R. Carlos Nakai - Spiral Rendezvous '2022

Tracks list

       For three decades and beyond, we’ve created, in RC’s words,
“sound sculptures” not heard elsewhere. This is not an expression of
boldness, but a simple summing of the musical forces we each bring to our
performances and co-compositions. From what other ensemble could a listener
experience all three registers of Native American flute (low - standard - high),
unique (a wornout word, yes, but absolutely true here) stringed instruments like
the lyraharp guitar, electric harp guitar, spiral clef, 26 string guitar, and
lyre set to the rhythms of globe spanning percussion and drums like the udu,
tar, cajon, to’ere, djembe, bodhran, caxixis, and ipu heke? For a long
time, we’ve entertained (or at least, intrigued) audiences with musical
explorations/experiments generated by our eclectic collection of instruments,
which to be musically effective requires a close alignment of artistic vision
and temperaments. We are dually fortunate for this alignment, which is also
personal, as not many ensembles can withstand the centrifugal pressures of time,
especially as we now count our time together not in years, but decades. 
This album, with its nine stylistically different tracks, owes its genesis to a
commission RC received from the International Trumpet Guild for a classical work
for trumpet and Native American flute. Free to compose whatever he wanted, RC
invited us to join him in creating music that became Passages, released just
prior to this recording on From Graceful Fields, RC’s fifth classical
album for Canyon Records. For us as a trio, this collaboration in a new genre
re-ignited our creativity and motivated us to continue making music as much for
fun as any predetermined artistic or commercial outcome. The iconography of
Spiral Rendezvous visually presents what inspires and generates our music. The
Nautilus shell is often used to demonstrate one of many biological expressions
of the Fibonacci series (originally defined in India five centuries before
Europe learned the Indo-Arabic numeral system, which provided them the math to
understand how the Indians deciphered the series). Our music is never created to
a formula but grows organically from the uncertain outcomes of improvisation and
the accidents of free form collaboration and eventually finds structure by
collation of three separate artistic imaginations. Nonetheless, somewhat like
the Nautilus, each song begins with a concise, defining form and expands
incrementally outward. While our songs, each from a different musical
constellation, can be as diverse as the expressions of the series in nature
(Nautilus shell, sunflowers, pine cones), the generative process is the same and
we hope our sound sculptures are as graceful as the spiraling curves and elegant
mathematics embodied in this music’s icon, the Nautilus. 

Tracklist:
1.01 - R. Carlos Nakai - Spiral Rendezvous (7:33)
1.02 - R. Carlos Nakai - From the Depths (7:27)
1.03 - R. Carlos Nakai - Modus Indorum ad Fibonacci (5:40)
1.04 - R. Carlos Nakai - Green Jaguar (6:34)
1.05 - R. Carlos Nakai - Firewalkers (6:09)
1.06 - R. Carlos Nakai - Hózhó Nihí Déyá - In Beauty, We Travel
(6:07)
1.07 - R. Carlos Nakai - Pebble in the Pond (6:01)
1.08 - R. Carlos Nakai - Heart of the Matter (6:39)
1.09 - R. Carlos Nakai - Memory’s Labyrinth (6:14)

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