Founding Advisors
Louis W. Ballard (Cherokee/Quapaw)
(July 8, 1931-Feb 9, 2007)
Dr. Ballard has composed works for symphony orchestra, chorus, chamber ensembles, and ballet companies, including premieres at Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, Walker Art Center, the Smithsonian, Carnegie Hall, Guthrie Theater and the Hollywood Bowl. He is the recipient of many grants, awards and commissions in the United States and abroad. His most frequently performed works include Scenes From Indian Life for orchestra; Incident At Wounded Knee for chamber orchestra; Katchina Dances for cello and piano; Ritmo Indio for woodwind quintet; Cacega Ayuwipi and Music For The Earth And Sky for Native American instruments and standard percussion.
Sharon Burch (Navajo Nation)
Sharon Burch’s music is the contemporary expression of traditional Navajo ways and living. Of the three albums that Ms. Burch has released, (“Yazzie Girl”), (“Colors of My Heart”), “Touch the Sweet Earth” was awarded the 1995 INDIE Award in the “North American Native Music” category. Sharon performs regularly at folk festivals, fairs, schools, universities and in concert has appeared at the Kennedy Center and the Smithsonian in Washington D.C., the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, The Heard Museum in Phoenix, and is quite popular in Japan.
Raven Chacon (Navajo Nation)
Raven Chacon (Dine’) is a Navajo experimental composer, performer and artist. His works range from music for chamber instruments to sounds made from homemade electronics to acoustic phenomena. He is often a solo live performer, but also plays with various ensembles and bands around the U.S. Chacon is also an active educator in the Southwest. A new LP record of his works will be available toward the end of 2009. http://www.spiderwebinthesky.com
Jim Clairmont (Sicangu Lakota)
Mr. Clairmont is a Spiritual Leader. Having survived his St. Francis boarding school experience, Lakota remains his first language. He is a much sought after as a teacher, speaker, and educator. He was lead singer of the drum group, the Porcupine Singers, which won 25 first place awards at powwows. Many of the traditional songs he composes come to him in a spiritual way for naming ceremonies, prayers, or funeral ceremonies. He also serves as emcee for pow wows all over the U.S. and Canada. He currently serves on the Council of Elders at the University of Minnesota.
Barbara Croall (Odawa)
Barbara Croall is active internationally, with work performed in several European countries, as well as Britain and Canada. She is a graduate of the Hochscule fur Musick in Munich, Germany and holds a Bachelor of Music from the University of Toronto. From 1993 to 1996 she was a music theory and composition student of Dr. Samuel Dollin (1917 – 2002) whom she regards as one of the most important influences in her classical training. Apart from playing, performing and composing on the traditional Native flute add singing in traditional ceremonies, Barbara also composes for instruments of the European classical and folk traditions. Many of her works confront the post-assimilation reality of aboriginal identity through recovery and reflection. Other works are influenced by her studies, travels and experiences abroad.
Brent M. Davids (Mohican)
Professional Concert and Film Composer, and American Indian citizen of the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of the Mohican Nation. Born: June 4, 1959, Madison, Wisconsin. Currently operating a music company he founded; Blue Butterfly Group (BBG). American Indian Music Expert, serving as Educator and Consultant to Schools, Festivals, Seminars and Workshops. Founding Artistic Director of the First Nations Composer Initiative (FNCI) with the American Composers Forum (ACF). Master performer of American Indian instruments and styles. Designer of original music instruments. He has consciously and deliberately focused on his indigenous heritage, honoring its unique qualities in a contemporary setting. He blends Eurocentric techniques of classical music with Native musical traditions in a way that is never glib or facile, but rich in resonance. Davids composer career spans 32 years, including awards from ASCAP, NEA, Rockefeller Foundation, InVision, Joffrey Ballet, Chanticleer, Kronos Quartet, Meet-The-Composers, Mir Quartet, Nations Symphony Orchestra, Bush Foundation, McKnight Foundation and Jerome Foundation, among others.
brent@filmcomposer.us 651-778-9611
Joy Harjo (Mvskoke Creek)
Joy was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma and is a member of the Mvskoke Nation. Her seven books of poetry include; She Had Some Horses, The Woman Who Fell From the Sky, and How We Became Human, New and Selected Poems. Her poetry has garnered many awards. She has released three award winning CD’s of original music and performances: Letter from the End of the Twentieth Century, Native Joy for Real, and She Had Some Horses. A song from her forthcoming CD, Winding Through the Milky Way, just won a New Mexico Music Award. She has received the Eagle Spirit Achievement Award for overall contributions in the arts, from the American Indian Film Festival and a US Artist Fellowship for 2009. She premiered a preview of her one-woman show, Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light at the Public Theater in NYC and will open at the Wells Fargo Theater in LA March 2009. She is a founding board member for the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation. Harjo writes a column “Comings and Goings” for her tribal newspaper, the Muscogee Nation News. She lives in Honolulu, Hawai’i where she is a member of the Hui Nalu Canoe Club and in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Charlotte Heth (Cherokee)
Assistant Director for Public Programs of the National Museum of the American Indian. Professor Emerita and former chairperson of the Department of Ethnomusicology and Systematic Musicology, former Associate Dean of the School of the Arts at UCLA, president of the Society for Ethnomusicology 1993-95. From 1976-1987 she was Director of UCLA’s American Indian Studies Center and from 1987-89 Director of Cornell University’s American Indian Program and Visiting Professor of Music. Her primary research interests are in American Indian music and dance and American Indian education. She is the general editor of Native American Dance: Ceremonies and Social Traditions published by the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution and is a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.
Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ (Chickasaw Nation)
A graduate of the composition program of the Cleveland Institute of Music, Jerod’s commissioned works include; Winter Moons ballet score; Iyaaknasha; for Double Bass and Orchestra premiered in 1993 with the Ohio Chamber Orchestra; Dream World Blesses Me premiered in 1997 by the New Jersey Chamber Music Society. In 1997 Itti” Bo’li was commissioned by the Dale Warland Singers in Minneapolis and performed at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Tracing Mississippi premiered in 2002 with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra.
Jennifer Kreisberg (Tuscarora, North Carolina)
Mother, Singer, Composer, Producer, Teacher and Activist – Jennifer comes from four generations of Seven Singing Sisters through the maternal line, and has been singing since she was young. She is known for her fierce vocals and soaring range. Her lilting, breath-taking harmonies will delight your ears. Jennifer has been singing with the critically acclaimed Native women’s trio, ULALI, for over seventeen years, helping to create a new sound in Indian Country. In February 2007, The Genie Awards (Canadian Oscar) awarded her with the Achievement in Music-Original Song Genie for her song Have Hope, which also received a New York Times “Critic’s Pick”.
R. Carlos Nakai (Navajo/Ute)
R.Carlos Nakai earned his MA in American Indian studies from the University of Arizona and received an honorary doctorate from Northern Arizona University. Originally trained in classical trumpet and music theory, Nakai was given a traditional cedar wood flute as a gift and challenged to see what he could with it. His first album Changes, was released on the Canyon Records label in 1983; he has since released more than 28 recordings with Canyon in several musical genres. Founder of the ethnic jazz ensemble the R. Carlos Nakai Quartet, he has made appearances throughout the U.S., Europe, and Japan.
George Quincy (Choctaw)
George Quincy holds two degrees from Julliard and has won several ASCAP and Meet the Composer Awards. The world premiere of his piece Pocahontas at the Court of James I, Part 1 was performed in 2006 by the Queen’s Chamber Band at Merkin Concert Hall and Part 2 was premiered in the same hall by the same group in 2007. He has also served as musical director for both the New Dance Group Arts Center and the Times Square Kidz. Quincy’s music is a mixture of Native and Western, in other words, classical contemporary.
www.georgequincy.com
N. Bird Runningwater (Cheyenne/Apache)
N. Bird Runningwater is born of the Cheyenne and Mescalero Apache peoples, and was reared on the Mescalero Apache Reservation in New Mexico. He is currently based in Los Angeles, California with the Sundance Institute where he serves as the Associate Director of the Institute’s Native American and Indigenous Program. He also oversees the Sundance Institute Ford Foundation Film Fellowship established for emerging Native American filmmakers and the Indigenous Producers Initiative. Filmmakers and projects he has identified for support include Sterlin Harjo and his Spirit Award-nominated Four Sheets To The Wind; Academy Award nominee Taika Waititi and his feature debut Eagle vs Shark; Billy Luther’s award-winning Miss Navajo; And Andrew Okpeaha MacLean’s Sundance Jury Prize winning SIKUMI. A past Woodrow Wilson Fellow and an alumnus of the University of Oklahoma and the University of Texas’ LBJ School of Public Affairs. Runningwater has served as the executive director of the Fund of the Four Directions, and as program associate in the Ford Foundation’s Media, Arts and Culture Program.
Joanne Shenandoah (Oneida Nation)
Ms. Shenandoah is a multiple award winning Native American composer, vocalist and performer. Her original compositions, combined with a striking voice, enable her to embellish the ancient songs of the Iroquois using a blend of traditional and contemporary instrumentation. Ms. Shenandoah has appeared on stage at the White House, Woodstock 94, Earth Day on The Mall, the Special Olympics, music festivals, state fairs, at President Clinton’s Inaugural with a private performance for First Lady Hillary Clinton and Mrs. Tipper Gore.
Ed Wapp (Sac and Fox/Comanche)
Ed Wapp is an ethnomusicologist, who has specialized in Native American music. He is one of the few Native American Indian flute players who maintains a repertoire of traditional Native American flute music. He has been instrumental in the revitalization of the instrument and its music and has performed throughout the United States, Canada and Europe. As well as Native American flute and Native American Music Performance, he is now retired from teaching piano, harpsichord, and world music at the Institute of American Indian Arts.
Our Newest Advisors
M. Cochise Anderson (Chickasaw/Choctaw)
M. Cochise Anderson ia a poet, spoken word performance artist, playwright, storyteller and educator – studied at Portland (OR)State University and at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in NYC. Cochise received the Jerome Fellowship for playwriting (“The Education of Benjamin Franklin”) and the Bush Artist Fellowship for Storytelling/ Performance Art (“The Only Good Poet is a Read Poet”). As an award-winning playwright he has extended his craft by initiating a creative writing/spoken word theater for young Native students in the Twin Cities area. From elementary schools to colleges and national cultural institutions he has developed a variety of curriculums and programs to entertain and educate all people about the beauty and struggle of Native America.
Steven Alvarez (Mescalero Apache, Yaqui, Upper Tananna Athabascan)
Steven graduated from San Jose State University with Bachelor of Arts degrees in Music(Voice and Percussion)and History and a minor in Philosophy. An artist with hands in many mediums, he is currently producing a film on the Alaskan Native and Inuit Games and regularly performs an innovative theater piece that couples film with live storytelling and song, which recently debuted at the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) in Washington D.C. http://www.thecharlesagency.com He is the director of Cultural Education and Strategic Initiatives for the Alaska Native Heritage Center, where he is responsible for developing educational and public programming. A percussionist with the Anchorage Symphony Orchestra, the Anchorage Opera, and the Anchorage Concert Chorus, he also performs with two traditional/contemporary Native bands; Medicine Dream and Pamyua. In addition, he recently played the role of Che in a touring production of Evita.
www.medicinedream.com
Timothy Archambault (Kichesipirini)
Tim is an American Indian flutist, studied music theory at Brown University and holds a bachelor’s degree in Architecture from the Rhode Island School of Design. His repertoire consists of early 20th century American Indian flute music and new compositions by American Indian composers. As a Hereditary Senator of the Kischesipirini Algonquin First Nation he is currently working on re-establishing their musical heritage through community based instructional websites in conjunction with North American Ethnomusicologists.
Gabriel Ayala (Yaqui)
Gabriel, a classical guitarist, is at the forefront of a new generation of Native Americans making a career performing classical music. Gabriel begin playing guitar as a child. He earned his Master’s Degree in Music Performance from the University of Arizona. Ayala has taught at all levels of education from elementary to college and serves as a competition adjudicator. Ayala performs extensively throughout the United States and has had the opportunity of performing on live radio broadcasts, as well as public and national television. Ayala has released three albums; “Gabriel Ayala” in 2003, “I’ll be Home for Christmas” in 2007 and “Tango” in 2008. Ayala has recently signed with record label Canyon Records, and released Canyon Records first ever Classical CD by Gabriel Ayala entitled “Portraits.” Gabriel Currently resides in Tucson, Arizona.
www.ayalaguitarist.com
www.myspace.com/ayalaguitar
Elizabeth Jaakola (Anishinabe)
Elizabeth has had a varied musical background preparing her for a career in performance, music education and American Indian studies at Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College. Earning her Bachelor of music degree (1992)in vocal performance, Elizabeth chose teaching at a tribal school as a music specialist before embarking on a performance journey. Elizabeth has performed in the Operafestival di Roma (Mezzo Soprano), Choral music at Carnegie Hall, Traditional ceremony singer, Jazz scat singer, Blues siren and Regional soloist in many venues of Northern Minnesota. Her Native-based compositions have been heard on radio stations, public television, video and many stages near to her home on the Fond du Lac reservation in Minnesota.
Swil Kanim (Lummi)
Swil Kanim is a classically trained violinist who grew up in Washington State. For many years he has traveled up and down the West Coast, playing violin and telling stories at schools, community events and festivals. He plays his own compositions, which incorporate classical influences but are infused with his own life and musical influences. Swil Kanim has been a featured performer at the American Indian Film Awards in San Francisco since 2003. The recipient of many awards and honors, Swil Kanim performed at the West Coast American Indian Music Awards last April, where he was presented with both the classical and traditional instrument awards. That same month he was invited to perform for the Dalai Lama at Key Arena in Seattle for the Seeds of Compassion event.
www.swilkanim.net
Kevin Locke (Hunkpapa Band of Lakota Sioux – Tokeya Inajin is his Lakota name, meaning “The First to Arise”)
Kevin Locke is known throughout the world as a visionary Hoop Dancer, the preeminent player of the indigenous Northern Plains flute, a traditional storyteller, cultural ambassador, recording artist and educator. Kevin is Lakota and Anishinabe. It was from his mother, Patricia Locke (1991 MacArthur Foundation Grant winner), his uncle Abraham End-of-Horn, mentor Joe Rock Boy, and many other elders and relatives that Kevin received training in the values, traditions and language of his native culture for which he works tirelessly. While his early instructions were received from his immediate family and community, from his extending family in every part of the world Kevin has learned many lessons in global citizenship and how we each can draw from our individual heritages to create a vibrant, evolving global civilization embracing and celebrating our collective heritage. Kevin Locke is acknowledged to be the pivotal force in the now powerful revival of the indigenous flute tradition which teetered on the brink of extinction just twenty years ago. His belief in the Unity of human kind is expressed dramatically in the traditional Hoop Dance which illustrates “the roles and responsibilities that all human beings have within the hoops (or circles) of life.”
www.kevinlocke.com
Lisa Long (Muskogee-/Creek/Choctaw)
Lisa began flute studies at the age of ten in Oklahoma and continued her studies with Barbara Davis, a former student of Walfrid Kujala, at Oklahoma City University, where she was principal flutist for numerous orchestral, operatic and musical theater performances. Long regularly performs as chamber musician and soloist throughout the Oklahoma City area.
Trevor Reed (Hopi)
Trevor began his career in the performing arts as a double bassist and composer. He graduated from Brigham Young University (BYU) with a Bachelors degree in music composition. As an undergraduate, Reed established the School of Music Student Association at BYU, an organization that provides performance and networking opportunities for students, now in its fifth year. Following his graduation from BYU, Reed held the position of artistic and operations coordinator for the Utah Symphony & Opera and the Deer Valley Music Festival and also maintained an active freelance composition and performance career. Reed is currently a masters candidate in the Arts Administration program at Columbia University’s Teachers College. Recently, Reed co-coordinated research activities at Columbia Research Center for Arts and Culture’s during its recent study, Taking Note: A Study of Composers and New Music Activity in the United States. His current areas of research include innovative financial models for orchestras and repatriation and revival of indigenous music. Reed’s compositions have received awards from the Vera Hinckley Mayhew Composition Contest and the Laycock Center for Creative Collaboration.
Arigon Starr (Kickapoo)
Arigon is a multi-talented and multi-award winning musician, actor, playwright and artist. She is an enrolled member of the Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma and is based in Los Angeles, California. Arigon has released four CDs including Meet the Diva, Wind-Up, Backflip and most recently, The Red Road-Original Cast Recording. Arigon has performed internationally as a solo artist and with her band in numerous locations including Los Angeles, New Orleans, London and in Australia. Her one woman comedy with music “The Red Road” has toured across the United States and Australia and will soon become a radio play produced by Native Voices at the Autry and the Native Radio Theater Project. Her radio comedy series “Super Indian” has aired nationally on the Native Voice One satellite radio network. She is currently working on a “Super Indian” graphic novel and a new CD. Her official website is: www.arigonstarr.com
Jennifer M. Stevens (Oneida/Lakota)
Jennifer M. Stevens, Lyric Soprano of Green Bay , WI is considered to be a multi-faceted artist in both the performing and visual arts. Stevens is an aspiring classical vocalist and professional potter and painter. She enjoys writing and performing compositions, and her soloist experience includes; the Green Bay Civic Symphony, Native American Music Awards, Club Italo-Americano, and will be featured in the documentary, “The Lesson.”
In addition to Stevens’ creative endeavors she is an active member of the Oneida and Greater Green Bay communities, encourages youth in the arts, and serves on the First Nation Composer Initiative Advisory Board and the Green Bay Press-Gazette Community Conversation Panel.
Kade Twist (Cherokee)
Kade is a multi-disciplinary artist working with video, installation, sound, text and two dimensional media. Mr. Twist’s work embeds Indigenous post-colonial narratives within a contemporary landscape of American popular culture and consumerism. He is one of the co-founders of Postcommodity, a contemporary American Indian collective working to advance post-colonial Indigenous discourse through collaborative, interdisciplinary, transborder actions.
www.postcommodity.com
