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Clara Baker
Clara Baker is a musician/producer/audio engineer from Portland, OR. Her sophomore release, Things To Burn (2019), was recorded live to tape in a Wisconsin living room with Grammy-winning engineer Brian Joseph (Sufjan Stevens, Bon Iver) and produced by avant-folk experimentalist Shane Leonard (Miles of Music Alumn!). The album also featured Miles of Music all-stars Courtney Hartman and Zachariah Hickman. It was during this week of recording that she experienced the difference that each and every microphone can have on a song. This led her down a rabbit hole, where she learned that less than 5% of producers and engineers are women. Determined to change this, Clara enrolled in community college and took all the audio engineering and producing courses she could between tours. After completing several internships/apprenticeships and assisting engineers on recording sessions all over the Portland area, in 2020 she was hired as an audio engineer/producer at The Rye Room Recording Studio -- a boutique studio in SW Portland, where she still works today recording, editing, producing, mixing and mastering music. Clara is a member of SoundGirls, and is passionate about transforming the culture of recording studios, and supporting other women in audio. Randomly, mid-pandemic, she developed a love of painting & refinishing furniture, and started a successful furniture flipping YouTube channel (Know Can Do) where she documents her learning/creative process weekly.
ALLIE CHIPKIN
Allie Chipkin is a Registered Vinyasa Yoga teacher with a diverse background in songwriting, dance, poetry, Spanish, and travel. Allie first dove into yoga for the physical benefits; however, she quickly realized how meditative movement could calm her mind and reveal the joy in each passing moment.
Allie loves helping students access the power of presence during class. She infuses poetry, music, and play into each breath of her sequences. Allie intends for her students to leave feeling inspired, spacious, and, most importantly, grateful to call their bodies “home.” Namaste!
Lizzy Ross
Lizzy Ross is a singer-songwriter, visual artist, and co-founder of the original Americana group Violet Bell. Lizzy spent her childhood painting and paddling through the marshes of the Chesapeake. School brought her south to NC, where she discovered mountain folk who gathered over Sunday potlucks to sing together. Her solitary musical experiments grew community roots, and she started performing her original music in a band under her own name.
Eleven years and six albums later, Lizzy’s still humming and rhyming. She’s a dirt-loving lazy gardener who’s deeply curious about both literal and emotional composting - what gifts can spring from the garbage of life? Lizzy’s art and music explore human connections to the mystical and natural world, healing intergenerational trauma, and the myths and archetypes that frame our past and hold the vision for our collective future.
Gabriella Simpkins
Gabriella Simpkins is an award-winning singer-songwriter, composer, and musician hailing from Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Originally a hobbyist classical autist and incidental songwriter and arranger, Simpkins began to focus more seriously on a career in music in her freshman year of college. She originally planned to study biology and go to medical school to avoid the economic instability of an arts career, but very quickly realized that a STEM career gave her no sense of fulllment of purpose. Instead of doing homework, she would spend many nights teaching herself to play the guitar and reading voraciously about songwriting and music theory. She would regularly practice in three-to-four-hour sessions and study the lyrics of indie rock and folk legends like Elliott Smith, Nick Drake, and Sufjan Stevens. She began to devote most of her free time to songwriting and composing arrangements for her songs, and began playing original songs as a solo artist at local open mics and events on Cape Cod with encouragement from friends.
Gabriella’s undergraduate studies are now focused in music theory and composition, which has greatly enhanced the cerebral quality of her songwriting and brought to life the depth of her lyricism. An avid student of Impressionism, her songs, instrumentals, and art music are rife with complex harmonies, unshakable melodies, and clever metaphors, all rolled together with hints of very successfully integrated teenage vulnerability. Currently, Gabriella performs regularly in the Boston area and works as a freelance composer while nishing her undergraduate studies at Salem State University. She has won awards from the Cape-based Eventide Theater Company for her songwriting and received grants from the esteemed Club Passim to support her creative journey.
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Valerie Thompson
Valerie Thompson is a Boston-based cellist/composer/songwriter/improviser who has performed nationally and internationally in rock bands, string quartets, chamber folk ensembles and as a cultural ambassador for the U.S. State Department. A cellist versed in many genres, Valerie currently tours with Laura Cortese & the Dance Cards and the MIDI-Marimba/cello duo, Goli. Valerie holds a Bachelors of Music in Music Performance from the Berklee College of Music and a Masters of Music in Contemporary Improvisation from the New England Conservatory. Composer credits include the Umbrella Stage Company’s 2020 production of Bent, and “Bonylil’s: Creation.”
Fun Fact: You can catch Valerie in the 100th episode of WB’s Gossip Girl.
Elizabeth Ziman
Elizabeth Ziman, who performs as Elizabeth and the Catapult, is a singer-songwriter from Brooklyn. She's toured with the likes of Sara Bareilles and Kishi Bashi; collaborated with Esperanza Spalding, Gillian Welch, Blake Mills and Ben Folds; scored, with Paul Brill, a variety of international award-winning documentaries including "Trapped," a Peabody winner; and won an Independent Music Award for Songwriting. Her songs have been featured in national television campaigns for Google and Amazon. She recently composed for Sara Bareille’s new show, “Little Voice”. Always writing, Elizabeth has narrowed her vast collection of previously unrecorded material down to her fifth full-length studio album "Sincerely, e”, which she self-produced at home and released on Compass Records in March 2021.