i play piano, guitar, saxophone, bass, and sing.

Essie (Sarah Riddle) is a WV native who moved to NJ to pursue her graduate studies in opera at Westminster Choir College. While there she began singing and song-writing with a local band soon forming Essie & the Big Chill. They played various local venues in the Central Jersey area gaining a reputation for being an incredibly fun and energetic cover band. As Essie wanted to continue to song-write and explore her own sound she left the Big Chill to pursue a solo career. 

She has been fortunate to sing in the Invitational house band at John & Peter's fronted by Mickey Melchiondo (Dean Ween) and featuring incredible musicians such as Michael Hampton (Kidd Funkadelic). Other notable performance venues include performing with Remember Jones at Brooklyn Bowl, and House of Independent's. She has also had the privilege of joining Jah People at venues like Ardmore Music Hall, and Brooklyn Bowl. 

Classically Essie has been fortunate to share the stage at Carnegie Hall with the Berlin Philharmonic for Beethoven's 9th Symphony under the baton of Sir Simon Rattle. She also has performed under Yannick Nézet-Séguin with the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Kimmel Center for multiple works, as well as several performances with the New Jersey State Orchestra. Over the years she has been recognized for several awards including the Hobson Award for Vocal Excellence and first place in both the Eloise-Campbell Long Competition, and WV NATS competition.

Elz
www.djelz.com
bookings: elz@bluebearmusic.org

ELIZABETH HENDERSON IS A DJ, ARTIST, AND EDUCATOR BASED IN SAN FRANCISCO.

Being known for genre-bending and crowd-pleasing, she has mastered the art of reading the crowd by setting the mood with tasteful dance music. Growing up listening to breakbeats, techno, and house music along with discovering classic rock, jazz, hip-hop, 80s, and funk music she learned how to incorporate all of these elements together to create some serious flavor. Her parents were opera singers, so they raised her with a great appreciation and passion for music and vinyl. She studied piano and violin throughout her youth and sang with her church choir and high school jazz band. She got interested in electronic music by going to local underground raves in San Francisco and saw her first female DJ perform and immediately became inspired to learn how to use turntables herself to express her love for music.

Her first DJ gig was in 1998 in a large warehouse space called 2nd and Jackson in Oakland. Soon after, she started playing for many legendary San Francisco long-running events, including 2nd Sunday, Sister SF, Feel Good, Sonic at 1015, Mixed Elements, and The Gathering. In March 2008, Elz graduated from Ex’pression College with a Bachelor of Applied Science degree in Sound Arts. After graduation, she spent the summer interning for DJ Shadow, assisted in preparation for the launch of DJ Shadow Digital Store, and processed sound samples for the store. 

SHE HAS SINCE RELEASED MUSIC ON MUZIMO RECORDS, HARLUM MUZIQ, LOOK OUT RECORDS, AND THE TECH HOUSE LABEL LASER NATIVE. 

In 2015 she studied Ableton at Sequence One in Oakland and went on to work as a Music Curator and Audio Engineer at the DJ app, Crossfader. She was a resident with The Kazbah for many years and is currently with the Disco Knights Burning Man crew. Elz was also a resident DJ at the Virgin Hotel in San Francisco at the Everdene Rooftop bar and the Common’s Club from 2019-2020. She plays regularly at many famous Bay Area venues and events and has also played larger shows and festivals such as Coachella, Boiler Room, SXM Festival, WMC, Sunset Campout, Oregon Eclipse Festival, Outside Lands, Soul Camp, Tropical Events, and BPM Festival. Elz has also curated music and DJ’d for weddings, healing, music therapy, and corporate events including companies such as Day Breaker, Deep House Yoga, Yoga Tree, Yoga Wave, Plato Verde, Skin Spirit, Adidas, Puma, IDEO, Montclair University (NY), Google, and Salesforce.

Elz has also taught therapeutic beat-making workshops for elementary and middle school children using Ableton and the Push with the nonprofit Today’s Future Sound throughout the Bay Area. She has been a DJ instructor at Blue Bear School of Music for the past 5 years at Fort Mason in San Francisco and teaches private and group classes for adults and teens. Her mission is to use music as a tool to heal people by giving them a safe space to be themselves while injecting them with positivity via dancing to the best music. Most recently she helped form Empress SF - an all female DJ Collective that has a residency every 3rd Sat @ Zhuzh

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