Seating Chart
On this episode of MoMM@Home the Museum welcomes three artists whose music is primarily founded upon the acoustic guitar. Cameron Knowler, Yasmin Williams, and Eli Winter join us for a roundtable discussion about their instrument of choice, their connection to it, and how it has influenced their lives and careers.
Cameron is multi-instrumentalist, educator, and recording artist who specializes in jazz, bluegrass and old time music forms. He has established himself as an accompanist, collaborator and solo artist, with a parallel focus on sharing his craft with others. His teaching methods are tailored to the aspirations of the student, methods which are rooted in practicality, theory, and intuition. Knowler holds a degree in jazz guitar performance from the University of Houston’s Moores School of Music, yet enjoys resisting the chokehold of normativism. He is based out of Los Angeles, California.
Yasmin is an acoustic fingerstyle guitarist with an unorthodox, modern style of playing. Her music has been commonly described as refreshing, relaxing, and unique and has been called some of the most imaginative guitar music out today. She utilizes various techniques including alternate tunings, percussive hits, and lap tapping in her music to great effect. She has won various local talent shows, was a finalist in the Rolling Stones Young Gun guitar competition, was the Grand prize winner of New York University's Ultra Violet Live talent show, and won the Gold Prize in the Instrumental category of the Mid-Atlantic Song Contest. She has been featured on several radio and television programs including New Sounds Soundcheck Podcast, NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday show, NPR Night Owl, NPR All Songs Considered, Woodsongs Old Time Radio Hour, and WUSA9, along with high profile magazine features such as Acoustic Guitar Magazine and Vintage Guitar Magazine.
A self-taught guitarist and native Houstonian, Winter has been praised as a "generational talent" (NYCTaper) for his masterful instrumental music, which has received praise from Pitchfork, The Guardian, the Chicago Reader, the Sydney Morning Herald and others. On the strength of his first album, The Time To Come, The Guardian featured him as an artist to watch for 2020. Winter has performed at Constellation, Hopscotch Music Festival, the Starlight Theater and Logan Center for the Arts, among many others. Winter received the David Blair McLaughlin Prize in Nonfiction from the University of Chicago. His essays and criticism have been published in The Economist, Texas Highways, the Brooklyn Rail, Chicago, Expressionless Objects and elsewhere. He is a 2021 Luminarts Fellow in Creative Writing.
