project.  Since its inception in 1999, CrossSound has delivered innovative programs by nationally and internationally established artists to enthusiastic audiences around Alaska including Juneau, Sitka, Ketchikan/Saxman, Haines, Skagway, and Anchorage.   The 44 newly commissioned works to date are the results of collaboration between the living Alaskan and international composers and the highly qualified, well-known Alaskan artists who come from a wide variety of musical and cultural traditions.  CrossSound is committed to the goal of linking Southeast Alaskan communities together by fostering a common interest in exploring dynamic cross-cultural exchanges through the unique musical landscapes set forth in its programs.  Through this, CrossSound helps to establish Alaska as a cosmopolitan state situated on the Pacific Rim that not only imports world culture, but also exports it to the rest of the world.  CrossSound is the only presenter of art music” in the state that focuses on the work of living artists.

Nevertheless, CrossSound programs are locally rooted, accessible, and of significant value to the audiences of Alaska, particularly Southeast.  This is what CrossSound 2003 Japanese composer Kiyoshi Furukawa in his article on CrossSound in the German music magazine Positionen  coined interlocal,” meaning locally rooted with global scope, as opposed to truly international.”  Success in this way comes from the establishment of a musical vocabulary based on trust and the fluid sharing of ideas among artists, always positively affected by the contribution of their own personal musical traditions. Mr. Furukawa elaborated his thoughts in the Juneau Empire, I can't compose for myself. . . . Composition is of me, but music is not of me. It's necessary to come here and discuss and get together to speak with the people so that I can make music. Composition is not a closed art form” but must always involve a number of people to realize its final outcome.  This inevitably involves dialogue and conflict resolution between musicians, composers, and audiences.  Invitees, composers and musicians alike, must have a clear personal voice, a spirit of reaching beyond existing capacities and a mastery of materials/strong technical background; they embrace diversity, and their previous work shows that they are eager for new artistic challenges.

CrossSound brings together artists with hyphenated identities – as in our 2005 program, "Echography (2005)," we had a Korean-German composer and Korean drummer;  an saxophonist and composer who grew up fishing in Bristol Bay and now teaches electronic composition in Virginia;  a Egyptian-American who studied composition at Harvard and teaches Arab improvisation at the American University in Beirut;  an English music director who trains opera singers in Bayreuth;  a Canadian bassoonist who lives and works in Boston;  a Chinese mouth-organ, or ”sheng” player, who won a scholarship to study in Berlin, adding his unique instrument to the plethora of unique voices stepping into western art music all over the world . . .  These are the kind of people we bring to (or back to) Alaska to work with Alaskans.  These are the kinds of people Alaskans like because such artists reflect the spirit of the last frontier.  Like Alaskans, they challenge themselves to hike artistically to the next peak, or paddle to the next inlet, and always open for new experiences and peoples. As Haines columnist Heather Lende wrote about CrossSound artists in a 2003 Anchorage Daily News article,". . . they are brave artists making new music with some of the finest musicians in the world and performing it right here for people they know prefer show tunes.  They trust we'll applaud, even if we don't get it all. I thought of ... the man who homesteaded next to the pond where we [go] swimming.  He said Alaskans are what we want to be, mostly. I suspect the folks who wrote and played the music we heard at the Chilkat Center Saturday night were all terrific musicians who, if they chose to, could give us one heck of a Broadway music revue.  But they don't want to wade in familiar ponds; they want to dive headfirst into wild rivers, and for that I am thankful."

back to top

Dr. Jocelyn Clark
Founder and Executive Director

After graduating from high school in Juneau, Alaska, where she played with the Juneau Symphony and attended the Sitka Fine Arts Camp, Clark spent a year in Japan on an ICYE scholarship where she became interested in non-western music. She started studying the koto at the age of 18 with the Sawai Koto Academy at Wesleyan University where she received the Kellam Prize for East Asian Studies. From 1990 she studied zheng at the Nanjing Academy for the Arts in China, continuing her studies the following year with Wang Changyuan in New York City. From 1992 to 1995 she received a scholarship to study traditional Korean music majoring in kayagûm performance at the National Classical Music Institute in Seoul, Korea. While finishing her Master's and Ph.D. degrees at Harvard University in the departments of East Asian Languages and Civilization, and Ethnomusicology, she produced a number of concerts featuring both traditional and modern compositions for East Asian instruments. She won a Fulbright Fellowship for the 1999-2000 academic year, and a Seonam Foundation Fellowship for the 2000-2001 academic year, to return to Korea to study Korean music. Clark plays kayagûm and tours internationally with IIIZ+ (www.threezeeplus.com), which she founded with composer/percussionist Il-Ryun Chung of Berlin. She finished her doctorate with a dissertation on Kayagûm P'yôngch'ang in 2005. More information at www.jocelynclark.com.

Dr. Stefan Hakenberg
Founder and Artistic Director

was born in Wuppertal, Germany, and attended the conservatories of Düsseldorf and Cologne, where he studied composition with Hans Werner Henze. He received a Ph.D. in Compositin from Harvard University where he studied with Mario Davidovsky and Bernard Rands. Other grants and fellowships brought him to the summer festivals in Tanglewood, Aspen, and Fontainebleau, to the artists' colonies "The MacDowell Colony" in New Hampshire, "Yaddo" in Saratoga Springs, and the "Atelierhaus Worpswede" in Lower Saxony. The Endowment for the Arts in North-Rhine Westfalia, the Alaska State Council on the Arts, and other state and local agencies have sponsored his work repeatedly. His compositions include works for a wide variety of media, from solo chamber music, to stage works, to interactive multimedia installations. His contributions to Hans Werner Henze's "Alternative Cultural Projects" led to the development of his own projects such as "Der Kinderkreuzzug" for the Opera of Cologne. Composing in collaboration with amateurs, and the integration of players from the folk music world or of non-western background are particularly important aspects of Hakenberg's creative thought. His "Musical Picture Books" are examples of his capacity for formal innovations. His work as a whole is an ongoing reflection on the musical inventions and forms of the artistic behavior of his peers who he came across along an international career that brought him from Europe to the US, to the Asian mix of cultures in Seoul, to creating new music along Alaska's Alexander Archipellago. Additional information, including full bibliography and sound clips, are available online at www.stefanhakenberg.com.

Clara Weishahn
Program Coordinator

grew up in Haines, Alaska. She attended the University of Alaska Southeast where she studied voice with Joyce Parry Moore and worked with Opera to GO! Currently a senior at Portland State University (OR), she is majoring in Theater Arts, studying voice with Angela Niederloh, and working for Portland Center Stage Theater. Over the summer 2007 she worked as a special assistant to Michael Kerstan and the El Cimarrón Ensemble in Germany to produce three new one act operas on various topics by three different composers. One was the new work by Kerstern and Juneau composer Stefan Hakenberg on a climate change inspired topic called "The Egg Musher". Clara can be contacted via e-mail: cweishahn at crosssound.com

Nancy Nash
Haines Program Director

is a multi-instrumentalist who has spent all her adult life, happily, in Haines. In Southeast Alaska she is known mainly as a pianist, but she served as principal oboist with the Juneau Symphony under conductor Mel Flood. She has studied oboe with Robert Mayer, former principal oboist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and Peter Christ, of the Westwood Wind Quintet. Hailing originally from the Midwest, Nancy holds a degree in philosophy from Gustavus Adolphus College and a BA in Music from the University of Alaska. She has taught piano privately for thirty years in Haines and also serves as Music Coordinator for the Episcopal Diocese of Alaska. Nancy especially enjoys working with children with special needs, coordinating music activities with physical and developmental therapy plans.

Coral Pendel
Sitka Program Coordinator

As a high school student. Coral played flute with CrossSound in a Southeast Alaska tour and appreciates the opportunity to work with CrossSound again. Coral grew up in Sitka dividing her time between commercial fishing with her family, playing music, and dance. Following high school graduation she attended Bard College in New York and returns to Sitka to spend summers trolling for salmon.

back to top

Bob Banghart (Musician; Designer, Banghart and Associates; Curator of Exhibitions, Alaska State Museums, Juneau)
Nancy Nash (Musician, Teacher, Haines)
Susan Brandt-Ferguson (Musician, Teacher, Sitka)
Laurel Mittenthal (China Specialist, Lawyer, London)
Theo Lipfert (Film Maker, University Professor, Bozeman MT)

CrossSound's 2000-2001 Season:
• American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers/Chamber Music America 1st place National Award for Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music

The Displacement Map (CrossSound 2002 Commission):
Composer: Stefan Hakenberg, and Film Maker: Theo Lipfert
• 1st place Jury Prize for the Best Experimental Film at the Cinema Paradise Island Independent Film festival in Honolulu Hawai'i 2003,
• 1st place Audience Prize for the Best Experimental Film at the Cinema Paradise Island Independent Film festival in Honolulu Hawai'i 2003,
• Honorable Mention (2nd Prize) for Best Documentary at the Kansas City Filmmakers Jubilee 2003, • Official selection of the Tribeca Film Festival, NYC, 2003

The Eternal Return (CrossSound 2002 Commission):
Composer: C.P. First and Film Maker: Matt Marello
• Won the Sonic Circuits X International Festival of Electronic Music and Art, 2002

back to top

Chilkat Valley News 22 June 8. 2006 Haines to host annual summer music festival

By Bonnie Hedrick

Musicians from around the world will be coming to Haines in August to participate in the first annual CrossSound Institute summer session. The five-day course, which will include master classes open to Haines residents, is aimed at honing the skills of singers and piano accompanists, and will becapped by a public concert featuring original works by two visiting composers. Stewart Emerson, a professor at Berlin’s Hanns Eisler Academy of Music, will headline the sessions, offering expertise that has helped train some of Europe’s most acclaimed operatic singers. "He’s a real specialist in his field," said Juneau conductor Stefan Hakenberg, who worked with Emerson at Germany’s Cologne Opera in the early 1990s. "A lot of today’s opera singers in big opera houses have worked with him."

Emerson has taught at the Royal College of Music in London and is an expert in four fields: conducting, singing, piano and vocal coaching, said Nancy Nash, program director for the Haines sessions. Hakenberg said the workshop is a longtime dream of the regional nonprofit group, CrossSound, Inc., which he helped found in the late 1990s. CrossSound works to foster creative contemporary collaborations by bringing together musicians from Alaska and abroad, and by commissioning original works that are performed in concerts across the state. The nonprofit has enlisted renowned composers and musicians from Greece, Japan, China, Germany, Australia and other exotic locales to perform selections that are uniquely Alaskan.

The group has long looked to expand with an educational component for musicians of the Last Frontier, Hakenberg said. "We’ve been wanting to establish a CrossSound branch that would offer the opportunity to learn with the guests we are bringing to Alaska," he said. This year’s Haines workshop is the first step in that direction.

Haines was selected partly because of the superior acoustics of the Chilkat Center and the Steinway grand piano that it houses, but also because of the warmth of local hospitality and the world-class natural attractions that are within reach, Hakenberg said. "Haines is a wonderful destination that would make people want to come from all over the world," said Nash. "And, we’re good at hospitality." Nash has helped make the summer session possible by lining up scholarships, transportation and housing for participants, and use of pianos around town for practice sessions. She said that hosting a music festival in Haines is a longtime dream of local musicians, who haven’t had the resources until now to pull it off. But working under the umbrella of the CrossSound organization has made the dream come true. She said the workshop, set for Aug. 26-30, will not only benefit musicians from Alaska and the Yukon, but also the local economy. Participants will have afternoons free to take in Haines attractions and tours, and the gathering will be a late summer boost to businesses. "It will be of great benefit, but Haines will have to do its part," she said. "This is the start of what could be a huge thing." Hakenberg said his vision for the Haines summer session is broad. "It could grow."

back to top