Imani Uzuri, raised in rural North Carolina, is an award-winning vocalist, composer, librettist, improviser and conceptual artist. She composes, performs and creates interdisciplinary works including concerts, ritual performances, albums, sound installations and compositions for chamber ensembles, voice and theater (including experimental and musical theater). Uzuri recently finished her tenure as a Jerome Foundation Composer/Sound Artist Fellow in support of her international travel and research for her forthcoming composing of a large music work celebrating the iconography of the Black Madonna which she is currently developing as a HERE Artist Residency Program (HARP) Fellow. She was a 2018 commissioned composer for Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity where she presented the world premiere of her choral composition “Sustenance” with 31+ voices from around the world. Uzuri is a 2018 Chamber Music America New Jazz Works composer commissionee. Dubbed “a postmodernist Bessie Smith” by The Village Voice, the New York Times calls her work “stirring” and Time Out New York says “Uzuri never fails to mesmerize audiences with her narcotic blend...of ethereal sounds.”

As a 2019 Composer in Residence at Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France, Uzuri will visit Black Madonna shrines in Marseilles and Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, integrate her research from previous international Black Madonna sojourns and begin developing the libretto and composing the score for her forthcoming aforementioned large music work Songs of Sanctuary for the Black Madonna.

www.imaniuzuri.com

Photo by Petra Richterova

Eleanor Savage has been with Jerome Foundation since 2007. She is active in the philanthropic and arts community as an agitator for equitable practice and involved with the national organization, Grantmakers in the Arts, as the Co-Chair of the Support for Individual Artists Committee. She is a media artist, an activist and has instigated many community-focused/artist-centered events in the Twin Cities: Naked Stages; Forbidden Fruit Radio; Vulva Riot; and Dyke Night at the Walker Art Center. She was previously the Associate Director of Event and Media Production at the Walker Art Center for sixteen years.

Eleanor's life-long commitment is promoting human rights as a guiding force and working actively as a white, gender-queer butch against racism and all the other intersecting oppressions.