Will Clipman began playing his father’s drums and his mother’s piano at the age of three, and has mastered a pan-global palette of over one hundred percussion instruments in addition to the traditional drumset. Will is a five-time GRAMMY® Nominee, a two-time Native American Music Award® Winner, a New Age Reporter Music Award® Winner, and a two-time TAMMIE® Award Winner; and has been inducted into the Tucson Musicians Museum for his contributions to the musical community in his hometown. Will has recorded over fifty albums, including twenty-five for Canyon Records, where he is regarded as the house percussionist. He performs and records with R. Carlos Nakai, William Eaton, Gabriel Ayala, Amber Norgaard, Gentle Thunder, Gary Stroutsos, Mary Redhouse, Jack Gladstone, and Solvei, among many others. Will’s solo CD Pathfinder is a GRAMMY® Nominee for Best New Age Album. His Planet of Percussion® workshop is a perennial favorite with students of all ages and music lovers of all skill levels.
A poet since the age of six, Will has published a book, Dog Light (Wesleyan University Press) and has been featured in numerous anthologies and literary journals. His writing has been honored with the Whiffen Poetry Prize, the Academy of American Poets Margaret Sterling Award, the Tucson/Pima Arts Council Poetry Fellowship, and the Arizona Commission on the Arts Award of Merit for Poetry. His poem The Quiet Power is the official Dedicatory Poem of the Tucson Main Library. Will is a featured artist in Indie Wolf’s book Touching the Sacred through Sound, and in Justin St. Vincent’s book The Spiritual Significance of Music.
Will is also an accomplished maskmaker and storyteller. His popular solo performance Myths & Masks® combines his original mask art, mythopoetic storytelling, and multicultural world music. As an arts educator, Will provides hands-on interdisciplinary workshops, lecture-demonstrations, master classes, and full-length residencies to elementary, middle, and high schools, colleges and universities, art galleries, libraries, adult prisons, juvenile detention facilities, senior centers, parks and recreation programs, retreat centers and resorts, and hospitals. His service to the community as an arts educator has been honored with the Arizona Commission on the Arts Decade of Distinguished Service Award and two Governor’s Arts Award Nominations. Will holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree from Syracuse University, and a Master of Fine Arts Degree from the University of Arizona.
To learn more about Will, buy his cds, and find out where he is performing near you, please visit him online: http://www.willclipman.com.
