|
|
|
Out in western Nebraska, there's a couple of windswept little towns on the Platte River where some people try to eke out a living from the dry soil. Even along the river, miles separate individual households, and north, in the sandhills, the solitude is as profound as any on the continent. Antelope still roam out there. Flocks of migrating Canadian geese rest in the river shallows in November, crossing this ribbon of water on the fly ways towards the Gulf of Mexico.
William Eaton's parents met and fell in love in this country and the taste and touch of this fading world lives on in their children. It's a pure Americanism, direct and honest, spacious and easy going, informed by daily contact with the wide open infinities of time and space and the windy relentless prairie.
While Eaton grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska, he has always returned for holidays and family gatherings to the original home in Lisco, on the river, where his grandmother still lives. When he was seven his Uncle Charlie gave him a ukulele and showed him the chords for "Five-feet-two, Eyes of Blue". His first performance was before an audience of 800 at Irving Junior High School in Lincoln, playing banjo and guitar with The Balladeers, a folk trio including his older brother.
In high school, as lead guitarist for Candy Machine, Eaton spent most Saturday nights in farm towns hundreds of miles from home playing the top 40 music of the 1960's to local teens starved for links with the outside world.
When he moved to Arizona to attend Arizona State University in Tempe, the demands of his schedule did not permit participation in a musical group. For a time he considered musical performance a pursuit he'd have to give up as he accepted the responsibilities of adulthood. His considerable intensity was devoted to academics and athletics, areas in which he excelled. His guitar was tucked under his bed, only to come out when he needed a break from the efforts which earned him the ASU pole vaulting record and the title "Outstanding Graduate" of the Business College. But another factor was beginning to influence Eaton at this time - the surrounding country was working a spell on him. The voice of the desert, that dry and brittle presence behind all the activity around college life captivated this young Nebraskan. Here was another solitude, another silence, another infinity beyond society; a place of origin. Opening to desert life permitted Eaton to see Tempe's local characters in a different light. A chance meeting with a luthier student led Eaton to visit the Juan Roberto Guitar Works, a sweltering Quonset hut established when ex-pilot and luthier John Roberts returned from years in Nicaragua, flying for a lumber company, bringing with him a lifetime supply of exotic tropical hardwoods. Here in 1972, Eaton built his first guitar and his 22 year association with Roberts began. He felt his business education was incomplete, so Eaton attended the two-year MBA program at Stanford where he specialized in small business finance and accounting. While at Stanford, Eaton also studied classical guitar with teacher Charles Ferguson. His final project for the business school was the development of a plan for the Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery, successor to the Guitar Works, an accredited technical school devoted to the design and creation of stringed musical instruments. After graduation, Eaton returned to Phoenix and carried out this plan. The Roberto-Venn School has attracted students from all over the world with over 800 graduates in its 20 year history. The first years after formal education were critical in developing Eaton's artistic perspectives.
Family and academic commitments fulfilled for the moment, he could at last embark on the personal quest which had been taking shape during his school years. While engaged in the Roberto-Venn work, he read omnivorously and investigated the spiritual and philosophical disciplines of many cultures. He spent days and nights outdoors, deep in the mountain areas outside Phoenix. He slept under the stars, living out of his car for two years. He contemplated the origins and dynamics of music. He wandered in the desert, and played with "erasing personal history" and "stopping the world". He began to imagine and create the remarkably innovative instruments for which he is noted. While this was not a time for performance before large human audiences, he began playing pieces in a variety of solitary settings, on a cliff in the moonlight by a quiet pool in a shadowed canyon. This period of Eaton's life is a source for much of his subsequent work, and the subtle qualities of sound, light and air experienced in the desert can be felt behind his every note. Eaton's return to the audience began after this retreat time. In late 1978, he frequently played in the moonlight near Arcosanti, the experimental community in Central Arizona. Interested people collected to listen to these sessions. Eaton's awareness of the acoustic properties of various spaces, which grew out of his instrument building, led him to stage impromptu concerts in a variety of improbable locations. Handwritten signs promoted events at the Arizona Sand and Gravel Building, the Central Arizona Project Siphon Tunnel at Granite Reef Dam, and the Monroe Street Civic Building, culminating in 1980 with the Sunset Moonrise Concert on South Mountain, the beginning of his formal performance career.
For the following 14 years, Eaton has explored the ways people can be brought to interact with music. Venues for his performances have ranged from intimate music settings to concert halls with a full chamber orchestra behind him, to outdoor amphitheaters with audiences of thousands. He has composed, improvised, collaborated, lyricized and scat sung. Solo performances have alternated with group appearances. Through programs sponsored by the Arizona Commission on the Arts, Eaton and his wife and work partner, dancer Christine Lamb, have brought the spark of music to school children throughout the state in extended residency programs which usually conclude with a music and dance concert put on by the children, using instruments they have designed and built. Throughout these years Eaton has always had one instrument or another under construction at the Roberto-Venn school and he continues to teach there. Most recent in his collection, the lyraharp guitar, was completed in May 1994 and incorporates his accumulated knowledge of building guitars, harp guitars and lyres with the sophistication of Roland's synthesizer technology, permitting voicings for nearly every existing musical instrument. The new instrument has had a profound and expansive influence on Eaton's musical directions.
|
|
|
|
 
Inspired by the land and traditions of the southwest, this impressionistic collection features guitarist and luthier William Eaton ?s musical dialogues with guest artists: Arvel Bird, violin; Claudia Tulip, silver flute; Rich Rodgers, shakuhachi; Udi Arouh, guitar and tablas; and Nakai on traditional flute. Eaton 's compositional ideas were born within the landscape of the four corners area of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah. Each song title reflects a sense of place in this musical travelogue.
|
 
Some of the world ?s favorite Winter seasonal melodies arranged for guitar, harp guitar, lyre and synth guitar by Eaton with R. Carlos Nakai creating and improvising variations on these traditional tunes on Native American flute. Ten carols including: What Child is This?/Greensleeves, I Saw Three Ships, Angels We Have Heard On High, and Silent Night (with Navajo chorale). Also includes an original composition by Eaton and Nakai - First Snowfall.
|
 
A musical foray into the natural world, Eaton began the idea for this recording by composing guitar music to the rhythm of cicadas and winged creatures in the canyons of the Sonoran desert. In addition to the cicada rhythm section guest artists include: Edgar Meyer on double bass (recent recipient of a MacArthur’s Foundation ‘Genius Award’ for his incomparable accomplishments in the classical, jazz, and bluegrass musical worlds), Robert "Tree" Cody, Native American flute, Claudia Tulip, clay vessel & ocarina; Udi Arouh, guitar; and Will Clipman on gourd water drums.
|
 
1994 GRAMMY Finalist in Best Traditional Folk Music category. Nakai and guitarist William Eaton create diverse music that celebrates the rich traditions of the peoples of the Americas. The themes for this album revisit the 500 year anniversary of Columbus ? arrival in the ?New World ? through the lens of thriving ?native ? civilizations who were already present on the ?island. ? The Black Lodge Singers pow-wow group appear on the finale cut Many Flags.
|
|
|
Hailed as a Critic ?s Choice by Billboard magazine this recording is an inspired blending of Eaton ?s lyraharp guitar, o ?ele ?n strings and spiral clef guitar with Nakai ?s cedar flutes and Will Clipman ?s ethnic percussion . . . creating a new music born and rooted in the Sonoran desert and colored by the sounds of the world.
|
|
|
The second recording by the trio of Nakai, Eaton and Clipman brings together their unique instruments to conjure the subtle beauty and ultimate grandeur of the singing desert, weaving aural fables of human and animal presence into enduring tableaus of landscape and sky. Red Wind received a NAMMY award (Native American Music Awards) for Best Instrumental Album.
|
Nakai, Eaton and Clipman are joined with special guest, Tibetan flutist Nawang Khechog in a recording that earned the group a GRAMMY nomination in 2001 for Best New Age album. This collaboration explores the worlds of Native America and Tibet, supported by the rich sonic palette of strings provided by William Eaton and the pulsing world beat percussion of Will Clipman.
|
This two-disc set is priced as a single disc. This album contains over two hours of new music by the William Eaton Ensemble that will take you on a musical voyage into worlds of wonder and peace. Features the sounds of Eaton's unique instruments including lyraharp guitar, 26 string guitar and spiral clef plus flutes, pan pipes, mandolin, violin, violira, bass and ethnic percussion from around the world.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
