Coaching and cohort “early bird” rates end February 18th. Register now!
Judith-Kate Friedman
photo by R. David Zaslow
Welcome to Aliveness Through Arts, the website of award-winning composer, performer, consultant, and life-long creative Judith-Kate Friedman. Here you’ll find: Music, Poetry, Short Films, Podcasts, and ways to work with Judith-Kate to support your own creative journey.
What’s New:
On Feb 12, Love Dogs features new songs and poems performed live online along with archival video of Judith-Kate and Daniel “3D” Deardorff swapping original love songs. Community conversation about heart, courage, and love will happen.
Two times: Noon and 6pm Pacific time. Tickets & Info.
On Feb 16th, join Judith-Kate for a two-hour playshop:
"Tending the Inner Nest," 1-3pm Pacific time online.
Beginning Feb 25th, dive into your own artistic adventure in the good company of a creative cohort, or in a series of coaching sessions. Your Breakthrough Year has options for emerging, long-time, and seasoned creatives. Info & Registration.
Artist’s Statement:
AT ESSENCE we’re all creative. Our artistry thrives when conditions are good. No matter what happens in our lives and the world, the good news is: We can create fertile conditions.
Now is the time—to look within, share gratitude, and begin to realize your visions for 2025 with ease, courage, and support.
Everyone deserves a champion. Everyone’s voice is needed.
Together is the way forward.
As a songwriter and performer I thrive on bringing my songs to people who need hope, healing, and encouragement. As a coach and facilitator I love working with clients and communities eager to embody the power that comes from being all of who we are.
I’m honored to work with folks of all ages and cultural heritages and to make the arts and connectivity central in our lives and society. My love of sound, humor, improvisation, Oral Tradition, and beauty are always in the mix.
A Celtic tale:
The God Lugh sought to enter into Tara, dwelling place of the Gods. At the gates into the Other World, Tara’s denizens would say yes only to those whose talents they truly needed.
Lugh approached and beseeched, naming one of his many skills: Smith, harper, poet, magician, metal-worker, historian, physician….
Each time, he was told “We already have what you bring. We don’t need anymore. Sorry.” Yet, Lugh was unstoppable. Again, and again he offered a different aspect of himself.
One day, exasperated, he proclaimed his true fullness: “I am all this!”
Swiftly the Gates opened and Lugh was granted access to longed-for and long-guarded unforeseen realms.
So it is with us, too.
Each part of who we are matters. Creativity opens our hearts and opens the hearts of others.
Everyone, those seen and those unseen, are just waiting for us to claim and re-claim all of who we are.
It’s the combination of gifts, skills, imperfections, and interests we bring that makes each of us like no one else on earth.
And that is a wondrous thing.
I look forward to hearing from you if I can be of support — to you, your community, or your dream.
Together, let’s open new doors and move through the gates of what once seemed impossible.
Judith-Kate Friedman is an award-winning composer, producer, and a multi-modal artist and author.
Support for Your Creative Thriving in 2025
Judith-Kate offers musical and multi-modal commissions, concerts, workshops and masterclasses, coaching, mentoring, and consulting.
Ways we can work together include:
Your Breakthrough Year
Cohorts for Creatives Artists, dreamers, leaders, change-makers - Women and All Gender small groups
Individual Coaching Packages
“Free/Find Your Voice/Vision, Speak /Sing Your Truth!”
Tending the Inner Nest
Creative exploration workshop
Tend your inner artist in a zone of goodness and discovery.
2 hrs on Zoom. Sun Feb. 16, 1-3pm pacific time
Publications and Press
“A tremendous songwriter with a real gift for prose, too.”
“We never give up, although we give in
We drink the above and grow from within
We wave in the breeze
We watch you begin
And teach you to listen for what weaves and spins”
Journeying in the Marvelous.
“Life is a deep dive. Initiatory experiences happen to us all the time. The question is — will we be accompanied on our journeys or confirmed when we return?….” — Judith-Kate Friedman
Oral Tradition stories and songs have guided Judith-Kate’s sense of kinship all her life. Singing, discovering and then writing songs, ever curious about Time’s great mystery, music helped her way-find through a rocky urban childhood (and since). Fortunately, those early edgy places became teachers of courage—because, as for so many of us, courage was required. Having found that proximity to many unusual and unexpected things and people, along with causes of justice and the beauty of the Living World made her well up and sing—with joy, grief, laughter, sheer wonder….. Judith-Kate started singing for others as a child. And so it still is.
The poet William Stafford talks of a “thread” we follow.
Like the tapestry yarns in her work, and these pages, Judith-Kate has followed and found, persistent, plucky, insistent strands of confidence.
Somewhat like those young girls carry in old tales. Or the curious callings that weaves and puzzle us, offering invitations, insisting on our attention, even devotion, and sometimes granting rewards, often after traversing real dangers. Her paths have snaked through Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Western Mass., Oberlin College and Conservatory in the Ohio heartland, London, Italy, Israel, Indonesia, San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, and most recently deep into the quite in the remote rural Pacific Northwest she now calls home.
Here are some of the journeys Judith-Kate is on this year, with invitations for you to join in:
• New Songs Weekly. As part of a great group of writers taking up the #REAL PEOPLE, REAL SONGS challenge, I’ll be “dropping” a new song each week at least through March. You can tune into all of our new music daily on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok.
• Coaching Cohorts and Individuals. If creative camaraderie is what you seek, check out the “Skilled Yet Thirsty” and “Seasoned and Staying Amazed” cohorts here. Find/Free Your Voice/Vision and Sing/Speak Your Truth with individual coaching here.
• Songwriting Works’ is 35 years old this year! The non-profit charitable organization is poised for a renaissance. Stay Tuned!
• The Mythsinger Legacy Project (MLP) — Stories and Songs: MLP is keeping alive the work of Judith-Kate’s belated beloved Daniel Deardorff (1952-2019), musician, songwriter, mythteller, author, ritualist, and revered teacher. She hosts StoryNights around the Virtual Hearth online on the last Wednesday of every quarter. Save the dates: March 26, June 25, September 24, and a December date TBD.
THIS MONTH: FEB 12th join us for LOVE DOGS : A concert featuring new love songs and poetry from Judith-Kate and a beautiful live concert video of the evening Daniel and JK swapped Love Songs, many written for each other. Community conversation follows the concert.
Daniel Deardorff’s classic book: The Other Within: The Genius of Deformity in Myth, Culture and Psyche, 3rd ed. (Inner Traditions, 2022) will be explored in book group cohorts later in 2025. Let us know if you’d like to join in a group as we chew (ruminate) on mythic morsels and medicine in this short, labyrinthine book.
• Commission a musical or multi-modal works for any occasions. Contact Judith-Kate about commissions and collaborations.
Elsewhere on this site:
• Judith-Kate’s podcast interviews about myth, story, and my work and life with mythsinger Daniel “3D” Deardorff.
• “Mandorla Rising” - multi-modal gallery for Judith-Kate’s M.A. Poetics of Imagination creative dissertation at Dartington Arts School, UK
• Check the events page, subscribe to receive lo-fi missives, or follow Judith-Kate on social channels for more news.
• Judith-Kate’s poems appear in Arbella Poetry Magazine Winter 21/22 and the London Writers Salon’s Writing in Community anthology #2 (2022), #3 (2023), and #4 (forthcoming).
See you in the beauty!
Current and Recent Projects
Tapestry, Deer Park, Olympic Mountains, WA —Judith-Kate Friedman