Biography
Jesse Autumn is a composer, performer, music teacher, writer and arts
administrator based in Santa Cruz, CA. She sings, plays piano, double-strung harp, piano accordion,
tin whistle, banjo and kalimba. In addition to writing songs in the realm of piano-based
folk/pop,
playing as many Tom Waits covers as a girl can handle,
and creating new arrangements of traditional
world music for double-harp and harp ensembles, she loves the written word and writes mostly poetry, though
is also working on a book of creative prose about a small community of artists with which
she has become increasingly entangled over the years. Jesse began teaching music privately in 1999 at
the age of seventeen. Since then she has specialized in Irish folk harp, double-strung harp and neo-African
polyrhythms, taught piano and musicianship/ear training for songwriters, been a faculty instructor for harp, piano
and accordion at the Community Music School summer Celtic camps, coached the School's acoustic Teen Band, lead recorder classes
at private schools and with homeschoolers,
and since 2001 she has directed the Santa Cruz Harp Festival, conducting an orchestra of
harpists of all ages and skill levels. Jesse has worked with contemporary dancers,
predominantly with Sarah Day and Daniel Bear Davis (Shah and Blah Productions), in Anatomy of
a Cloud and as part of Discourse off the Walls: A Month of Dance in a Small Room.
For many years she has been involved in the art scene of her home town, both as an organizer in the
non-profit sector (Community Music School, Santa Cruz Institute of Contemporary
Arts, Felix Kulpa Gallery, Tannery Arts Center), and as a performer and collaborator in concerts and art
happenings. She's played with the White Album Ensemble (live re-creations of albums by the Beatles),
Trio Hecubus (an acoustic world music group with new and unusual instruments), Lori Rivera,
Molly Hartwell, Librarians, Birds Fled From Me, and Ratpack Kirtan. She has played harp on more
than a dozen CD's as a guest musician (recordings by Shelley Phillips, Barry Phillips, Aria DiSalvio,
David Brewer, Molly's Revenge, Deby Benton Grosjean, the Banana Slug String Band, Joya
Winwood and Mothersong Santa Cruz, Victoria Hanley, Freesia Raine, Gail Swain, and Our Lady of
Perpetual Help Chant Choir), in addition to recordings for special events (imagine music for a
giant turnip "dress" designed for an avant-garde fashion show). In her early twenties she recorded
two CD's of traditional and contemporary Celtic music - the first with a band of young trad
musicians (California Celt, 2002, sponsored by a grant from the California Arts Council
supporting artists ages 18-25), the
second with world-renowned cellist/composer Barry Phillips (The Black Rose, 2004). Jesse currently
teaches and writes music in a multi-discipline arts community in the Dead Cow Gallery at the
Tannery Arts Center Krohn House, where she is composing material and arranging harp tunes for two upcoming
recording projects, a singer-songwriter album and a music book/CD of new harp music for kids. She
works regularly with twenty-one awesome harp and piano students and spends her spare time playing pianos, drinking tea, reading books, wearing
pretty dresses and riding her bicycle.