R. Carlos Nakai Quartet

Since his first release for Canyon Records in 1983, Native American flutist R. Carlos Nakai has used the traditional Native American flute in exciting new musical settings creating a new genre that has found widespread popularity.

With the R. Carlos Nakai Quartet, Nakai continues this musical experiment by joining the haunting sound of the cedar flute with sax, bass, keyboards, drums and female vocals. This
new sound is a confluence of traditional Native American sounds, Latin rhythms, and ethnic jazz.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

R. Carlos Nakai

Of Navajo-Ute heritage, R. Carlos Nakai is the world’s premier performer of the Native American flute. Originally trained in classical trumpet and music theory, Nakai was given a traditional cedar flute as a gift and challenged to see what he could do with it. His first album, Changes, was released on the Canyon Records Productions label in 1983 and since then he has released over sixteen more recordings with Canyon. In addition to his solo appearances throughout the United States, Europe and Japan, Nakai has worked with guitarist William Eaton, pianist Peter Kater, the classical ensemble Tos and various symphonies, founded the classical jazz ensemble, Jackalope, and released an album, Island of Bows, with Win Travelin Band, a traditional Japanese ensemble from Kyoto. In 1994 his third collaboration with Eaton, Ancestral Voices, was a Grammy® Awards finalist in Best Traditional Folk Music. Nakai earned a Master’s Degree in American Indian Studies from the University of Arizona. He was awarded the Arizona Governor’s Arts Award in 1992 and an honorary doctorate from Northern Arizona University in 1994. Nakai sees his role as a performer of the traditional flute not to reiterate the traditional sounds but to find new avenues of expression for the native cultures of America.

Amo Chip

Chip’s first musical experience was a young singer with the New Jersey State Boys Symphony Choir. He also attended the Neward School for the Performing Arts where he studied woodwinds (primarily saxophone), bass, piano and composition. A master of many musical styles, Chip has performed with African, world-beat, reggae, and jazz bands and worked with Sun Ra and his Omiverse Arkestra, O.J. Ekemode and the Nigerian All-Stars, Zydeco’s Queen Ida and the avant garde ensemble, the Rova Saxophone Quartet. He has appeared on over fifteen albums and has released an album of original compositions, So Many Ways, on his own label, Micro Chip.

Mary Redhouse

A member of the Navajo tribe, Mary has established a career as a performer, composer and educator. She is a versatile jazz vocalist and calls her exploratory style “eco-spiritual,” evolving to a sound that genuinely fuses Native American chants, bird calls, animal cries and multi-octave scat lines. Mary was introduced to jazz in grade school by Beatrice Parker, a beatnik school librarian who played jazz albums while Mary shelved books. Although she listened to the classic jazz vocalists, Mary cites instrumentalists John Coltrane, Charlie Mingus, Thelonius Monk, Eric Dolphy, Miles Davis, Roland Kirk, Ornette Coleman, and Dave Holland as some of her main influences. She has toured for the Arizona Commission on the Arts as a vocalist for Jazz Menagerie, and has opened for Geri Allen, Marlena Shaw and Jane Ira Bloom. In 1994, she collaborated with critically acclaimed bassist Michael Formanek and guitarist John Stowell and presented A New Wind: Native American Vocal Jazz Explorations, a collection of her original intertribals for jazz group. Mary’s talents are featured on two recent Canyon Records releases: Urban Indian, performing contemporary native jazz with The Redhouse Family, and on Naked in Eureka, as a member of the William Eaton Ensemble.

Will Clipman

Will’s percussive adventure began at the age of three, when he started playing his father’s drum set and his mother’s upright piano. Following an early exit from his elementary school band (precipitated by his insistence on playing drums instead of trumpet), Will undertook two years of study with jazz drummer Phil Wolfson at the East Shore Conservatory. His early formal training came to an abrupt halt when his teacher left for a European tour and never returned. Undaunted, Will played his first professional gig at fourteen, embarking on a twenty-year exploration of jazz, rock, pop, blues, reggae and world music. A fortuitous relocation from the East coast to the Southwest to pursue a Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of Arizona led to a six-month, five-nights-a-week gig with the jazz-pop fusion band, Street Pajama. Will went on to play with a “who’s who” list of Tucson-based bands, including the legendary delta blues power trio Rainer & Das Combo, with who he recorded the classic Barefoot Rock album. Along the way, Will studied for two years each with master African drummers Cornelius Kweku Ganyo and Abdulai Aziz Ahmed, coming full circle to the polyrhythmic roots of jazz. Will has released three solo recordings, Nerve Chorus, Philadelphia, and Bone Fire, on his own Bone Fire Music label, as well as over 30 recordings with various artists, including nine albums for Canyon Records. When he isn’t breaking new musical ground with the R. Carlos Nakai Quartet, Will performs with the Nakai-Eaton-Clipman trio, the William Eaton Ensemble, Stefan George & Songtower, and as a soloist in his own Global Village Music Story Theater.

“A southwestern supergroup ... the best musical collaborations occur when players of different backgrounds and diverse influences meet ... (the Nakai
Quartet) understands the creative nature of this tension and exploits it fully,
with wonderful collaborative results.”
-Fred Mills, Goldmine

Tour Schedule

The R. Carlos Nakai Quartet has open availability.

R. Carlos Nakai Main Page

R. Carlos Nakai and Keola Beamer

Nakai, Eaton, and Clipman