Our Team
Dr. Kristina Jacobsen
Director and facilitator
Kristina Jacobsen, PhD, is a singer, songwriter, ethnographer and ‘peregrina’ who founded and led the Songwriting Major at the University of New Mexico from 2013-2025. In July 2022, she completed the Camino Francés and received her “Compostela” (certification of completion) when she walked from Burgos, Spain to Santiago de Compostela, Spain (498 kilometers). A Fulbright Artist and Scholar (Italy 2019-2020), Kristina has been nominated for four New Mexico Music Awards. Her oeuvre is informed by a world of global music—all deeply considered and then seemingly wrapped up quietly but with profound sentimentality in her spacious and intimate songs—includes sonic touches of American honky tonk and folk music. She delivers her songs in a yodeling alto that can warm your heart, bite off a searing denunciation, or celebrate good times with equal fervor. Her travels, from the American southwest and Scandinavia to Sardinia, resound in every note in a rich melting pot of culture and human connection. Her seventh album, Camino Dreaming, features cowrites written while walking the Camino de Santiago between 2022-2026.
A long-time practitioner of mindfulness, Jacobsen completed her introductory MBSR (Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction) training at Duke University’s Center for Integrative Medicine and graduated with a Certificate in Mindful Leadership (with Mark Lesser and Nikki Mirghafori) from Spirit Rock Insight Meditation Center in 2021. She was ordained as a member of the Order of Interbeing in the Plum Village tradition in June 2026, with the Dharma name “True Spring Light of Awakening.” She enjoys bringing mindfulness into the songwriting process in beautiful places around the world. Kristina speaks Italian, Spanish, Norwegian and some Sardinian, Finnish and Navajo.
Kristina is the author of the award-winning books, Sing Me Back Home: Ethnographic Songwriting and Sardinian Language Politics (2024 UTP; 2025 NeoClassica) and The Sound of Navajo Country: Music, Language and Diné Belonging (2017), and the co-author of The Creative Ethnographer’s Notebook with poet Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor (Routledge 2024). A passionate teacher, she is a believer in the power of walking and contemplative practice to deepen our songwriting craft and our sense of connection to nature, to ourselves and to one another.
Learn more about Kristina:
Personal website
Substack: Ethnographic Songwriting
Songs of Sardigna
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[English] My yoga teacher training was the moment everything shifted.
I began listening inward, and my intuition awakened.
My work emerges from a space of deep personal evolution, peeling back infinite layers of self.
Today, I move between spirituality, movement, energy work, and creativity, translating them into experiences that go beyond the body and mind and leave a lasting sense of connection.
Yoga teacher since 2021. Spiritual being since 1989. Hesen is currently based in Bosa, Sardigna.
[Italiano]
La formazione per insegnanti di yoga ha segnato la svolta decisiva.
Ho iniziato ad ascoltare il mio mondo interiore e la mia intuizione si è risvegliata.
Il mio lavoro nasce da un profondo percorso di evoluzione personale, che porta a svelare infiniti strati del sé.
Oggi mi muovo tra spiritualità, movimento, lavoro energetico e creatività, trasformandoli in esperienze che trascendono corpo e mente e lasciano un senso duraturo di connessione.
Insegnante di yoga dal 2021. Essere spirituale dal 1989. Hesen adesso e’ basato in Bosa, Sardigna.
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Jolie is a performer, songwriter, and educator whose work lives at the intersection of storytelling, presence, and advocacy. With a decade-long meditation practice and a background as a licensed K-12 performing arts educator, she moves between the work of mental health and the work of the stage, treating both as forms of collaboration, curiosity, and care.
Her path began in musical theatre and choir, competing nationally as a young performer and singing with ensembles across and beyond New Mexico. That early immersion in the performance world shaped a lasting commitment: creating spaces where artists can show up fully human, with room for bodily autonomy and emotional safety built into the process.
As an educator, she draws on years of studying musical pedagogy and childhood development to nurture young artists with the same intentionality she brings to her own practice. As a songwriter, she uses her voice to challenge inherited structures, capitalist, colonial, patriarchal, and otherwise, and to open conversations that are often left unspoken, bridging divides rather than deepening them.
Jolie is endlessly inspired by the strong communities that shaped her, and she's committed to passing that same strength, and a devotion to the arts as a force for change, on to the next generation. She welcomes difficult conversations and difficult emotions alike, believing both are essential to honest art and a more connected world.
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Aubrie Powell holds a PhD in Musicology from the University of Illinois. She is interested in how participatory collaborative ways of making music, such as song co-writing and band making, link to genre, creative community, and ways of knowing and learning. Her interdisciplinary work engages with the public humanities and Arts-Based Research to see music making as a community resource. Aubrie has a Master of Music Composition from the University of Missouri-Kansas City and a Masters with a concentration in musicology from the University of New Mexico.
Aubrie has written over fifty songs and co-written with over twenty songwriters. She is the site coordinator for workshops with Sing Me Back Home Retreats and a facilitator of the Urbana-Champaign Songwriter Meetup. She participates regularly in ensembles at the Community School for the Arts in Urbana where she interned as part of the Summer Bridge Experience supported by Humanities Without Walls. She plays in several pick-up groups and bands in Illinois including the Philo Country Opry, the Tumbleweeds, and the Recliners.
You can listen to Aubrie’s music, here: https://aubriempowell.com/
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Bo Shimmin (Pueblo of Acoma) is an operatic tenor, contemporary vocalist, educator, and arts advocate whose work spans opera, recital, and contemporary vocal performance. A two-time Fulbright grantee to Italy, Bo’s artistic practice centers on expanding the classical vocal canon, championing contemporary Indigenous voices, and creating greater access to classical music within Native communities.
Bo holds degrees from DePauw University and the University of Michigan, with additional training at Arizona State University and the Luigi Cherubini Conservatory in Florence. He has performed with organizations including Arizona Opera, Opera Montana, Dell’Arte Opera Ensemble, and the Lyceum Club in Florence. He is also the founder of NDN Opera, an initiative bringing Indigenous classical repertoire, performance, and music education to Native communities and young people across the Southwest. In 2026, he received a Native Arts and Cultures Foundation LIFT Award supporting his recording project, I Heard the Voice of the Wind.
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Singer and ethnomusicologist, Luigi ‘Gigi’ Oliva, is a renowned teacher g of traditional Sardinian singing. An ethnomusicologist, he teaches classes and workshops in multipart singing at the University of Cagliari, at the Conservatory Palestrina, also in Cagliari, and in Bosa. He also teaches traditional Sardinian singing workshops for members of the University of New Mexico class, “Singing and Ethnography of the Mediterranean,” a study abroad class to Sardinia, each May. He has presented and taught workshops on multipart singing in Italy, France and Germany; he has facilitated cultural exchanges focused on traditional singing with the program, ERASMUS, in Estonia, LIthuania, Croatia, Georgia, Portugal and France. Known for his creative and effective didactic approaches to teaching both singers and non-singers, Oliva is also the artistic director of the Cultural Association and singing group, “Coro di Bosa.” He also directs the women’s choir, “Stella Splendens” of Belvi, Sardinia.
Songs of Santiago
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Aubrie Powell holds a PhD in Musicology from the University of Illinois. She is interested in how participatory collaborative ways of making music, such as song co-writing and band making, link to genre, creative community, and ways of knowing and learning. Her interdisciplinary work engages with the public humanities and Arts-Based Research to see music making as a community resource. Aubrie has a Master of Music Composition from the University of Missouri-Kansas City and a Masters with a concentration in musicology from the University of New Mexico.
Aubrie has written over fifty songs and co-written with over twenty songwriters. She is the site coordinator for workshops with Sing Me Back Home Retreats and a facilitator of the Urbana-Champaign Songwriter Meetup. She participates regularly in ensembles at the Community School for the Arts in Urbana where she interned as part of the Summer Bridge Experience supported by Humanities Without Walls. She plays in several pick-up groups and bands in Illinois including the Philo Country Opry, the Tumbleweeds, and the Recliners.
You can listen to Aubrie’s music, here: https://aubriempowell.com/
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Felix Gato Peralta is a New Mexico songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, educator, and Genízaro cultural bearer. He first
walked the Camino with Kristina Jacobsen as part of a healing and
songwriting journey, carrying his grandfather Adán Aragon’s button
accordion through the same region of Spain where his ancestors
once lived. His work blends traditional Nuevo Mexicano forms—
corridos, Matachines, and Comanche dance songs—with blues,
cumbia, and collaborative songwriting. A 2026 516 ARTS Fulcrum
Fund grantee, Felix writes and performs as a way of archiving what
remains and passing it forward. He is a grounded collaborator who
believes songs are built in relationship— on the road, around the
table, and on the Camino.
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Musical Biography (Inglés)
Jean-Claude Benazet (Toulouse, France), has been walking the Camino de Santiago since 1981. In 1989, he composed the song, “Ultreia,” which has gone on to become one of the best-loved and best-known songs now sung along the many Caminos across Europe, including the Camino Francés. In 1993, he composed the music for the poem, Misa de Amor. In addition to “Ultreia,” he has written the songs “Pour Partir Léger” (2013, lyrics by Jacques Strobel), “A Fisterra Llegaré (2014), and “Por qué tan Lejos” (2014). In addition, he has co-authored numerous collaborative songs, including “Mélodia del Bierzo” (w/ Nhu-Mai Nguyen, 2023), “Gracias a las Ruedas” (w/ Kristina Jacobsen, 2023). He has participated in two previous Songs of Santiago Retreats (2023-2024), and is glad to be returning as this year’s spring Camino Songwriter in Residence .
Listen to the cowrite, "Melodia del Bierzo," here
Listen to an interview with Jean-Claude for the podcast "Senderos Jacobeos," here
Biografía Musical (Español)
Jean-Claude Benazet (Toulouse, Francia) recorre el Camino de Santiago desde 1981. En 1989 compuso la canción “Ultreia”, que se ha convertido en una de las más queridas y conocidas de las que se cantan en los numerosos Caminos de Santiago de Europa, incluido el Camino Francés. En 1993 compuso la música para Misa de Amor, un romance del siglo XVII. Además de “Ultreia”, ha escrito las canciones “Pour Partir Léger” (2013, letra de Jacques Strobel), “A Fisterra Llegaré” (2014) y “Por qué tan Lejos” (2014). Además, ha sido coautor de numerosas canciones colaborativas, entre ellas “Mélodia del Bierzo” (con Nhu-Mai Nguyen, 2023), “Gracias a las Ruedas” (con Kristina Jacobsen, 2023) y muchas otras canciones escritas a lo largo del Camino como participante en retiros anteriores de Songs of Santiago (2023-2024). Está contento de volver como compositor residente del Camino de primavera de este año con Songs of Santiago (2025).
Escucha la coautoría, "Melodia del Bierzo", aquí
Escucha una entrevista con Jean-Claude para el podcast "Senderos Jacobeos", aquí
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April Goltz is a freelance writer, flamenco dancer, event producer, amateur singer, and adventure seeker. Her interest and training in ethnomusicology has led to her work with a long list of arts organizations including the National Institute of Flamenco, Preservation Hall, American Routes, the National Council for the Traditional Arts, and the New Orleans Jazz Museum. April's pet project, Candelabra Productions, is dedicated to producing multi-sensory arts experiences that bring together artists and audiences from diverse creative communities.
Songs from the Jemez
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Meredith has been interested in songwriting for over twenty years. From an early age, it became her guide to understanding the world around her. She wrote, recorded, and released a solo album in 2008 ("Self-titled") and fell in love with the process of collaborating with friends to fine-tune the songs she wrote on her own. Her second solo album "The Coming of the Night" was released in 2016, and she was lucky enough to sing the album from start to finish in a cathedral in Albuquerque, NM. From 2011-2016, she wrote with the band Wildewood and recorded three albums ("While the Light Lasts," "Wildewood," and "The Other Side"). They toured throughout the US and, most notably, opened for The Handsome Family on the west coast. Meredith has written and recorded with numerous songwriters from New Mexico and Colorado, including the one and only Kristina Jacobsen, and continues to feel grateful for and inspired by the songwriters that take the time to go on retreats and share their ideas. Her music can be found on meredithwilder.bandcamp.com.