Pacific Northwest Tour Kickoff // 13 WHAM TV interview with Alexis Arnold // Seattle Times Plug

Hello friends!

Just five days left to help us with fundraising for our second tour. If you haven't yet, please check out all of the wonderful audio and video from our last tour on Kickstarter. Remember that every donation helps us to travel, perform and create media to share our music with more people like you!

Click here to explore the Kickstarter

We just finished our first day of rehearsal for our tour of the Pacific Northwest, including San Juan Island National Historic Park, North Cascades National Park Complex, Mount Rainier National Park, and Olympic National Park. Our performance times and locations are all set at these locations: check out our TOUR page for more details.

To start the tour, we are performing at the George Eastman Museum to complement their current exhibit, "Photography and America's National Parks." This morning, we played on the local news station 13 WHAM ABC with Alexis Arnold and discussed our upcoming tour and weekend concert at the GEM. Check out this awesome interview!

Click here to view the video

In addition, our Washington tour was plugged by the Seattle Times, suggesting things to do in area parks this summer. Nice!

Click here to view the story

Kickstarter Updates

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT OUR KICKSTARTER CAMPAIGN!

With 16 days to go on our Kickstarter campaign, we have raised 22% of our goal! Check out our campaign page for lots of new audio and video footage from our first tour, and please consider supporting our Pacific Northwest adventure!

Thank you to our generous supporters who have made donations already, and thank you to our whole online community for your support of our musical endeavors in national parks across the country!

Kickstarter Launched! August Tour Soon!

We just put together a Kickstarter campaign to help offset our costs for the August tour. There is tons of awesome new audio and video from our June tour available in the campaign, so be sure to check it out. If you aren't able to contribute, remember that sharing our content and the Kickstarter is a great way to help. Remember that every dollar will help our musicians share more music and media all over the country to celebrate the National Park Service centennial with people like you!

Click here to check out our Kickstarter campaign.

TV News Feature with Matt Molloy and 13 WHAM, Rochester, NY

Yesterday we met up with Matt Molloy of 13 WHAM in Rochester, NY, by Eastman School of Music to discuss Music in the American Wild. They were so nice to do a feature yesterday evening on our project! Thanks Matt; it was great to meet you!

Click here to watch the feature.

July Update: Southeast Tour Success!

Images and outdoor field recordings from our tour of Mammoth Cave, Great Smoky Mountains, and Shenandoah National Parks.

Images and outdoor field recordings from our tour of Mammoth Cave, Great Smoky Mountains, and Shenandoah National Parks.

Enjoy this trailer made by our videographer, Jorge Arzac, showcasing our southeast tour. We played concerts at Mammoth Cave, Great Smoky Mountains, and Shenandoah National Parks, as well as performed at Locust Grove in Louisville, KY, The Theatre at Washington, VA, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. Park rangers told us that our tour reached over 2,000 people in and around the parks! 

In addition to our concerts, we made field recordings 30 stories underground in Mammoth Cave, on top of Purchase Knob in the Smoky Mountains, and at Big Meadows along Skyline Drive in Shenandoah.

We had a fantastic time celebrating the National Park Service centennial by sharing our music with park-going audiences and performing in scenic and inspiring locations throughout the southeast. Scroll down below for more posts with photos and videos from each of our southeast performances, and keep your eyes on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for lots more great footage.

New York Times - Travel Shout Out

Thanks for the mention, The New York Times - Travel! We're excited to continue our National Park Service centennial celebration in Washington state in August!

You can see us in print on page 3 of today's New York Times - Travel section.

Click here to access the article and learn about other centennial celebrations!

Thanks, University of Rochester!

Check it out: thanks University of Rochester for this great feature on Music in the American Wild!

Click here to access the article.

Shenandoah: Big Meadows Recording Session

Here are some pictures from recording in beautiful Big Meadows in Shenandoah National Park. We were recording a piece written by Chris Chandler about this place!

Check out a movement that we recorded in the meadow about Skyline Drive. Can you hear the cars driving up and down through the park?

Photos by Geoff Sheil.

Washington Post Review

Check out this wonderful Washington Post review of our southeast tour finale at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Renwick Gallery!

Click here to read the article.

Here's a photo of the MAW gang!

Photo credit Geoff Sheil.

Purchase Knob Pictures and Concert

Check out some pictures from our performance on Purchase Knob in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Thanks to Ranger Susan Sachs and Emily Jones of the National Parks Conservation Association for hosting us and setting up this special event in such an amazing place!

Photos by Geoff Sheil.

Mammoth Cave Recording and Pictures

Check out these photos from our recording session in Mammoth Cave. Thanks to Vickie Carson for guiding us as we recorded works by Chris Chandler, Tonia Ko, and others 30 stories below the ground!

Check out an excerpt from a piece by Clay Mettens, written to celebrate all the high and low places. You can hear us starting with airy music for high places and descending down into dark harmonies that really fit the cave setting where we were playing.

Photos by Geoff Sheil.

Tour Kick-Off Video

Our tour kicked off on June 9 at Locust Grove Historic Site in Louisville, KY. What a beautiful place! Stay tuned for updates on our upcoming performances at Mammoth Cave and beyond. Thanks to Jorge Arzac for this awesome tour teaser!

Music in the American Wild at Locust Grove.

Interview with WEKU Public Radio

Emlyn Johnson was interviewed about our upcoming performance at Mammoth Cave by Lisa Autry. We're getting excited to play underground!

Click here to access the article and listen to the interview.

Here We Go!

Just a quick update from the road to Louisville, where we play our first concert at Locust Grove tomorrow night at 7:00 PM! We've had a week full of rehearsals, and we're looking forward to sharing our music with all of you this summer. Check back regularly for updates - we'll have tons of photos, videos, anecdotes, and recordings to share along the way!

After our performance at Locust Grove, you can catch us at Mammoth Cave National Park on Saturday, June 11. We'll play down in the cave between 10 AM and 2 PM, and then we'll perform a full concert at the amphitheater at 7:30. Mammoth Cave is a really special place, and we're excited to experience the park above and below ground. Hope you can join us!

San Juan Island: Site Visit #7

We concluded our visits with a ferry trip to San Juan Island National Historical Park. Ranger Raena Parsons gave us a fantastic tour of the park and the island, and we're already dreaming about our August return to this special place!

North Cascades National Park Complex: Site Visit #6

Site visit #6: Explored the rugged, beautiful terrain of the North Cascades National Park Complex with Ranger Denise Shultz, one of our earliest and most enthusiastic supporters. It was so great to spend the day with her in the park, and we're excited to return for performances August 7-10!

Mount Rainier National Park: Site Visit #5

Site visit #5: Spent the afternoon with Ranger Fawn Bauer, who gave us a special tour of possible performance venues at Mount Rainier National Park. From the massive volcano to the peaceful forests, this is one amazing place!

Olympic National Park: Site Visit #4

Site visit #4! It's hard to believe that all these photos were taken in the same park in the same day, but that's the magic of Olympic National Park. Mountains, lakes, rain forests, beaches... this park has it all. Music in the American Wild will perform at some of these amazing sites in August, so stay tuned!
Thanks to Olympic's Barb Maynes and Chris Eckard for sending us to such beautiful places.

Smoky Mountains

Last week we visited the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, where we saw amazing sights (and sites!) on both the Tennessee and North Carolina sides of the park. Special thanks to Susan Sachs, Emily Jones, Mike Maslona, Lloyd Lutekin, and all the black bears for making it such a special visit!

We are thrilled to return to beautiful Cades Cove to perform on June 15. We'll be playing at the campground amphitheater, but the whole area of Cades Cove is full of amazing views of the misty mountains and historic artifacts of times past - it is definitely worth a trip, whether you take the scenic drive or hike the park. On June 14 we'll also be performing atop Purchase Knob, and the breathtaking view on top of the mountain will make for a spectacular evening performance! Don't miss out on this event; reservations can be made HERE.

See you in the wild!

Cades Cove

MAW director Emlyn playing at Purchase Knob

Exciting News!

We are thrilled to announce that Music in the American Wild has received a National Endowment for the Arts Art Works/Imagine Your Parks grant! This award makes it possible for us to bring our music to audiences across the country and compensate our artists for their time and their talents. This is big news for our initiative, and we are just over the moon!

This year the NEA awarded a number of grants to projects honoring the National Park Service centennial, and we are proud to stand among a great group of individuals and organizations who are bringing the arts and the national parks together in all sorts of wonderful ways. You can read more about the 2016 Imagine Your Parks grantees HERE and the 2015 grantees HERE.

Thanks so much to our ensemble personnel, our composers, and our support team at Eastman School of Music and University of Rochester for making this project - and this grant success! - possible.