Greetings, One & All~
It’s May Day in Mexico, Lei Day in Hawai’i, Beltane throughout the Celtic realm, and goodness knows what else in your neck of the global woods. . . and of course, that means it’s time for your May A 440 Newsletter from right here in Willyworld!
Concerts
The reeeeeally big shew for May is R. Carlos Nakai & Will Clipman at The Musical Instrument Museum Theatre on Saturday May 11th at 7:30 PM. This dynamic flute-and-drum duo will be performing music from their newly-released Canyon Records CD Awakening the Fire at the MIM–widely regarded as the world’s exemplary temple to world music–and of course we’ll be autographing copies of AtF at our meet-and-greet after the performance.
Advance tickets and more info at
http://mimmusictheater.themim.org/carlos-nakai
Further out, there are some great shows coming up in June for which advance tickets have just now gone on sale, so I’ll let these cats out of the bag a little early:
Coyote Jump at Piedmont Piano Company in Oakland CA, Saturday June 1st:
http://piedmontpiano.com/concerts/130601coyotejump.html
and at Willits Community Theatre in Willits CA on Saturday June 8th:
http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/382022
Artist-in-Residency
Monday-Friday, May 13-17 and May 20-24, I’ll return to Cheyenne Traditional School for my annual Myths & Masks Artist-in-Residency there. Having worked with third and fifth grade students in previous years, I’ll be working with the fourth grades this year, guiding a whole new crop of budding artists toward the creation of their very own masks and mythic persona poems. Heartfelt thanks to the Arizona Commission on the Arts, the Scottsdale Unified School District, and the CTS PTO for their generous support of this program.
Creative Development
And speaking of the aforementioned Coyote Jump, two members of that ensemble, multi-instrumentalist and composer Colin Farish and violin virtuoso Savannah Jo Lack will be flying in to Tucson from San Francisco May 2-7 for a week of exploratory improvisation with yours truly and Native American Flute maestro R. Carlos Nakai. I’m happier than a prairie dog in soft dirt to be hosting this sonic summit meeting in my studio out here at Rancho Improvisoso, and we’re even bringing in a rented piano for Colin to play–a first for the Boom Boom Room!
Studio News
I just got my copies of the brand-new release by Lori Laska Sumberg entitled Tales of the Road, throughout which yours truly plays a veritable panoply of pan-global percussion to add that worldbeat vibe to Lori’s well-crafted folk-rock songs–you should get yours, too!
In the Media
For those of us with literary aspirations, it comes as welcome news that Awakening the Fire was reviewed in the latest Midwest Book Review–very interesting that an instrumental CD would find its way into a compendium of written publications!
For those of you more Internet savvy, that review (and yours, if you’d like to write one) will be posted on the amazon.com page devoted to Awakening the Fire at
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dpopular&field-keywords=Awakening+the+Fire
I could go on, but I know your time is precious, so I won’t.
Thanks for your kind attention~be well and be in touch!
