JAZZ IN THE MIDDLE

Cecilia  Peña-Govea

Cecilia Cassandra Peña-Govea is the Vocal Coach for MDYMP and a teaching artist with SFUSD’s Mariachi Program at various schools throughout the Mission and Excelsior. Her expertise lies in many different types of Latin music including Mariachi, Salsa, Conjunto/Tex-Mex, Rumba, and Cumbia/Vallenato. She also plays different Balkan styles of music. Cecilia’s main instruments are trumpet, voice and guitarron. She is a long-term member of San Francisco treasure, La Familia Peña-Govea, and a founding member of Taraf de Locos,  a Latin/Balkan fusion band based out of SF.  Cecilia plays with many different groups in the larger bay area including Los Compas and Almas Fronterizas. When she is not teaching she is working on her own musical projects or working as a Latin Music Analyst for Pandora Radio. Cecilia is a young Latina woman who was born and raised in San Francisco and sees music as a huge tool for the cultural vitality of the city and larger Bay Area. Her passions lie in sharing the joy of music with people of all ages and helping youth harness their voice and cultural power through music and performance. Cecilia is a bilingual instructor and teaches in both English and Spanish.

Dan Wolf

Dan Wolf is a hip-hop artist who works with rap, theater, personal narrative, and history to give voice to the problematic world we live in. His multi-sensory work draws its power from years of experience working, teaching, and performing with the critically acclaimed hip-hop music and theatre collective Felonious. His debut album “Blood and Bones, Skin and Scars” is a fearless exploration of ideals, values, and vulnerability, and marks his debut as a solo hip-hop musician. His projects have travelled all around the world from concert halls to museums to schools and memorial sites where he engages history and culture as a prompt to make vital music and theater that can only live in this moment. He is a Resident Playwright at the Playwright Foundation in San Francisco and is the co-founder of the Bay Area Theatre Cypher, a collective of performers who live on the cross fader of hip hop, theater, activism, and community.

Darius Simpson

Darius Simpson is a writer, educator, performance artist, disruptor, and skilled living room dancer from Akron, Ohio. He received his BA in Political Science from Eastern Michigan University. Currently he is a candidate for his MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College. Darius has partnered with a number of organizations as a Teaching Artist and Coach to engage in creative writing and performance with young people all over the Bay Area including: Chapter 510, Youth Speaks, and Oakland School for the Arts. His work is featured on platforms such as Huffington Post, Mic, TEDx, Button Poetry, as well as others. 

Héctor Lugo

Héctor Lugo is a percussionist, singer, songwriter, producer, and educator. A native of Puerto Rico, he has performed and recorded with a variety of prominent artists in the Bay Area’s Latin, jazz, and Afro-Caribbean music scenes. Mr. Lugo has a Masters in Sociology from UC Berkeley, and has done extensive research on the sociology and cultural history of Latin America and the Caribbean.

Imani Cezanne 

Imani Cezanne is a highly acclaimed writer, performer, teaching artist, and poetry slam coach. Rooted in her experiences as a Black woman, Cezanne’s work digs deep into the silenced themes of race, gender, class, sexuality and privilege to become a catalyst for social justice and change. As a nationally touring poet, Cezanne has been invited to share her work at venues, colleges, universities, conferences and festivals across the world. She's won 5 Grand Slam Championships, placed in the top 10 at 7 World Poetry Slams and has appeared on three major network television shows. In 2016 Cezanne released a chapbook with Belladonna Press. In 2020 she became the Women of the World Poetry Slam Champion for the second time, one of only two people to ever do so.

Tammy L. Hall

Tammy L. Hall began playing the piano at age 4 and is still devoted to that instrument, Music and it’s calling. A San Francisco resident since 1983, she continues to expand her musical experience not just through jazz, but through ALL Music. Good Music. 

In pursuit of the creation and development and performance of Good Music, Tammy has worked with and accompanied numerous vocalists and instrumentalists including: Etta Jones, Ernestine Anderson, Melba Moore, Darlene Love, Linda Tillery, Kim Nalley, Paula West, Tiffany Austin, Denise Perrier, Connie Champagne, Queen Esther Marrow, Barbara Dane, Holly Near, Veronica Klaus, saxophonists Houston Person, Tia Fuller and David “Fathead” Newman, violinists Regina Carter and Mads Tolling, Laurie Anderson, harpist Destiny Muhammad, drummers Terri Lyne Carrington and Allison Miller, trombonist and educator Angela Wellman, Bassist/Bandleader Marcus Shelby. 

In 2015, Tammy made her conducting debut in Turkmenistan and Baku, Azerbaijan, working with Broadway Bound, a diplomatic arts outreach program founded by Amikaeyla Gaston of the ICAHSI Foundation. Tammy works with SFJAZZ, Handful Players (Children’s Theatre after- school program), as well as teaching and guest lecturing at Stanford University, the California Jazz Conservatory, Jazz Camp West, Lafayette Summer Music Workshop.