The Cedar Commissions

MEET OUR 2025 - 2026

CEDAR COMMISSIONS COHORT

The Cedar Cultural Center is excited to announce the recipients of the 15th round of The Cedar Commissions, The Cedar’s flagship commissioning program for emerging Minnesota-based composers and musicians made possible by a grant from the Jerome Foundation. To date, the Commissions have supported the creation of new music by more than 80 local artists across genres.

The 2025-26 round of artists was selected by a diverse committee of Minnesota-based musicians, music industry professionals, and Cedar staff. The 6 commissioned artists, Deeq Abdi, Bryn Battani, GR3G, Creekbed Carter Hogan, Valentine Lowry-Ortega, and Mikey Marget will each receive $4500 to compose and perform new musical work to debut at The Cedar on Friday, February 20th and Saturday, February 21st, 2026.

Deeq Abdi

Deeq Abdi was born in Somalia, a nation celebrated for its rich poetic heritage. From a young age, he found his voice through poetry, learning the intricate craft of Gabay—a traditional form of Somali verse—from his uncles. After moving to the United States, Deeq expanded his artistic expression, embracing spoken word and hip-hop as dynamic tools for storytelling and cultural connection.

Growing up in a multilingual household, where the blend of English and non-English speakers has shaped his worldview and deepened his appreciation for the city's diverse cultural fabric. This unique perspective fuels his work as a poet, rapper, youth worker, and community organizer.

Deeq uses poetry and hip-hop to engage and empower young people, particularly in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis. His creative journey began in his early teens and grew from poetry into music. He became a member of the rap group True Mutiny and later released his solo project, Southside Somali, Northside Nomad, while working at Franklin Library.

Bryn Battani

Bryn Battani is a Texas-bred writer/performer who loves to say the opposite of what she really means. She supports her “persona pop” songs with genre-bending arrangements colored by her folk-rock roots and theatrical background, heightening her shapeshifting stage presence with props and costume changes. Her work oscillates between tongue-in-cheek melodrama and raw vulnerability, examining social politics, thorny entanglements, and other modern absurdities.

This February, Bryn will deliver a rock operetta exploring themes of credibility and authority in an age of algorithms, educational censorship, and commodified desire. Morphing between unreliable narrators influenced by hidden agendas, blatant biases, and genuine intentions, she playfully questions where we get our information and who we trust. This new work punctuates character-driven songs with short scenes and musical interludes, utilizing pop idioms and misleading appearances to disguise deception and challenge the audience’s assumptions of the singer-songwriter as an “authentic” voice.

Gregory Bess

GR3G is a 24-year-old independent artist from South Side Chicago, now based in Minneapolis. Rooted in storytelling and social justice advocacy, his work blends hip-hop lyricism with experimental jazz influences to explore themes of Black masculinity, resilience, and healing.

At the heart of his work is a desire to listen to the stories of life and struggle. Through poetry and music, he explores mental health, fatherhood, and survival in a world shaped by systemic oppression. Voices in Between is a performance where spoken-word monologues meet live hip-hop and jazz compositions. Each monologue opens a doorway into a theme, and each musical response is a conversation with it, together weaving a tapestry of reflection, resilience, and hope.

GR3G invites audiences into a shared space where they can witness, reflect, and connect not just with his story, but with their own. Through music, words, and the silence in between, the project offers a space for catharsis, dialogue, and collective healing.

Creekbed Carter Hogan(he/they):

“Bread & Roses”

Creekbed Carter Hogan is a trans musician, writer, and educator who channels their passions for history, labor organizing, and queer community into folk music that aims to build solidarity, connection, and hope. “Bread & Roses” is a new union song cycle that will draw from Minnesota’s labor history, as well as from the long tradition of labor music. Featuring a band of musician union members from the Twin Cities United Performers (TCUP), this work seeks to bring the ordinary poetry of the fight for a dignified life into a somatic performance space, reminding us all that while we may not see total systemic change in our lifetimes, there's nothing more beautiful and lasting than giving it a shot anyway.

Valentine Lowry-Ortega

Valentine Lowry-Ortega is a Venezuelan-American songwriter based in the Twin Cities. They have been performing since they were old enough to speak, through the lens of their father’s camcorder, or at the hokey talent shows in their small hometown of Worthington, Minnesota.

They went on to study acting at a conservatory-style program during college, but realized that they prefer writing their own narratives and characters to playing pre-prescribed ones. This led them to pursue songwriting more seriously, in the beer-can littered basements of the Stevens Point DIY scene. After several years of testing their material, they moved to the Twin Cities, and formed their current project Oceanographer–a Folk-Pop band. Oceanographer has played across the Midwest, coloring the landscape with heartfelt, twangy tales of queer love and self-discovery. Valentine was nominated for a 2025 Loring Award in the category of “Best Upcoming Artist” for their work with Oceanographer.

Arquetipo is a staged song cycle created by Venezuelan-American songwriter Valentine Lowry-Ortega, set within a mind suffering from fragmented memory. For survivors of childhood abuse, memories are often encoded irregularly–appearing more like fragments of a shattered mirror, or a jumbled web, rather than a linear narrative.

Raised in a mixed-race household, Valentine’s soundscape is colored by influences of Salsa and Latin Pop from their mother’s side, as well as influences of Folk and Country from their father. This Genre-Expansive Song Cycle weaves together truth and fantasy in a surrealist, childlike world. Sentimentality can be found through crooked doorways, the late-night hum of a television astrologer, or a cafecito shared with your abuelita.

Mikey Marget

Mikey Marget (they/them) is a Minneapolis-based cellist and songwriter. Their instrumental music combines traditional folk with modern electro-acoustic elements, while their singing tunes address topics including: the joy of community connection, personal and collective mental health, and queer experience.

Gazing into the wildest, deepest part of the forest, the air is heavy with the scent of fresh moss and the decay of old wood. We’re uncertain of the path, but feel the point of an ancient, ephemeral compass gently prodding. We grasp hands, stepping thoughtfully into the darkness… As the climate rapidly shifts, it is imperative to develop and maintain connections to one another, to each of our heritages/histories, and to the environment itself. In this project, cellist Mikey Marget will create new folk-fusion music influenced by Scandinavian fiddle styles. They will interweave traditional and modern musical elements with poetry and puppet masks to explore the concept of connection during our human-caused climate crisis.

2024-25 Cedar Commissions COHORT

The Cedar Cultural Center is pleased to announce the recipients of the 14th round of The Cedar Commissions, The Cedar’s flagship commissioning program for emerging Minnesota-based composers and musicians made possible by a grant from the Jerome Foundation. Additional support provided by New Music USA. To date, the Commissions have supported the creation of new music by more than 80 local artists across genres.

The 2024-25 round of artists was selected by a diverse committee of Minnesota-based musicians, music industry professionals, and one Cedar staff. The 6 commissioned artists, A.P. Looze, Hibah Hassan, John Jamison II, May Klug, Phillip Saint John, and Yeej Moua, will each receive $4,500 plus a $350 production stipend to compose at least 30 minutes of new musical work to debut at The Cedar on Friday, January 31st and Saturday, February 1st, 2025.

Artists receive professional development, administrative and marketing support from Cedar staff, artist photos, and mentorship from an artist-determined individual. Performances include a tech rehearsal, high-quality professional photos, an unmixed multi-track recording, and single-camera video documentation.

Learn more about this year’s artists and their projects, below!

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

A.P. Looze (they/them):

“PRISM”

A.P. Looze's deepest inspiration and companion in this particular lifetime of theirs is Love. Looze will derive songs/sonic worlds through a process of channeling the Akashic Record--a sphere of consciousness that holds all unconditional love for our souls. This act of listening to love is the most precious act of surrender, often leading to the taproot of their most impassioned needs and desires. This mysterious and often ineffable realm is the place Looze strives to make Known in an Unknowable Way by way of art. It's less about understanding, and more about learning to hold the unpronounceable feeling that connects us to What Matters Most in our precious lives. Looze wishes to sing this beautiful and holy part of existence wide open--imperfectly, a little haphazardly, with wonder, humility, an earnest passion, and above all, a big 'ol sense of humor. When I offer and listen to love, what will love offer in return? Hopefully...some songs. :) xoxo

Learn more about A.P. Looze

Hibah Hassan (she/her):

“privileged communications”

“privileged communications” is a multimedia showcase comprising visual art, poetry, and music, created by Hibah Hassan. Raised in a Muslim household by Pakistani-immigrant parents, often with the buzz of South Asian sound and American Pop music in the background, Hibah’s artistry is defined by a strong passion for storytelling and complex lyricism. Her work is not only reflective of her experiences, but the experiences of her community. In “privileged communications”, a movement in six parts, she sets out to explore the intersection of speech and privilege, where our greatest powers are stifled. A love letter to the parts of speech, the words we don’t express, and the immense power many of us hold; the longing we have for our nostalgia-painted homelands, the sacrifices we make to avoid feeling “othered”, and the experiences that often demand we keep our heads down and work hard. Dedicated to the people who speak out against injustice and are subsequently punished; to all the BIPOC, immigrants, refugees who traded their voices for the promise of freedom; for the people who never had voices to begin with: we will make your words ours.

Listen to Hibah Hassan

John Jamison II (he/him):

“Expressions of Afro-American Folklore”

John Jamison II is a Minneapolis based Thespian, Teaching Artist, and Blues Singer. John will be playing with the range of performance based expression through a theatrical exploration of Afro-American folklore with a bluesy subtext. Our oral literature brought to life with the intention to deepen the relationship between literature and flesh. Musical storytelling geared towards the alchemical celebration of the people of African descent in America.

May Klug (she/her):

“May and the Ladies”

May Klug is an experimental electronic composer/performer whose deep relationships with pieces of audio equipment and electronic instruments are a bridge through which she explores the networks of technological development, industry, and modern social life. Her performances blend electroacoustic experimentalism with the theater of pop, queer performance art, and high-femme fashion.

May’s primary instrument, and electronic collaborator, is the Casio CZ-101 synthesizer. By allowing the synth’s digital memory to decay, she generates sounds that capture the natural process of memory loss in a volatile RAM circuit with no electricity.

“May and the Ladies” is an avant-pop song cycle that will orchestrate these rich textures and complex synth voices with a live band to create catchy, danceable electronic music. The cycle’s lyrics will explore themes of assumed identity, misinformation, camp, and radical feminist politics. This work seeks to explore the role of female pop artists as innovators and early adopters of electronic instruments and experimental techniques, and to examine the archetype of the pop star as an unattainable fantasy of beauty, wealth, hyperfemininity, and virtuosity.

Phillip Saint John (he/him):

“Tribal Community”

Through his social experiences as an emcee and soul singer in the twin cities for a decade, Phillip is bringing together pieces of what he’s learned musically and socially centering community over hyper individual living. Though he is Apache Native American, his upbringing in Hastings, Minnesota came with a lot of social isolation and conditioning about the American dream. With his hometowns water supply currently polluted with chemicals and the shift of music culture due to artists focus on social media and metrics, Phillip is using the skills he’s learned from communal circles such as sound bowls, group harmonization, collaboration with other musicians, meditations & guitar to bridge us back to ourselves in a more symbiotic and inclusive way of life. A life not previously possible for his last four generations.

Learn more about Phillip Saint John

YEEJ (he/him):

“PINES”

A multi-hyphenate artist originally from Missoula, Montana, YEEJ now resides in the Twin Cities. “PINES” will be a cinematic musical journey mirroring his life. The songs will embody various genres such as pop, alternative, and traditional Hmong music through the exploration of Montana folk and country sounds. This is a love letter to his family, friends and culture. It will reflect on his time living in both Montana and Minnesota; the place that fostered his upbringing with the place that he found himself flourish as an artist and every bit in between.

Listen to YEEJ

ABOUT THE CEDAR COMMISSIONS

The Cedar Commissions is a flagship program for local emerging artists made possible with a grant from the Jerome Foundation. Since the program began in 2011, the Commissions have showcased new work by over 80 Minnesotan emerging composers and musicians, including Dessa, Aby Wolf, Adam Levy, Maria Isa, Joe Horton, Joey Van Phillips, Gao Hong, Dameun Strange, Vie Boheme, and many more.

“We’re grateful to continue supporting early-career artists from our varied communities. Every year, I love how each artist digs deep within to create new works from the heart - they really commit,” says Robert Lehmann, Community and Grant-Funded Programs Manager and program lead for The Cedar Commissions. “One of our priorities as a nonprofit is to support emerging artists, and we’re grateful for the Jerome Foundation’s support of the program all these years. This year, we’re particularly focusing on amping up mentorship from individual mentors within our local and national circles, Cedar staff, and the artists themselves sharing from their various levels of experience. Each performance will be strikingly different from the others, but I love that - there’s a magic in the high contrast of the genres, sounds, and subjects explored across the two evenings.”

The 2024-25 round of artists was selected by a diverse committee of Minnesota-based musicians, music industry professionals, and one Cedar staff. The 6 commissioned artists each receive a $4,500 stipend, as well as an additional $350 production stipend to be used for project-specific technical and performance expenses. Artists receive professional development, administrative and marketing support from Cedar staff, artist headshots, and mentorship from an artist-determined individual. Performances include a tech rehearsal, high-quality professional photos, an unmixed multitrack recording, and single-camera video documentation. To date, the Commissions have supported the creation of new music by more than 80 local artists across genres.