Greetings, One & All~
It’s hard to believe that another year is coming to an end. After two solid months of hyperactivity in October and November, I’m grateful that this December will be relatively relaxed here at Rancho Improvisoso and I’ll be able to spend most of the winter solstice season this year closer to home and hearth. With apologies for the lateness of this issue of your A 440 Newsletter, and with best wishes for all the blessings of the holidays to you and yours, please enjoy a few year-end highlights!
POP Goes M&M
Having completed four different but overlapping and interwoven Artist-in-Residencies and workshops in both Myths & Masks and Planet of Percussion with students of all ages this Fall, I’m delighted that the success of each program will manifest as a further incarnation of the other in the new year: Myths & Masks with Lifetime Arts Creative Aging at Chandler Downtown Library has given rise to Planet of Percussion in February 2016; and Beauty & the Beats (a custom-designed variant of POP) at Western National Parks Association has given rise to Myths & Masks in April 2016!
Enrollment for both these newly-emergent workshops is capped at twelve, and pre-registration for both has been brisk, so mark your calendars and be in touch!
Yours truly enjoying a light-hearted musical moment at Beauty & the Beats
The cast of characters at Lifetime Arts–who’s that scary-looking guy in the middle?
and for a more comprehensive look at the Lifetime Arts process, click on
This Myths & Masks workshop also received national recognition in the form of a feature story on the PBS show Next Avenue!
A Sonoran Sky Mythic Persona poet nestled among the rocks at SSky Camp
A bold Santa Cruz County Young Audiences volunteer model getting “plastered”
Music as Spiritual Manifestation
Two new projects in the realm of spiritual music have taken flight: a new Canyon Records digital-only release entitled Native American Flute Music for Yoga, on which yours truly is included on multiple tracks with world-renowned flutists R. Carlos Nakai and Robert Tree Cody, among others; and a concert next summer with R. Carlos Nakai & Will Clipman at the internationally-acclaimed Buddhist retreat center Tara Mandala in Pagosa Springs, Colorado.
This soothing and healing music can be sampled and downloaded at
or
https://play.google.com/store/music/album/Various_Artists_Native_American_Flute_for_Yoga?id=Bdcqyc6zg4dolzhrjxt5t3dplda
or when I see you in person I’ll give you an iTunes scan card!
And more information about Tara Mandala and our concert there can be found at
http://taramandala.org/program/r-carlos-nakai-and-will-clipman-in-concert/
Continuing the Trialogue
My newest musical adventure is Trialogue: a contemporary instrumental trio with flutist Sherry Finzer and guitarist Darin Mahoney. We’ve been in the studio at Clamsville Productions with engineeer John Herrera, and are currently mastering a three-song booking demo that will form the nucleus of a full-length album, to be released on Heart Dance Records in early 2016.
Darin, Sherry and yours truly at our Sea of Glass concert last Fall
And on December 17th at 9 AM we’ll perform a private Holiday Breakfast Concert at Grandview Terrace in Sun City, Arizona.
Big Sky Christmas
And speaking of new musical adventures and holiday musical extravaganzas, yet another new flute, guitar and percussion trio has formed expressly to perform for a private Christmas Eve/Christmas Day event at the spectacular Spanish Peaks Resort in Big Sky, Montana. This ensemble is so new we haven’t even come up with a name for it yet, but the stellar musicianship of flutist Claudia Tulip, guitarist Gina Machovina and yours truly will no doubt bring a magical sparkle to the proceedings. The setting will certainly be a winter wonderland!
And of course, one’s own winter wonderland is always best: be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home, and nowhere I’d rather be for the holidays. With that in mind, I’ll close with this image of our own backyard during a rare and beautiful snowfall in Northern Sonora, a baby saguaro nestled in the sheltering embrace of its overarching palo verde nurse tree and the craggy peaks of the Santa Catalina Mountains in the distance. . . .
~Wishing you and yours
all the brightest blessings of the holiday season
with peace and good will to all~
Peace is a personal choice.
~Guillaume Henri
[
Will Clipman
musician • poet • performing & recording artist • maskmaker • storyteller • educator
office: 520.743.1347
mobile: 520.591.0776
fax: 520.743.0650
email: williamclipman@aol.com
website: www.willclipman.com
facebook: www.facebook.com/willclipman
