New additions have been made to the Gratitude and Links pages.
Conspiracy starring Val Kilmer and Gary Cole will be released on DVD on March 18, 2008. Erica plays a "Diner Patron" during a fight scene.
Sunshine Cleaning premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah in January 2008. Erica was chosen by director Christine Jeffs to appear in the film as a "Country Club Lady" for the baby shower scene. It stars Amy Adams and Alan Arkin. For more information go to www.sundance.org
BIOGRAPHY:
Erica Jett, a multi-disciplined performing and visual artist, originally from Illinois, started music and dance at the young age of three. Able to read music before words, she had musical parents and grandparents to thank. She started playing piano before the age of three, and added on the drums by age thirteen. In addition, by the age of eighteen, Erica had been a competitive gymnast, a paid photographer and darkroom technician, a dance instructor, played numerous roles in theater, and had been crowned the very first "Little Miss Firecracker" at age six in 1980. In 1992 Erica moved from a small town in Southern-Central Illinois to Albuquerque, New Mexico to pursue a music degree. In 1997, she received her Bachelor's of Music in Percussion Performance under the direction of Christopher Shultis as well as a Minor in Art Studio under the direction of Patrick Nagatani from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, NM. While at UNM, Erica was a member of, recorded with, and toured with the UNM Percussion Ensemble, Marimba Band, Renegade Steel Drum Band, and the UNM Symphony Orchestra.
After her graduation, she toured internationally over the course of two years from 1997-1999 as Percussionist, Audio Director, and Stage Manager with Theater Grottesco, an imaginative theater company founded in Paris in 1983 that uses Commedia Dell' Arte and Buffoonery among other styles rarely seen in North America. This tour included such prestigious venues as an Off-Broadway run at the New Victory Theater on famous 42nd Street in New York City, Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, and the Capital Theater in Windsor, Ontario. No stranger to life on the road, she had toured previously in 1994 with the Blue Knights Drum & Bugle Corps, which then ranked 7th in the world, and where she studied with drum corps virtuoso, Ralph Hardimon. On The Field From Denver, Colorado...The Blue Knights! is a book written by a fellow member about his experience of the 1994 summer national tour, which includes photos by Erica Jett.
Erica was the Percussion Director at the Public Academy for Performing Arts in Albuquerque from 2001-2003. At "P.A.P.A.," she created the only known public school percussion program independent from the band program in the state of New Mexico, which grew from two students to thirty students in a mere two years' time. She also clinicianted various award-winning Albuquerque high school drum lines and percussion ensembles from 1995-2000. Erica currently teaches private percussion and piano lessons in her home studio.
As a featured composer on the 2001 UNM Composer's Symposium, her percussion ensemble piece, Ticker Tape, received its world premiere performance and recording. During the three-day symposium, Erica gave talks on her work and participated in panel discussions regarding the American Experimental Tradition in Composition. Other compositions of hers include Venus Amending Mars (1997), a mixed-media percussion solo, Animal & Janice (2000) for multiple percussion and classical guitar, Percussion Pod 2020(1994-present), and Grotokra (1999), both for percussion ensemble. Erica is currently working on brand new music for her next cd.
Erica was selected to perform the marimba solo Blindness, written by her mentor Christopher Shultis, on the opening day of the Percussive Arts Society International Convention in November 2004 in Nashville, Tennessee. This was her second appearance at PASIC. Her first was as a member of the UNM Percussion Ensemble performing Musik im Bauch by Karheinz Stockhausen on the opening concert of the 1995 PASIC in Phoenix, Arizona.
Also a professional photographer, Erica is published in such magazines as Photographer's Forum, Conceptions Southwest, as well as in the books John Cage: Music, Philosophy, and Intention, 1933-1950 (Studies in Contemporary Music and Culture)
Erica has also appeared and been featured in the major motion pictures, 21 Grams, Suspect Zero, RX (aka Simples Lies), Elvis Has Left The Building, Bordertown, Sunshine Cleaning, Conspiracy, Swing Vote and several episodes of the TV series Wildfire.
