About
Golden Egg is an artist-led initiative strengthening financial security for Chicago’s freelance musicians. We aspire to create a vision for lasting, shared wealth in the music industry, and to build the collective power we will need to bring that vision into existence.
Everyone gets sick, ages, and dies. We all need support as we do. Yet we are accustomed to thinking that the capacity to age in good health and die in dignity is a privilege to be earned, not an inherent human right. Why is that? Why is it hard for so many of us to even imagine having the support we need?
As a group of artists and arts workers, we imagine new realities every day, even while we lead extremely contingent lives with few protections. We know how to appreciate constraints, to treat them as prompts for inspiration and calls for collaboration. We believe we are exactly the right people to change the unfit systems that shape retirement and later-life existence in our society.
Some of our team first started working on a collaborative retirement savings program for artists in 2019. At the time, in honor of the upcoming Year of Chicago Music, DCASE issued a call for bold, systems-changing ideas, and we pitched a retirement savings project. The proposal was not funded, but we kept at it, studying similar initiatives and reaching out to folks for advice. Finally, in spring 2023, we won a $100,000 grant from DCASE through the Chicago Arts Recovery Program to pilot Golden Egg.
Steering Committee
Golden Egg is democratically controlled by artists. This year, to set up our organization and make our first grants, we gathered a Steering Committee of eight artists who represent the breadth of the Chicago music community reasonably well. Their greatest strength is their experience—as people who know what it's like to live a freelance lifestyle, these artists personally understand the needs of the community we serve.
Caitlin Edwards
Caitlin Edwards, a Chicago-based multi-genre violinist, arranger, and educator, embarked on her musical journey at age eight in Birmingham, Alabama. Trained classically with a passion for gospel, jazz, hip-hop, and neo-soul, Caitlin released "Exhale" in 2021 and "Mere Mortals" in October 2023. Committed to preserving the legacy of Black composers, she actively showcases their works for aspiring BIPOC musicians and a global audience. Caitlin's versatile career has garnered recognition, including the 2023 Advocate for the Arts award, 2023 Sphinx MPower Artist Grant, and the 2022 Esteemed Artist Award. She holds Grammy certificates for contributions to Disney's "The Lion King" and albums by John Legend and PJ Morton. A proud member of D-Composed, Ensemble Dal Niente, and Sphinx Virtuosi, Caitlin serves on the Board of Directors for the Chicago Federation of Musicians Local 10-208, contributing to the thriving local music community.
Shanta Nurullah
Shanta Nurullah makes music primarily on sitar, bass, and mbira, and works as a storyteller and teaching artist. She has been performing professionally as a musician since 1972 and as a storyteller since 1978. She co-founded two all-women’s groups, Sojourner and Samana, and currently leads the ensemble, Sitarsys.
A member of the AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians), Shanta has received an Artist Fellowship from the Illinois Arts Council Agency and the Zora Neale Hurston Award from the National Association of Black Storytellers. Shanta teaches at the Old Town School of Folk Music and is an advocate for women in music.
Adrian Ruiz
Adrian started playing piano at the age of 16 in his high school jazz band which is where he discovered his passion for music. He won the Ravinia Jazz Scholar award his junior and senior year in high school. He studied with Chicago's own Willie Pickens. Adrian started playing professionally at the age of 19. He has done recordings with many artists. From doing theater work at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre to having already shared the stage with artists such as Delfeayo Marsalis, Frank Catalano, Von Freeman, Luis 'Perico' Ortiz, Brenda K. Starr, Van Lester, Willie Garcia, Jesse Charbonier, Ernie Adams, Frankie Vazquez, Frankie Negron, Alison Ruble, The Drifters, Kayvan Vega, Joan Collaso, Papo Cocote, Tony Vega, Los Bandoleros, Pedrito Martinez, Victor Miranda, the Grammy Nominated Angel Melendez and his Mambo 911 Orchestra, Grammy Winners Roberto Vizcaino, and Raul Pineda. He looks forward to continuing his passion.
Ariel Zetina
Ariel Zetina is a Chicago based artist, focusing in music production, deejaying, and writing. Her music takes influence from techno, Chicago house, Belizean punta, and the queer club scene worldwide. Her debut album Cyclorama released in 2022 via Local Action Records. She is a resident DJ at Smartbar and co-runs the party Rumors. She was chosen as one of the Chicago Tribune’s Chicagoans of the Year in the Pop Music category in 2023!
Mabel Kwan
Pianist Mabel Kwan is fascinated by sounds, contradictions, and our perception of what is familiar or strange. She is a founding member of Ensemble Dal Niente, Restroy, Mega Laverne and Shirley, Fifth Season, Uluuul, and Honestly Same. A native of Austin, Texas, her interest in art and music began at an early age when she started accompanying her father on lieder, arias, and Chinese folk songs. Mabel is a 2017 3Arts Awardee, 2018 High Concept Labs Artist, and 2020 City of Chicago Esteemed Artist.
Justine Ogbevire
Activist and artist Justine Ogbevire has been active in restorative justice work since 17 years old when she first learned about School To Prison Pipeline, from there she contributed back to the Rogers Park Community with her fellow past collaborators Peace Angels through Howard Area. Then around 2015 she met with Circles and Ciphers and has done some work with them in the past and first learned about Peace Circles and the purpose behind them.
Justine's natural talents as a poet began at age 11 when she wrote her first poem. Ever since then, she performed and joined programs like Young Chicago Authors at Literature Fest, most importantly found her voice through Circles and Ciphers when she got paid $50 for her very first performance from her older poems she revisited and revised. Then the path took its own course when she started performing through Circles in the city at open mics and universities. Unlike poetry, music came later on in her life but has been attempted as a teenager at the age of 15. A part of Justine's passion that never really left, Hip Hop music was the power to her spirit and foundation of the creative world she tries to express herself.
As her journey continues in doing the work of activism, hip hop, and poetry She is unfolding the greater and bigger picture on purpose as she develops her own practices of restorative justice through hip hop and poetry.
Isaiah Spencer
With his edgy style and innovative beats, jazz and blues drummer Isaiah Spencer has carved out a unique reputation in Chicago and beyond. Critics have called his sound propulsive, fiery, and incendiary.
A North Side native, Spencer has studied with Dr. Curtis Prince in Chicago’s All-City Jazz Band, with Dana Hall and Ernie Adams in the Ravinia Jazz in the Schools program, at Roosevelt University, and with legendary jazz educator Ronald Carter at Gallery 37, a paid summer job teaching the arts to youth. He has also studied with Ralph Peterson Jr., Kenny Washington, Greg Hutchinson, Ed Soph, Hamid Drake, Albert "Tutti" Heath, and Wilbur Campbell.
Now, Spencer is the one doing the teaching. He is a teaching artist and mentor for a nonprofit organization called Youth Guidance, and a percussion teacher and assistant band director at New Trier High School. He directs his own drum camp program and through his mentoring and volunteer work, he teaches children how music can help them to overcome obstacles and reach greater heights.
He has performed at the Chicago Blues Festival, the Englewood Blues Festival, Jazz Showcase, House of Blues, and Rosa’s, and shared the stage with greats including Fred Anderson, Pine Top Perkins, Eddie Clearwater, Buddy Guy, Clark Terry, Roy Hargrove, Tom Harrell, Donald Harrison, Wynton & Branford Marsalis, James Moody, Cyrus Chestnut, Johnny O'Neil, and Nicole Mitchell. He has toured with William Parker, Ernest Dawkins, and Guy King, among others.
Anonymous
The eighth member of our the Steering Committee has asked to remain anonymous in our communications.
Staff
Deidre Huckabay
Project Manager
Deidre Huckabay (they/them) is a performer, writer, and flutist. Their creative work, life work, and work-for-money work flow from the belief that liberation from suffering is possible for every living being.
They are co-owner of the experimental cassette tape label Parlour Tapes+ and a member of the collective Mocrep. As a flutist, Deidre has extensively toured the U.S., Europe, and Latin America. They studied at Eastman School of Music and Duquesne University.
Deidre has been fundraising for Chicago-area nonprofits and artists since 2013, and they are especially compelled to collaborate with artists and organizations practicing experimental, interdisciplinary, and difficult-to-define approaches.
Kelsey McFalls
Evaluation & Research Manager
Kelsey McFalls (she/her) is Development Associate at ESS. She is a freelance dancer, grant writer, and development consultant with eight years of experience in fundraising and managing arts projects. Previously the Chief Operating Officer of an ed-tech startup, Kelsey now collaborates with arts nonprofits on fundraising and program development. In addition to ESS, she also supports Homeroom, Heidi Duckler Dance, San Francisco Dance Film Festival, and Dark Circles Contemporary Dance.
Olivia Junell
Engagement & Outreach Manager
Olivia Junell (she/her) is Director of Development & Outreach at ESS. She has over 15 years of experience working in development at small to mid-sized arts nonprofits, where she has gained extensive, diverse experience in fundraising, project management, project development, budgeting, production, strategic planning, and marketing. Olivia holds a dual Masters in Arts Administration and Public Policy and Modern Art History and Critical Writing at the School of the Art Institute Chicago (2016). She has held various roles at contemporary arts and music organizations including significant development and leadership roles at the Hyde Park Jazz Festival, the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, High Concept Labs, and Women & Their Work. Olivia serves as Treasurer and Development Committee Chair on the board of Honey Pot Performance, a multidisciplinary Afro-feminist nonprofit. She is the Program Director for Back Alley Jazz, a project of the Hyde Park Jazz Festival and South Shore Works.
Adam Vida
Grant Administrator
Managing Director of ESS Adam Vida (he/him) has worked in various capacities at ESS since 2008. A drummer, recording engineer, and touring artist, Vida is embedded in the Chicago arts community and dedicated to shaping positive change in the field.