ABOUT US
“If you can reach one child, you have reached an entire generation”, a quote from an unknown author that motivates and drives Natye Briggs, the appointed Executive Director of SoBroSol Production Inc. each and every day.
Natye has achieved a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration and Management, specializing in Human Resources; minoring in Early Child Education through Wayland Baptist University. A dual Master’s degree in Early Childhood Education and Special Education through Grand Canyon. Her passion has always evolved around caring, educating, and mentoring youth. Natye’s background includes running a home daycare, working for organizations like Head Start, Boys and Girls Club, the YMCA, Child Youth Services on the military post, and the Yellow Ribbon Reintegration Program for the Veterans Affairs. In addition, to her 16+ years of servicing the youth, she has raised four wonderful and successful children.
If asked, Natye would describe herself as an accomplished nerd who loves to learn all things data-related, watch anime, and run programs that contribute to the advancement of youth. She is known for being a person who listens, provides advice, a helping hand, and for her great ideas.
Natye strongly feels that every child, youth, and young adult should have at least one positive role model in their life that believes in them and stands firmly in their corner.
Steven Alvarez was raised in a multi-ethnic military family, and grew up in and around many diverse cultures including Hispanic, Native American, Hawaiian, Japanese, and all three coasts of the continental U.S. He majored in Music (Voice and Percussion) and History and minored in Philosophy at San Jose State University.
An artist with hands in many mediums, he works professionally as a percussionist, vocalist, stage actor, film and stage producer and music educator. He also produced twelve cultural documentary films and music videos which have been screened internationally at film festivals and broadcast nationally on PBS. His films have won several awards including a Native American Music Award (NAMA) for his music video In This World, produced for the contemporary indigenous band: Medicine Dream. He executive produced For the Rights of All–Ending Jim Crow in Alaska and Games of the North, both of which were broadcast on PBS from 2009-2011.
Steven began working professionally as a musician at the age of 16 and worked his way through college performing as both a singer and percussionist. From 1982 through 1989, he played regularly with the Monterey Symphony and Santa Cruz Symphony Orchestras and performed as a guest artist for the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1983 with jazz artist Bobby Hutcherson. He freelanced as a percussionist and vocalist in the San Francisco Bay Area before moving to Anchorage and has shared the stage with Lloyd Bridges, Doc Sevrinson, Jethro Tull, and R. Carlos Nakai. For more than 40 years, Steven has worked with numerous bands, combos, pit orchestras and theatre companies. He has recorded local and national radio and television commercials jingles as both a vocalist and percussionist including the 15” Hershey’s Kisses Christmas spot that has run annually since 1989.
Music directing more than 40 theater productions, he co-founded Theater Artists United (TAU). TAU has produced several musical theatre productions and has partnered with many local arts organizations. In October of 2018, Steven co-produced, and music directed with Alaska Dance Theatre, Bernstein and Beyond, celebrating the centennial of Leonard Bernstein’s birth. In October of 2016, he co-produced with the Anchorage Concert Chorus, ALWays: A Tribute to Andrew Lloyd Webber. In 2015, for the Alaska Native Heritage Center and Alaska Dance Theatre, he music directed and served as the Artistic and Executive Producer of Spirit – the 7th Fire of Alaska, an Alaskan adaptation of Peter Buffett’s masterwork. In 2008 and again in 2018, he co-produced, with the Anchorage Symphony Orchestra, Randy Fleischer’s Echoes, a multi-media symphonic piece coupling the indigenous song and dance of Hawaii, Alaska and Native America with a symphony orchestra. The piece was also performed in Washington DC at the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) in 2008 and with the Youngstown Symphony Orchestra in 2010.
He has performed on stage in several musical theater productions, having played the roles of Jinx/Forever Plaid, Judas Iscariot and Jesus/ Jesus Christ Superstar, Che/Evita, The Celebrant/Bernstein’s Mass, and The Evangelist for a production of Bach’s St John Passion. Steven regularly presents an innovative theater piece, which debuted at the NMAI that fuses film, contemporary song and indigenous storytelling and has performed as a vocalist and storyteller at venues throughout the country.
Locally, Steven serves as the Principal Percussionist with the Anchorage Symphony and Anchorage Concert Chorus orchestras and is the Principal Timpanist for the Anchorage Opera. He worked with the indigenous groups, Medicine Dream and Pamyua and performed nationally as a solo artist at the Kennedy Center and at the NMAI’s Classical Native Series. In 2010, he was honored to perform at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver with Saturday Night Live percussionist, Valerie Naranjo.
Steven spent 15 years teaching music, and has directed private music and dance schools, after school cultural education programs and art organizations for more than 30 years. From 2000 through 2015, he served as the Director of Arts and Education for the Alaska Native Heritage Center working with the Center’s national and local partners, coordinating special projects, directing educational initiatives, public programs, and performance art and film festivals. He currently is the Tribal Administrator for Ugashik Traditional Village.
Dan is the founder of SoBroSol and its first Executive Director. SoBroSol was originally formed as a way to feature BI-POC artists in the arts. With this mission driving him Dan directed the musical “Hedwig and the Angry Inch”, he’s played piano and led the first Salsa orchestra to play in Anchorage in decades featuring many local Latinx artists, he was the also the executive producer and driving force behind the local theatre production of Lin Manuel Miranda’s “In the Heights” which boasted a talented cast and management team comprised of BI-POC community members, an orchestra and employed over 60 community members during its production run.
Dan has now stepped into an advisory role on our board and is resting easy knowing that the organization is doing more great works for our community under its new leadership.