Anto’s Music Collaborators
Valerie Holt (vocals)
Valerie Holt is a singer and vocal teacher from Seattle, Washington who performs and teaches nationally and internationally. For the past decade she has been performing, touring, recording and teaching along side musician/composer Anne Mathews in their ballad-driven duo The Lonely Coast (thelonelycoast.com) and in more recent years with their energetic seven-piece Balkan electro-pop band Eurodanceparty USA (eurodancepartyusa.com). The Lonely Coast duo has led vocal workshops and classes in the United States, Canada and Mexico teaching unique multiple-part harmony arrangements of global folk, pop and traditional songs.
Amy Denio (clarinet, saxophone & vocals)
Amy Denio is a teacher, singer, multi-instrumental composer, producer and improviser based in Kitsap County, Washington. She is a producer, photographer, polyglot and musical transcriber. Amy has a four-octave vocal range and plays guitar, bass, alto sax, clarinet and accordion. She composes for modern dance, film, theater and TV. A member of Seattle Jazz Hall of Fame, she has written more than 500 works and has produced over 60 recordings solo and in collaboration with artists worldwide. She has been operating her own recording studio, record label and publishing company, Spoot Music since 1986 with the release of her first cassette No Bones. She is President of the all-women Tiptons Sax Quartet (1988-present), Vice President of the Seattle Composers Alliance (2016-present) and has recorded and toured the world with Balkan group Kultur Shock since 1999. Mainly self-taught, she has developed her unique musical style by collaborating with musicians and artists worldwide.
Rachel Nesvig (violin & viola)
Inspired by her Norwegian roots, Rachel has built a career around her love of music, performance, teaching, and Scandinavian tradition. She earned her BA in Music and Norwegian from St. Olaf College in 2007, followed by a master’s degree in Violin Performance and K-12 Teaching Certificate from Central Washington University in 2011. Rachel completed additional studies in classical violin at the Music Conservatory of the University of Stavanger, Norway, also using the opportunity to polish her Norwegian language skills. Although violin is her main jam, Rachel is an avid Hardanger Fiddler (the national folk instrument of Norway), an aspiring violist, an enthusiastic conductor, and a novice improv actor!
Jason Everett (bass)
Jason Everett (aka Mister E) is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, arranger and producer who plays a variety of stringed and percussive instruments including his custom Conklin seven-string fretless bass guitar, electric upright bass, and an electric sitar of his own design. Jason attended Northern Arizona University on a full scholarship for music and started playing professional gigs at sixteen. He released a solo album of Indian influenced world music under the name Tal Maya on his own label in 2010 and has produced and released several CDs with different world fusion ensembles. In addition to his solo and session work in the Seattle area, Jason plays with Bay-area world fusion groups, Ancient Future and Facing East Music. He has had numerous solo and ensemble videos featured on/in several music magazines including No Treble, Bass The World, Bass Musician Magazine, Bass on the Broadband, and Bass Frontiers.
Nonda Trimis (percussions)
Epaminondas Trimis BMI is a Percussionist, Composer, Recording Artist. Nonda comes from an extensive background in both percussion and drums. As a 1980 graduate of California State University with a Bachelor of Music in Percussion Performance, Nonda studied during his developing years with several renown players including Steve Mitchell(Vince Guaraldi), Gary Nash (Jackie and Roy), Ed Shaughnessy (The Tonight Show), Steve Schaeffer (Dallas, Dynasty LA Studio), and Jerry Steinholtz (Dianna Ross, the Carpenters). He has appeared on over 75 different CDs with different local and national artists including Amy Denio, Richard Dillon, Anto Ferrante, Stephen O’Bent, Susan Carr, Dan Dean, Richard Warner, John Serrie, The Jazz Police, Michael Powers, Gary Stroutsos, Phil Sheeran, and Tony Gable. His live performances include backing Eddie Daniels, Ben Vareen, Greta Metassa, Jovino Santos, Blackstone, Kathy Lee Gifford, Carl Saunders, Teatro Zinzani, Marc Seals and performances at the Santa Barbara Jazz Festival, Earshot Jazz Festival and the Moore Theater.
Camelia Jade (audio engineer, mixing & mastering)
Composing on guitar, charango, rhythm, and voice, Camelia Jade weaves tradition and innovation into songs that are lush and percussive, joyous or bittersweet. Camelia (pronounced kah-MEL-ee-ah) creates instrumental explorations that become a living soundtrack and sings with a voice that is both soothing and strong. Drawing from her Chilean-American heritage, she writes in English and Spanish. Her music emerges like the varied landscapes of Chile; sunbaked expansive deserts, wet and moody archipelagos, and nostalgic subtropical love songs. She revisits the folklorica and Musica Andina from her heritage to infuse it with the freedom and experimentation she has found in music on the West Coast of the United States and in Queer culture.
Hayley Dayis (album cover painting)
Hayley Dayis was raised with a deep appreciation for the outdoors, leading her to take an interest in the environmental impact of our culture. In searching for non-chemical paints, she moved to Cauca, Colombia in 2020 to learn how to forage soil pigments. Her paintings are a window into the natural world. The natural pigments that she use in the creation of her current work infuse each piece with the subtle majesty of Earth’s color spectrum while paying homage to the innate reciprocity and dependency between humans and land. Hayley currently lives in Rochester, NY, returning to Cauca, Colombia each winter to paint.