Joan Jeanrenaud is a world-renowned cellist, surely the best known in the avant-garde classical field. She spent 20 years playing with the groundbreaking string quartet, the Kronos Quartet, recording with it over 30 albums and performing more than 2,000 concerts. In 1999, she left the group for a solo career that has encompassed performance art, composition, and free improvisation.

Jeanrenaud grew up on a small farm outside Memphis, TN. The third child of a family not particularly inclined to music, she began playing cello at age 11. A year later she was studying with Peter Spurbeck. Quickly she developed a special interest in contemporary music. She went to Indiana University, where she worked with Fritz Magg and co-founded the IU Contemporary Music Ensemble. She completed her Bachelor of Music degree and spent 1977 in Geneva, Switzerland, to take private lessons from famous cellist Pierre Fournier.

Upon her return home in 1978, her friend and Indiana University alumnus Hank Dutt encouraged her to audition for the cello spot in Kronos Quartet. David Harrington’s group, founded in 1973, had just moved its headquarters from Seattle to San Francisco, and violist Dutt had become their newest member. Jeanrenaud was asked to join and stayed with the quartet for two decades. During this period, the group changed its demeanor from that of a classical string quartet to an avant-garde outfit performing in casual settings with something of a maverick attitude on the side.

In 1998, Jeanrenaud took a one-year leave of absence from the group. She announced her official departure the next summer (her replacement was Jennifer Culp). Remaining in the field of avant-garde and experimental music, she has explored about every possible field her busy schedule with Kronos had kept her from. Her first solo concerts included works by Fluxus composers (Christian Wolff, Charlotte Moorman), and collaborations with dancers (Molissa Fenley, Anna Halprin). Her first non-Kronos recording was Lou Harrison’s Rhymes With Silver (New Albion, 2000).

A residency at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts during the 2000/2001 season allowed her to try new things, like duetting with a computer (Mark Grey’s “Blood Red”), multimedia performance (a cello arrangement of Philip Glass’ “Metamorphosis” with video projections), and even composition. In 2001, she entered the free improvisation scene under the wing of guitarist Fred Frith. She performed and recorded with his trio Maybe Monday, as well as with many more. Jeanrenaud says about her work, “I am interested in not only the sound world my instrument can inhabit but also the visual and conceptual presentation of the music.” http://www.jjcello.org

Hazel Dickens

Larry Gibson (1946-20012) was a founding leader of the movement to stop MTR.  Mountaintop removal is the process by which a mountaintop is blown up and dumped into the surrounding valleys to mine seams of coal.  MTR is an incredibly destructive form of strip coal mining that has already destroyed more than a million acres and buried over 1,200 miles of streams across Central Appalachia.  It is killing people in surrounding communities as residents report much higher rates of birth defects and cancer.  Gibson saw this threat long before it became nationally known and began his work to protect his mountains more than two decades ago.

In 2004, he founded the Keeper of the Mountains Foundation to educate and inspire people to work for healthier, more sustainable communities and bring an end to MTR.  The Foundation has successfully protected fifty acres from mining activity through the Stanley Heirs Park, an incredible accomplishment in the face of a coal industry that runs roughshod over West Virginia communities and politics.

He is also committed to building new leaders to expand community power in the coalfield region, as well as developing leadership within his family to ensure the continued protection of Kayford Mountain, where he lives.  Kayford Park, atop its peak, is the primary location for people, organizations, political leaders, and funders to see mountaintop removal first hand.  Since this land was successfully saved, visitors have included WV Senator Joe Manchin, UMWA President Cecil Roberts, NRDC spokesman Robert Kennedy, current Young Democrats of America President Rod Snyder, country singers Kathy Matthea and Big Kenny, and tens of thousands of others.  The continuing protection of this land is critical to ensure the growth of the success of the anti-MTR movement.  As he says, “Our mothers give us birth, but the mountains give us life.”  Larry passed away on Kayford Mountain on September 2012.   http://mountainkeeper.org

Carol Gibson is a native West Virginian, currently Larry Gibson’s partner and member of the board of the Keeper of the Mountains Foundation.  Carol loves the mountains; she says, “I always played in the hills when I was a little girl.  I have a brother and sister and we used to climb the hills behind our house in Carbon, West Virginia.  We would sometimes take a jar of ice-cold water or Kool-aid and stay out all day.  Sometimes we would hunt beachnuts and take a tin pie pan and put them in it and sit and eat nuts and drink our Kool-aid.  My dad worked for Carbon Fuel Company, and they would blast sometimes and rocks would fly down the hillside and onto our porch.  Sometimes it would go into our home, living room and bedrooms.  We would have to shovel the mud out of our house and off the porch.  It would leave our house smelling like sulphur.  They would dump big piles of slate in big heaps really high. Sometimes we would take old cardboard boxes and climb to the top of these slate dumps and slide down.  When it would rain it would add oxygen to the dump and it would start smoking and the air would smell like sulphur and sometimes catch back up on fire and we would watch it flame up and burn.  We were not aware of any danger at that time but I am sure we inhaled enough sulphur to kill us.  I sure would not let my grandson play on such a pile of smoke and sulpher.  I would love to see the mountains come back pretty and green and high the way God intended them to be.  I used to like to go to the mountains to pray too.  It seemed like God was surely in my midst when I would kneel beside an old rock and pray.  I could really feel his presence all around me.  I will never forget those days, and I am sure because sometimes I do go out on Kayford Mountain and seek God’s presence and He is always there to meet me.”

T. Paige Dalporto is an award-winning poet, photographer, songwriter and anti-MTR activist.  He has been writing songs since 1973 and his work focuses on the issues that face Appalachia.  He lives in West Virginia, where he was born.  He says, “Here in West Virginia, our mountains and our land, and thus our people are being destroyed at an alarming rate by the worst man-made environmental disaster in human history.  I have joined with other West Virginians to call for an end to Mountain Top Removal, a deadly form of mining: deadly to the environment, deadly to the planet.  I use my music to call attention to the devastation, even as more and more people realize that what affects the health of Appalachia on such a massive scale will eventually affect every individual’s health and the health of the planet.”  Judy Bonds, the late, great environmental activist and fearless critic of MTR has been a big influence on T. Paige’s work.  To learn more, go to www.tpaige.com

Benny Key (1948-2011)  former pianist and music director of the Chruch of Stop Shopping Choir, with Revernd Billy. Benny Key improvised a beautiful version of the West Virginia Hills for our wedding to the Appalachian Mountains in Athens, Ohio. Benny was an incredibly talented musician who worked in innumerable shows in our community, with Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir as well as on Broadway. Benny passed away at his home in Huntington, WV on March 25, 2011.

Bryan Martens Bryan Martens is a composer, pianist, organist, and music teacher from Madison County, nearby Winterset, Iowa. He is an accomplished musician, and is currently the choir Director and Organist at Zion Lutheran Church also in Des Moines. Bryan maintains a computer based recording studio of his own, and is also an accomplished recording engineer. He has released two CD’s, one of classical piano recordings, and is currently releasing a “piano with ensemble” CD. Among many honored animal guests on his farm is his basement skunk “Skunky”. http://www.bryanmartens.com

Catherine Moore aka Rainbow Jeremy is writer in residence at the Beckwith Halfway House & Creek Enjoyment Center. She is busy collecting chestnuts and small wood for the stove. Catherine also works as a journalist.

Rich Reardin is a radio producer, audio engineer, Flash animator, graphic artist, cartoonist, and web designer living in Bloomington, IN.  Rich’s father was lifelong friends with Allen Ginsberg.  Ginsberg’s subsequent life and work helped to inspire Rich’s longtime interest in Buddhism, the arts, poetry, literature, and music.  Rich is now creator and executive producer of a nationally syndicated radio series, “In Search of a Song,” with Jason Wilber (John Prine’s longtime lead guitarist), about the lives and music of world-class songwriters, which is available on the Public Radio Exchange.  He is also the creator of a comic strip called “What N’ Where? The Adventures of Cosmic Tom.” Growing up in the Appalachian mountains of Pennsylvania, Rich was inspired to help in creating a website for Coal Country, which can be seen on the Discovery Network Planet Green. See www.insearchofasong.com

Jack Spadaro Spadaro is an environmental expert on mine safety and health.  He has dedicated his life to preventing environmental damage from coal mining activities and is among the nation’s leading experts on coal waste disposal.  Jack was a young engineer and instructor at West Virginia University’s School of Mines, one of the world’s top institutions for training mining engineers, when the 1972 Buffalo Creek, WV, disaster occurred.  “Right then,” he says, “I made a pledge to dedicate my life to doing whatever I could to prevent this type of thing from happening again.”  He has since spent nearly 38 years in public service, safeguarding coal miners and their communities from life-threatening environmental and health and safety hazards caused by mining operations.  For more information, see http://jackspadaro.com/

Vivian Stockman Stockman is project coordinator for the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition (OVEC).  With a degree in Environmental Communications, she is one of the premiere photographers of the apocalyptic landscapes created by mountain top removal.  A volunteer for OVEC since 1995, she was hired full-time in 2000.  Since then, her essays about MTR and coal sludge impoundments have been published in Plundering Appalachia (which features dozens of Vivian’s shots, including the cover) and in The Appalachians, a companion book to the PBS TV series.  Her op-eds have appeared in numerous newspapers and websites, and she has assisted with, consulted for and been filmed for documentaries including Burning the Future and Sludge. Her photographs have been extensively published in publications such as the New York Times, the Washington Monthly, Orion magazine, World Watch magazine.  They have also been exhibited in colleges and have appeared on the NASA Earth Observatory site:: http://earthobservatory,nasa.gov/Study/MountaintopRemoval.

Occasionally Vivian will foray into street theatre events as the dreaded “King Coal.”

Stephanie Tyree is a native of Charleston, WV.  She graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a B.A. in Philosophy and Fiction Writing, and received a J.D. from New York University School of Law, with a concentration in environmental justice, critical race theory and environmental poverty lawyering.  She worked for two years as the Environmental Policy Coordinator at WE ACT for Environmental Justice in New York City, focusing on climate justice and energy.  She then moved back to her home state to work on MTR and coal slurry issues with the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition (OVEC).  While with OVEC, Stephanie realized the great need for lawyers working for community health and empowerment in the Appalachian coalfields.  She plans to take the State Bar and begin practicing as an environmental torts attorney advocating for community health and safety in West Virginia.

Sarah Vekasi, M.Div. is the director of the Eco-Chaplaincy Initiative, where she provides support to communities fighting MTR coal mining.  She developed the idea of eco-chaplaincy after engaging in direct action and community organizing for many years in the Northwest, living in a Zen monastery in Japan, and completing a Master of Divinity degree from Naropa University in 2008.  She grew up in Montana and Maine and currently lives in Swannanoa, NC.  Sarah loves wild and rural places, is a potter and a quilter.See www.ecochaplaincy.org