From Mary Jane:
Newest Randy & Shelley Stenzel family benefit FLUTE AUCTION!
Note: auction ENDS 8-6-09 @ 10 PM!

Colyn & Kitty of Woodland Voices Flutes, have hosted another great auction for the Stenzels and Michael has donated an unusual and very fine flute with a rare coyote fetish.
There are also some beautiful flutes and cases donated by some other great flutemakers.
Check out this auction!!! It's a win/win.

Casa Grande report

In the arid Sonora Desert, just south of the Superstition Mountains, the festival at the Casa Grande Ruins National Park was cool in many ways; beautiful ancient Hohokam ruins and vast archeological site (5 miles square), pottery shards litter much of the park. The concert went well with New Mexico musician, Randy Granger performing with me all three days, playing Hang drums, Randy brilliantly accompanied my experimental rim-blown flutes, it went well with the Arizona evening.

Carlos played a most sweet and gentle concert, his flute playing was like holding a baby bird in your hand. Nice.

 In every way the Park Rangers really took care of us and put on a very good festival. The big stage was right by the large Hohokam ruins, the festival was well thought out and nicely done.

My friend, Ranger Alan Stanz, guided Scott August and me around  remote parts of the archeological park, really amazing. I did suffer some temptation concerning those pottery shards, but I only took pictures.

MGA 

American Indian Music Fest

Here is the link to the Arizona festival in February.

Concert in Arizona; February 2009

I will be in Arizona at the Casa Grande Ruins National Park February 13, 14 and 15 2009 for the first annual AMERICAN INDIAN MUSIC FEST. Click the link on my website for more information. They are scheduling me to play each day during the festival, I expect to play mostly ancient rim-blown flutes: Anasazi, Hopi, Mojave and other lesser known flutes + some of my own modified flutes. I will enjoy presenting my lecture on Ancient Flutes of North America including the introduction of several ancient rim-blown flutes and an artifact or two.  I'll bring my expanded "petting museum" of flute replicas and giveaway PVC  student flutes. AND... MJ and I will have a booth offering our work, teaching folks how to play the Anasazi flute and generally visiting. 
The National Park is working on the website for the festival, I'll have a link as soon as it's available.

Under an Ancient Sky

Echoes Listeners' Poll Top 25 of 2008

Hearts of Space Label

Barry Stramp and Michael Graham Allen reunite with the latest Coyote Oldman offering:  Under an Ancient Sky. Coyote Oldman is exploration and art.  Michael Graham Allen shapes ancient flutes and flowing melodies while in the studio Barry Stramp shapes the time and space in which this unique music unfolds and expands.

2008: Under an Ancient Sky embodies the work of two seasoned experimental artists who achieve a surreal sound sculpture of comforting music in this thoughtful and strangely crafted recording.

The Anasazi (ahn-uh-sah'-zee) were prolific artists and innovators.  Their culture arose and flourished for thousands of years in the vast rocky, arid Four Corners area of the southwestern United States.  The Anasazi were the ancient founders of the Pueblo cultures building stone and adobe villages, developing agriculture, making beautiful pottery, cotton cloth and extensive roads in an impressive civilization.  And they made some very fine wooden flutes.  The flutes used in "Under an Ancient Sky" are based on 1,200 year old artifacts of Anasazi flutes unearthed in Central Eastern Arizona.

Archeology supplies us with well-documented artifacts: flutes that are clearly original and unencumbered by interpretation.  Even in fragments, old flutes are embued with information: their musical notes and voice still readable in the length, bore, finger hole size and placement, information that survives for centuries under the right conditions.  With precise measurements skillfully reproduced in wood, this ancient flute comes back to life, its' voice heard once again in our world.

The flutes heard on "Under an Ancient Sky" were built and played by Michael Graham Allen and bear the original tone and scale of an instrument that has been silent for the past 700 years; the lush harmonic overtones and unusual compositions are inspired by the mysterious voice of the Anasazi flute, the soul of this latest Coyote Oldman recording "Under an Ancient Sky".

The latest in 21 years of Coyote Oldman recordings is formed around the ancient flute, haunted by complexly shaped notes that seem to glow with strange unknown colors reflected in an elegant atmosphere of sound.  The Anasazi flute is a significant musical instrument that will spread and live again on this planet.  "Under an Ancient Sky" is part of the reintroduction of this, until recently extinct, flute of the New World.  Musician Michael Graham Allen has been researching, building and reintroducing traditional flutes of North America since the 1970s.

The futuristic musical sound transformations heard on "Under an Ancient Sky" were researched, developed and created by Barry Stramp.  THese compositional methods combine many common and uncommon ways to change sound, and were tailored specifically for each piece of music.  This recording is about cycles of life and sound, and their synergistic metamorphosis.