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Native American Flutist R. Carlos Nakai and Pan-Global Percussionist Will Clipman 3 pm concert for their newest Grammy Nominated CD "Awakening The Fire" on Canyon Records !

Willits Community Theatre
Willits, CA

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Native American Flutist R. Carlos Nakai and Pan-Global Percussionist Will Clipman 3 pm concert for their newest Grammy Nominated CD "Awakening The Fire" on Canyon Records !

R. Carlos Nakai

Of Navajo-Ute heritage, R. Carlos Nakai is the world's premier performer of
the Native American flute. Nakai began his musical studies on the trumpet
but his musical interests took a turn when he was given a traditional cedar
wood flute as a gift and challenged to see what he could do with it. His
first album, Changes, was released by Canyon Records in 1983 and since then
he has released over thirty-five recordings with Canyon plus additional albums
and guest appearances on other labels. In addition to his educational
workshops and residencies, Nakai has appeared as a soloist throughout the
United States, Europe and Japan and has collaborated with such artists as
guitarist/luthier William Eaton and composers James DeMars and Phillip Glass
among many others.
Nakai, while well grounded in the traditional uses of the flute, began
finding new musical settings including the genres of world, new age, jazz,
and classical. Nakai founded the ethnic jazz ensemble, the R. Carlos Nakai
Quartet, which allows him to explore the use of Native American musical elements in the jazz idiom. In a cross-cultural foray, he performed
extensively with the Wind Travelin' Band, a traditional Japanese ensemble
from Kyoto and together they released an album, Island of Bows. Additional works
with ethnic artists include In A Distant Place with Tibetan flutist and singer
Nawang Khechog and Our Beloved Land with famed Hawaiian slack key guitarist
and singer Keola Beamer.
Nakai brought the flute into the concert hall, performing with over fifteen
symphony and chamber orchestras. He was a featured soloist on the Philip Glass
composition, Piano Concerto No. 2: After Lewis & Clark, premeired by the Omaha
Symphony. Nakai also works with producer Billy Williams, a two-time GRAMMY
winner, in orchestral works for the flute in a lighter vein.
Nakai has received two gold records (500,000 units sold in the U.S.) for
Canyon Trilogy and Earth Spirit (the first Native American recordings to
earn this achievement) and has sold over 4 million albums in the course of
his career. In 1994 Nakai's third collaboration with Eaton, Ancestral
Voices, was a GRAMMY Awards Nominee for Best Traditional Folk Album. In
2000 he earned a rare double nomination in the same category for Inner
Voices and Inside Monument Valley as GRAMMY Nominees for Best New Age
Album. Other GRAMMY nominations include In A Distant Place (2001 Nominee
for Best New Age Album), Fourth World (2002 Nominee for Best New Age Album),
Sanctuary (2003 Nominee for Best Native American Album), People of Peace
(2004 Nominee for Best New Age Album), Reconnections (2008 Nominee for
Best Native American Album), Dancing Into Silence (2010) Awakening the Fire with Will Clipman (2014 for Best New Age Album).
A Navy veteran, Nakai has earned a Master's Degree in American Indian
Studies from the University of Arizona. He was awarded the Arizona
Governor's Arts Award in 1992 and an honorary doctorate from Northern
Arizona University in 1994. Nakai has also co-authored a book with composer
James DeMars, The Art of the Native American Flute, which is a guide to
performing the traditional cedar flute and includes transcriptions of
Nakai's songs.
Nakai's career has been shaped by a desire to communicate a sense of
Native American culture and society that transcends the common stereotypes
presented in mass media.

www.rcarlosnakai.com/

ARTIST BIO: WILL CLIPMAN

percussionist poet performing & recording artist maskmaker storyteller educator

Will Clipman began playing his father's drums and his mother's piano at the age of three. He played his first professional gig at fourteen, and has since then mastered a pan-global palette of over one hundred percussion instruments in addition to the traditional drumset. Will is a seven-time GRAMMY Nominee, a three-time Native American Music Award Winner, a Canadian Aboriginal Music Award Winner, a New Age Reporter Music Award Winner, and a two-time TAMMIE Award Winner; and has been inducted into the Tucson Musicians Museum for his contributions to the musical community in his hometown. Will has recorded over sixty albums, including over thirty for Canyon Records, where he is regarded as the house percussionist. In addition to his solo work, Will performs with R. Carlos Nakai, William Eaton, Solvei & ZumaSOL, Amber Norgaard, Gabriel Ayala, and Coyote Jump, among many other internationally-acclaimed artists and ensembles. Will's solo CD Pathfinder earned a GRAMMY Nomination for Best New Age Album. His Planet of Percussion performance and workshop provides a hands-on tour of world music rhythm and polyrhythm.

A poet since the age of six, Will has published a book of his original poetry entitled Dog Light (Wesleyan University Press) and his work has appeared in numerous anthologies and literary journals. His writing has been honored with the Whiffen Poetry Prize, the Academy of American Poets Margaret Sterling Award, the Tucson/Pima Arts Council Poetry Fellowship, and the Arizona Commission on the Arts Award of Merit for Poetry. His poem The Quiet Power is the official Dedicatory Poem of the Tucson Main Library.

Will is also an accomplished maskmaker and storyteller. His Myths & Masks performance and workshop combines his original mask art, mythopoetic storytelling, and multicultural world music, and is now available as a DVD. Will has provided over two hundred workshops, lecture-demonstrations, master classes, full-length artist-in-residencies, and self-realization events to elementary, middle, and high schools, colleges and universities, art galleries, libraries, adult prisons, juvenile detention facilities, senior centers, hospitals, parks and recreation programs, retreat centers, spas and resorts. His service to the community as an arts educator has been honored with the Arizona Commission on the Arts Decade of Distinguished Service Award and two Governor's Arts Award Nominations.

Will holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree from Syracuse University, and a Master of Fine Arts Degree from the University of Arizona.

for more insights into Will's creative world, please visit http://www.willclipman.com

www.willclipman.com/

August 30th, R. Carlos Nakai and Will Clipman enjoyed a live on-air interview with Jay Winter Nightwolf, host of American Indian Truths: The Most Dangerous Show on Radio on WPFW Radio 89.3 FM out of Washington, DC. Jay played his favorite cuts from Awakening the Fire, explored the history of our collaboration and the creative process behind our latest recording, and engaged us in a wide-ranging trialogue on all things indigenous.

Awakening the Fire Receives
GRAMMY Nomination

the Nominations for the 56th Annual GRAMMY Awards were announced on December 6th, and Awakening the Fire: R. Carlos Nakai & Will Clipman (Canyon Records) has received a Nomination for Best New Age Album.

PHOENIX, AZ (December 10, 2013) R. Carlos Nakai, the world's premiere performer of the Native American flute, received his tenth GRAMMY nomination for Awakening the Fire released by Canyon Records. Last Friday, The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) announced that Awakening the Fire was a final nominee for the Best New Age Album at the 55th Annual GRAMMY Awards.

Awakening the Fire features the Native American flute accompanied by world drums and percussion provided by co-creator Will Clipman. The musical challenge for the artists was to create a new music blending the free-flowing melodies of traditional flute with the pulses and rhythms of djembe, udu, frame drum, and other drums and percussion instruments from around the world.

Of Navajo Ute heritage, Nakai has released more than 40 albums with Canyon Records with additional titles on other labels. Nakai created a new sound for the traditional flute when he began performing over 30 years ago and continues to work in the genres of Native American, world, jazz, and classical music. Two of Nakai's albums, Canyon Trilogy and Earth Spirit, have earned certified Gold Records (500,000 units sold) while Canyon Trilogy has sold more than one million albums worldwide.

Clipman, a drummer and world percussionist, has performed with Nakai for more than 25 years and has appeared on more than 30 albums for Canyon Records. Awakening the Fire is Clipman's seventh GRAMMY nomination.

Nakai received his first GRAMMY nomination in 1994 for Ancestral Voices and has been a regular nominee since then for Inside Monument Valley (2000), Inner Voices (2000), In a Distant Place (2001), Fourth World (2002), Sanctuary (2003), People of Peace (2004), Reconnections (2007), and Dancing into Silence (2010).

The other nominees in the New Age category are Brian Eno for Lux, Kitaro for Final Call, Peter Kater for Illumination, and Laura Sullivan for Love's River.

This year's GRAMMY nomination brings Canyon Records' total to 32 in four categories. Canyon earned its first GRAMMY for Best Native American Album for Bless the People by Verdell Primeaux and Johnny Mike.

The GRAMMY Awards will air on CBS on Sunday, January 26, 2014 from 8-11 p.m. (ET/PT) from the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California.

Based in Phoenix, Arizona, Canyon Records has produced and distributed of Native American music for more than 62 years making it one of the oldest independent record labels in the music industry. For more information visit http://www.canyonrecords.com/