21 SepA NACAP Graduate Goes on the Road With ETHEL
By Rik Fairlie If you wanted an example of how ETHEL and the Grand Canyon Music Festival’s annual NACAP tour can inspire Native American youth, you only needed to look in the back seat of the band’s rental car this year. There you would have found Russell Goodluck, a freshly minted high school graduate who [...]
Read More ...20 SepMusings on Three (Wonderful) Weeks
By Dorothy Lawson I am home again from our annual Southwest immersion. It was longer, more challenging and glorious than ever. My sense of time is completely suspended, altered and distorted. There’s the jet lag. Three hours. And the concert on the last night, followed by the late-night hang at the hotel bar, necessitating late [...]
Read More ...09 SepReaching Out to the Kids on the Reservation
By Rik Fairlie Over the next few days, ETHEL will wrap up its annual visits to Native American elementary and high schools in Arizona and Utah, drive to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, and premiere the students’ compositions at the Grand Canyon Music Festival. For ETHEL, helping these young composers fine-tune their compositions [...]
Read More ...08 SepBehind the Scenes at ‘Oshtali’ Recording Sessions
By Rik Fairlie For three days last January, ETHEL joined 11 young Native American composers, their teacher, and a producer in Oklahoma City to create something entirely new: The first professional classical recording of works composed by Native American students. The project was, as ETHEL’s Mary Rowell recalls, “a really wonderful exchange.” You can hear [...]
Read More ...24 OctETHEL on WNYC
Today’s WNYC broadcast of “Composition on the Reservation: A Musician’s Radio Diary,”narrated by ETHEL’s Ralph Farris and produced by WNYC’s Beth Fertig, is now available online: This Radio Diary (featuring music by NACAP students: Tommy Suetopka, Courtland Willie, Raquel Calamity, and Bernie Tamahongva) documents ETHEL’s 2007 residency at the Grand Canyon Music Festival’s Native American [...]
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