Gordon Ekvall Tracie Memorial Award 2020

Gordon Ekvall Tracie Memorial Award
Randal Bays and Emiko Nakamura, Co-recipients of the 2020 Gordon Ekvall Tracie Memorial Award.
Living among us in Olympia, Washington is a self-taught, Irish style fiddler and guitarist, born in Indiana, who is considered among the best Irish style fiddlers of his generation. His discography is vast, including recordings with Ireland’s top traditional musicians. He has performed throughout Europe, Canada and the U.S. and played for the President of Ireland. This international treasure is Randal Bays, who enriches our lives all year with performances and who provides classes and opportunities for youth to assure that this fine art form will live on.

Randal began playing music at the age of eight, including serious study of the classical guitar, prior to taking up Irish fiddling in the 1970s.

Read the full press release here »

Listen to interviews of 2020 Award Recipients here »

Every year in March the Seattle-Tashkent Sister City Association fills the Event Center of Vasa Park in Bellevue with over 600 guests for Navruz, the Central Asian celebration of the spring equinox. The event is indescribably joyful, with most of the guests newcomers from the diverse nations of Central Asia who have settled in the Northwest since 1990. A huge feast awaits, as the Uzbek Ambassador or another representative from Uzbekistan arrives, along with Seattle public officials. Children are everywhere, intoxicated by music from the loudspeakers. But the highlight is the dance performance program of Emiko Nakamura and her students in stunning multi-colored costumes, most of them created by Emiko, and featuring dances from a part of the world we hardly knew when the Seattle-Tashkent Sister City Association was established as the first US/USSR sister city in 1973.

Read the full press release here »

Listen to interviews of 2020 Award Recipients here »


The Gordon Ekvall Tracie Memorial Award was established in 1990. It recognizes an ethnic performing artist(s) for excellence in ethnic performance and for his or her significant contributions to the development and presentation of the traditional cultural arts in the Pacific Northwest. It is presented at the Ethnic Heritage Council’s Annual Meeting.

 

2020 Randal Bays and Emiko Nakamura
2019 Ben Hunter and Joe Seamons
2018 Harvey Niebulski, MD
2017 Christos Govetas and Ruth Hunter
2016 The Morovich Family: Cathryn Morovich, JoAnne Morovich Abdo, and John Morovich
2015 Warren Chang and Buyun Zhao
2014 Sidney Deering
2012 Swil Kanim
2011 Omar Batiste
2010 Luis Gramal
2009 Nat V. Raman
2008 Dr. Ratna Mukherjee Roy
2007 Rubina Carmona
2006 Melody Wenying Xie
2005 Arthur W. C. Nation
2004 Jiyeon Cheh
2003 Roger R. Del Rosario
2002 Mary Mariko Ohno
2001 Bruce Miller “Subiyay”
2000 Sara Contreras
1999 Henry Louie
1998 Kofi Anang
1997 Allan Swensson
1995 Ken Jackson – Grey Eagle
1994 Prabha Rustagi
1991 Patrinell Wright
1990 Ruben Sierra