Louis W. Ballard (Cherokee/Quapaw)

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)

Originally from Chinle, AZ on the Navajo reservation, Raven Chacon is one of the few American Indian composers working in the world today. Chacon has recorded many works for classical and electronic instruments and ensembles and has had many performances and exhibits of his work across the U.S. as well as Europe and New Zealand. Much of his work involves homemade microphones and instruments to produce a noise environment in a live or installed performance. He has also studied and worked with notable composers such as James Tenney, Morton Subotnick, and Wadada Leo Smith. Current projects or groups include KILT and Cobra//group.

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 Odawa (Giniw dodem, Manitoulin Island) and balances her time between work in outdoor education rooted in traditional Anishhinaabe teachings, taking part in traditional ceremonies, volunteer work with aboriginal youth and composing music. Active internationally since 1995, she is a graduate of the Hochschule fur Musik in Munich, Germany and holds a Bachelor of Music from the University of Toronto where she was the recipient of the Glenn Gould Award in Composition in 1989. Apart from playing, performing and composing on traditional native musical instruments and for voice in the Anishinaabe way, Barbara also composes for European classical instruments and instruments of different folk traditions from around the world. Her music for soloists, small and large chamber ensembles, symphony orchestra, film and theatre have been premiered internationally and across Canada. In 2002 she was commissioned to compose the incidental and theme music for the opening ceremonies of the 2002 North American Indigenous Games (Winnipeg). Her music has been premiered at many international festivals - in Lithuania, Finland, Switzerland, Germany, France, Italy, the UK and Canada.Website: www.barbaracroall.com

Brent Michael Davids (Mohican)

Brent Michael Davids(www.BrentMichaelDavids.com) is a strikingly accomplished composer with dozens of awards and commissions from notable organizations such as ASCAP, NEA, Rockefeller, Sundance, Bush Foundation, McKnight Foundation, National Symphony, Kronos Quartet, Chanticleer, and Miro Quartet. Davids film scores include The World of American Indian Dance for NBC, The Hallmark miniseries Dreamkeeper for ABC, The Business of Fancy Dancing, and The 1920 Classic Myth: The Last of the Mohicans. Brent coordinates the Composer Apprentice National Outreach Endeavor (CANOE) that teaches written composition to American Indians.

Joy Harjo (Muskogee)

Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma and an enrolled member of the Muskogee Tribe, Joy Harjo came to New Mexico to attend the Institute of American Indian Arts where she studied painting and theatre, not music and poetry, though she did write a few lyrics for an Indian acid rock band. She began writing poetry when the national Indian political climate demanded singers and speakers, and was taken by the intensity and beauty possible in the craft. Her most recent book of poetry is the best-selling How We Became Human: New and Selected poems, from W.W. Norton. It wasn't until she was in Denver that she took up the saxophone because she wanted to learn how to sing and had in mind a band that would combine the poetry with a music there were no words yet to define, a music involving elements of tribal musics, jazz and rock. She eventually returned to New Mexico where she began the first stirrings of what was to be her first band, Joy Harjo and Poetic Justice. Joy now lives in Hawaii, teaches at UCLA and the University of Hawaii. She now performs simply as Joy Harjo.

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 Elizabeth Kreisberg (Tuscarora)

Singer and composer, Jennifer comes from four generations of singers through the maternal line. She performs with the women’s trio Ulali, and is a clinician at universities, schools and festivals. She is a Master Teaching Artist for the State of Connecticut. She is a founding member of the Native American Scholarship Fund at Lynchburg College in Virginia. Jennifer made a guest appearance as Salmon Girl in Sherman Alexie’s The Business of Fancy Dancing. The soundtrack features Jennifer singing the Deer Song, which she composed in 1997 for the Aboriginal Women’s Voices project in Banff.

R. Carlos Nakai (Navajo/Ute)

R. Carlos Nakai began his musical training with the trumpet but in the 1970’s took up the instrument that has made him famous, the cedar flute. Over the last two decades, Nakai has developed his art to form a complex, sophisticated sound that not only reveals the flute’s uniqueness, but covers the spectrum of musical genres: jazz, piano and guitar collaborations, and the concert hall. Additionally, Nakai creates new sounds for the flute using electronic technology such as synthesizers and digital delay. A prolific musician and composer, Nakai has 27 albums in commercial distribution, including 18 releases on the Canyon Records label.

George Quincy (Choctaw)

George Quincy was born and raised in Oklahoma and is of Choctaw heritage. He has two degrees from The Juilliard school and later taught there, became Musical Advisor to Martha Graham and went on to compose, orchestrate and conduct music for Theater, Dance, Film, Opera, Television and Concert. His music has been performed in Carnegie Hall, Weill Hall, Alice Tully Hall and many theaters in New York City. Throughout his childhood, his Juilliard years and later, he believed that his lyrical gift in musical composition was rooted in his Choctaw blood and his analytical talent in his white western education. He develops the emotional and cultural fusion of classical music and Choctaw sounds in his personal artistic journey. The New York 5, a chamber music group specializing in Mr. Quincy’s music, played a concert in February at Pen & Brush where they premiered “Voices from Ground Zero” for which he received a Meet the Composer Grant. Albany Records has released a CD called Choctaw Nights, based on Quincy’s Choctaw background and the moons of Jupiter. Pocahontas at the Court of James I, part 1 was presented by the Queen’s Chamber Band at Merkin Hall on May 23. He is musical director of New Dance Group and through them (with Thayer Burch) contributes songs to the Times Square Kidz. He and the New York Five played in two concerts at the American Indian Wing of the Smithsonian in Washington DC in October. He has received awards from ASCAP and many from Meet the Composer. www.georgequincy.com

N. Bird Runningwater (Cheyenne/Mescalero Apache)

Responsible for programming for Native American Initiatives at The Sundance Film Institute, Mr. Runningwater works with Native screen writers to assist them in the development of their scripts, placing them on a trajectory towards production, including connecting them with potential financing and distribution. He also oversees the programming of the Sundance Film Festival’s Native Forum, a showcase highlighting the innovations of Native filmmakers. Mr. Runningwater has served as a producer, director and writer for a number of film and television projects, and serves as advisor and board member to many national film organizations.

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 (Comanche/Sac and Fox)

Ed Wapp is the Chairman of the Indigenous Studies Department at the Institute of American Indian Arts where he teaches anthropology and music. Wapp is an ethnomusicologist who has specialized in Native American music, the music of Latin America and the music of the Middle East. Mr. Wapp has traveled and performed extensively throughout the U.S., Canada and Europe. His main musical instruments are the piano, harpsichord and Native American flute. As a Native American flute player, his repertoire consists of the old traditional flute melodies. He also specializes in Spanish piano music and 17th century harpsichord.