Greetings, One & All~
Having recently returned from concert and festival appearances and an artist-in-residency in Cherokee country, your peripatetic pan-global percussionist is heading to Ute country for some fence-mending and video-editing; and thence to Navajo country for a musical meditation, some workshops and a showcase performance, before settling back into Tohono O’odham and Yaqui country for the summer with a TV show and a solstice celebration concert.
Read on for all the good news in your June A 440 Newsletter!
The Gathering
June 9th-13th I’ll be in Flagstaff AZ for The Gathering of the North American Flute, where in addition to holding the heartbeat for a two-hour musical meditation at the Center for indigenous Music with R. Carlos Nakai and a multicultural ensemble of world musicians, I’ll present two installments of my workshop The Flute & the Drum Are One on the campus of Northern Arizona University before capping off the week with a headlining showcase performance by the R. Carlos Nakai Quartet.
more info on the concert line-up at
http://www.rnaff.org/concert-schedule.html
more info on the workshop offerings at
http://www.rnaff.org/workshop-schedule.html
Yours truly drumming up a blissful vibe for
The Flute & the Drum Are One workshops at The Gathering
RCNQ comin’ straight 4 U!
Live TV with TQ
On Wednesday June 17th I’ll appear on Tucson’s ABC affiliate station KGUN-9 with Temenos Quartet for a combination of performance and interview. The Morning Blend show airs live at 11 AM AZT, and will then be archived at
http://www.scrippsmedia.com/kgun9/shows/the-morning-blend
TQ on their way to the station
Summer Solstice Concert
Then on Saturday June 20th at 7 PM, Temenos Quartet will bring its folkiefunkadelic dancextravaganza to Tucson’s premiere outdoor small concert venue Monterey Court for a summer solstice celebration show. Enjoy the mist-cooled combination of cabaret and theater seating, along with the stage-front dance floor, and make an evening of it with Nuevo Southwestern cuisine, craft beers on draft and a tastefully varied wine list to go with the musical feast provided by AmoChip Dabney, Will Clipman, Heidi Wilson and ToReeNee Wolf.
info & tickets at
http://www.montereycourtaz.com/index.php/component/jevents/icalrepeat.detail/2015/06/20/2299/-/summer-solstice-celebration-concert-w-temenos-quartet?Itemid=1
TQ jammin’ in the barrio
May Montage
It’s hard to take a lot of pictures when one is always in the picture, but here’s a small handful of off-the-cuff images from last month’s tour:
Will with the legendary Jorma Kaukonen and the legendary R. Carlos Nakai
backstage at Fur Peace Ranch following our standing O encore improv
a quiet morning at Fur Peace Ranch signing posters to be auctioned
to benefit Iraq and Afghanistan vets
RC & Will make the ArtSpace marquee in Asheville NC!
our ArtSpace students perform their improv concert
for a packed house at the LEAF Festival
New Media
I’d like to invite everyone (especially those of you involved in education and personal enrichment–and who isn’t, really?!) to visit my new Education & Enrichment page:
http://www.willclipman.com/education_and_enrichment.php
Here you’ll find a menu of my workshops and artist-in-residencies, along with testimonials from distinguished colleagues in the field. You’d think I would have thought of this sooner, having been a professional arts educator and personal enrichment facilitator for thirty-five years–I guess I’ve just been too creatively engaged in the work itself all this time to formally promote my programs!
I see education & enrichment just over your horizon!
Poem of the Month
Nature continues to inspire me daily here at Rancho Improvisoso: our “wild life” is richly blessed with a perpetual panoply of dramatic wildlife moments, such as the one I’ve attempted to document and divine in your June Poem of the Month below. I only wish I had a Photo of the Month to go with it; alas, it all unfolded too swiftly for this startled artist to react with any lens other than those of his own two eyes!
Between Stillness and Nothingness
Watering the pepper tree at sunrise
I’m stumbled upon by a coyote-stalked mule deer.
I’d heard the rest of the pack scatting
a moment earlier off to the southwest
but figured they were bedding down for the day
not chorusing mid-hunt.
The deer’s oxygen-saturated tongue flags out bright red,
its hunger-carved ribs heave. It sees me seeing it,
sees I mean no harm, and positions itself in the shade
between me and the coyote, who circles stealthily
down into the arroyo at the bottom of the hill, moving
like the moon circling the earth, visible only in motion,
at one with the gravity of this ancient orbit.
The deer is not panicked:
it is my heart that beats wildly.
The deer is calm and alert, completely aware
of both the coyote and me, who stands still
and does nothing, as nothing that is not
already being done can be done.
© Will Clipman 2015
Photos of the Month
But I do have this snapshot for you: two of the eight deer who made a dusk visit to the water basin outside our kitchen window a couple of weeks prior to the poetic drama described above–along with some of the other exotic inhabitants of our naturally supernatural Sonoran Spring Extravaganza. Enjoy!
Hey. . . are you lookin’ at me?!
three feet of hungry Western Diamondback
just waking up from a long winter’s nap
One of our little dinosaurs catching some rays by the pool–
now that’s a lounge lizard!
Grilled packrat, anyone?
(Just kidding–I left this nursing mother and baby alone on Mother’s Day!)
May your Spring conclude in harmony
and your Summer commence in tranquility
For those engaged in the conscious pursuit of excellence,
surrendering to the easy allure of mediocrity is not an option.
~Guillaume Henri
