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.

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!

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

Cades Cove

MAW director Emlyn playing at Purchase Knob

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.

Another Site Visit on the Books!

Quintessential Shenandoah

Quintessential Shenandoah

Yesterday Music in the American Wild toured Shenandoah National Park in preparation for our June 18 concert at the Byrd Visitor Center. It was a great day: friendly people, beautiful weather, and a sighting of three bears, to boot! Many thanks to Shenandoah's Tim Taglauer, who has been a great collaborator in this whole endeavor. We're excited to further explore the beauty of Shenandoah this summer, and we hope to see you in the park on June 18!

Alongside our in-park performance, you can also hear us in a free performance at The Theatre at Washington, Virginia on June 17 at 8:00 PM. This historic theater is located in the quaintest little town, and it will be a thrill to play in this great space!

Home Stretch

In a few short weeks Music in the American Wild will receive the eleven brand new, parks-inspired pieces our composers have been creating over the past months. In the meantime, we've been taking members of our MAW team outdoors to make some recordings to share with you! Below you'll hear violinist Jeremy Potts and cellist Daniel Ketter performing some Bach on their Luis and Clark string instruments. Enjoy!

If you're a musician who would like to share photos or videos of your own outdoor performances, we would love to help share them on our website or facebook page. Email us at musicintheamericanwild@gmail.com or connect with us through facebook to tell us about your performances in the wild!

Uploaded by Daniel Ketter, cellist on 2016-03-09.

Uploaded by Daniel Ketter, cellist on 2016-03-09.

HAPPY LEAP DAY!

Leap Day is proving to be a lucky one for Music in the American Wild! Everything is coming together on the tour front, as we continue to confirm events in new spaces and start working out the details of each performance. Our June tour is officially set, so check out our TOUR page to see where you can find us early in the summer. We are so excited for our performances at Mammoth Cave, the Smokies, and Shenandoah, and we hope to provide our audiences there a new way to connect with these beloved parks - through music. If you can't make it to a park or prefer a more formal performance, you'll be able to hear us at some fantastic indoor venues along the way, including Locust Grove Historic Estate, The Theatre at Washington, Virginia, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. 

We've had a string of crazy, indecisive weather in our home base of Western New York the past few weeks, and our musicians are just itching to get outdoors to perform in and explore our country's national parks this summer. If you're also feeling that cabin fever, we here at MAW suggest checking out your favorite national park's social media feed. They're just killing it with their photos and videos this winter!

NEW YEAR AND NEWS

Dan trying out his new Luis and Clark cello at the beach!

Dan trying out his new Luis and Clark cello at the beach!

Happy new year from Music in the American Wild!

And happy centennial year to the National Park Service! This centennial celebration is the heart of our whole endeavor, and we are thrilled to play a musical part in honoring the amazing spaces our country has protected for the past hundred years - and will hopefully continue to protect for hundreds more!

MAW was recently gifted a suite of carbon fiber string instruments made by Luis and Clark. With these instruments, our string players can go anywhere without fear of damaging their instruments, and this means that we can share our music with more people and travel to farther-flung, wilder places in the national parks and beyond during our summer tour. We are extremely grateful for this amazing gift.

Over the holidays our cellist, Dan Ketter, tested out his brand new Luis and Clark cello on the North Carolina seashore. Here's his new year's gift to you!

Our Music in the American Wild cellist tests out his brand new Luis and Clark carbon fiber cello with a familiar new year's tune.

MAIDEN VOYAGE INTO THE WILD

Last week Music in the American Wild traveled to Mammoth Cave, Kentucky, to scout out some cave venues for our upcoming June performances. Mammoth Cave is a magical place, and the folks who work there are warm, dedicated, creative, and wonderful people. MAW director Emlyn Johnson had a fantastic meeting and brainstorming session with a team led by Vickie Carson and Leslie Price of the National Park Service, and Helen Siewers, Director of the Friends of Mammoth Cave. This awesome group of women had so many great ideas about integrating our music into the park and creating an event that will make for a great celebration of the National Park Service centennial.

It was a total delight to tour the caves and test out the incredible acoustics in various locations, and we're so excited about Mammoth Cave being our first national park of the MAW tour. Looking forward to heading back to Kentucky in June! 

Emlyn Johnson with Friends of Mammoth Cave's Helen Siewers and Mammoth Cave rangers Vickie Carson and Leslie Price.

Emlyn Johnson with Friends of Mammoth Cave's Helen Siewers and Mammoth Cave rangers Vickie Carson and Leslie Price.