Mary Redhouse

EMAIL: maryredhouse@hotmail.com

Mary Redhouse, member of the Dine' (Navajo tribe), is a 2005 Grammy Nominee in the New Age Category (People of Peace cd with R.. Carlos Nakai Quartet). She is a versatile jazz vocalist who is experienced in several genres. She is an electric bassist, native flute player who also plays acoustic guitar and keyboards. She calls her exploratory vocal style "eco-spiritual" because it blends bird and animal calls, multi-octave scat lines and Native chants. Mary has a 5 octave range.

Mary was raised in a musical family off the reservation on the culturally diverse, west coast of California. She was introduced to jazz in grade school by Beatrice Parker, a "beatnik" school librarian who played Jazz albums while Mary shelved books. Her musical influences include the classic jazz vocalists, but she cites especially instrumentalists: John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Eric Dolphy, Roland Kirk, Ornette Coleman among others.

During 1989-96 she toured for the Arizona Commission on the Arts with the Jazz Menagerie band and and was featured in Tucson Jazz Society concerts. She helped organize and present a Very Special Arts Native American Festival at the Tucson Convention Center that involved up to 4 regional states.

Mary has produced music for two KUAT-TV documentary series: ART OF THE FIRST AMERICANS and OUR JOURNEYS--AMERICAN INDIAN EPICS. She created ballet music and narration for Tucson Regional Ballet's 2000-02 productions of "Why Butterflies Fly Crazy" based on a Pueblo Coyote story.

In 1994 Mary collaborated with critically acclaimed bassist Michael Formaneck and guitarist John Stowell and, with grant funding, presented A New Wind: Native American Vocal Jazz Explorations (a collection of her original intertribals for a Jazz group).

Mary has worked with jazz luminary: saxophonist Oliver Lake (founder of the World Saxophone Quartet)-- who composed a poem "Constant Whole" and song "Let it Go" for her as part of his Meet the Composer program. She has worked with pianists Jill McManus, Diane Moser, Les Czimbre, Larry Redhouse, Joe Bonner and pianist/vocalist Lisa Otey; trombonist Michael Vlatcovich; guitarists Joshua Breakstone, Mitch Chmara, Dom Minasi and John Stowell;; bassists Santi Debriano, Ed Schuller, Mark Dresser, Michael Formanek, Zimbabwe Nkenya, Lee Gardner; and drummers Andrew Cyrille, Gene Lake, Pheeroan Aklaff and Tom Tilton. She has also sung with the Flux String Quartet in Oliver Lake's string quartet Einstein 100. She led her own band as a featured artist and also backed other performers at Native Roots and Rhythms 2000 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She has performed with Oliver Lake at Tonic and Knitting Factory in New York City; the Priory in Newark, the first Philadelphia Jazz and Poetry Festival at Sedgwick Cultural Center and the new Cecil’s in West Orange, New Jersey, the Geulph Festival in Ontario in 2004, and a Denmark tour in May 2005. She and Oliver Lake will open the Edgefest in Ann Arbor, Michigan in October 2006. She was in the cast at the Scottsdale Center for the Arts' 2003 production of "Native Trails" which featured traditional and contemporary Native songs and dances.

Mary tours and records with Canyon Records' multi-Grammy nominee and renowned Native flutist R.Carlos Nakai (world and Native American music), the William Eaton Ensemble (world chamber music), and the Redhouse Family Jazz Band and Redhouse Dancers. She also conducts school and museum lectures and workshops in the U.S. She has toured and done residencies with Jazz Menagerie for the Arizona Commission on the Arits (1990-92).

She has worked with critically acclaimed poet/saxophonist/singer/songwriter Joy Harjo; Keith Secola and the Wild Band of Indians' and vocalist Star Nayea. Mary is also vocalist, bassist and Native Flute player in a band called ANANEAH with versatile Pauite violinist Arvel Bird, guitarist William Eaton, and percussionist Will Clipman. Their debut "global native fusion" ANANEAH cd is on Singing Wolf Records.

Mary’s musical experience and artistic statement continues to be influenced and manifested by both her native heritage, jazz and contemporary life; expressing the beauty of Nature, spirituality and the vastness of the Universe.