Cellist Zuill Bailey to play Grammy-nominated work in Anchorage

December has been an eventful month for artists in Alaska, but it was particularly momentous for cellist Zuill Bailey, director of the Sitka Summer Music Festival, who received his first nomination for a Grammy award. Bailey was included in the picks for "Best Classical Instrumental Solo" for his performance on "Michael Daugherty: Tales of Hemingway, American Gothic & Once Upon a Castle (Live)."

The recording, released by Naxos American Classics in September, received two other nominations, one for the "Best Classical Compendium" and one for composer Daugherty and for "Best Contemporary Classical Composition." Among the competition in the compendium category is Frank Zappa's "200 Motels" and Daugherty is up against Jennifer Higdon's opera "Cold Mountain," among other challengers.

Bailey will play "Tales of Hemingway" in Anchorage in the days leading up to the awards ceremony, in performances with pianist Susan Reed at the Anchorage Museum on Feb. 10 and an "informance" at UAA on Feb. 11, after which he'll presumably board a plane for the trip to the awards ceremony in Los Angeles on Feb. 12.

The same dates, Feb. 10-12, will see the Winter Classics chamber music series in Anchorage, overseen by Bailey as part of the Sitka Music Festival.

Aside from the two free performances noted above, Bailey will not take part in the Winter Classics concerts, which will feature cellist Wendy Sutter, pianist Natasha Paremski and Sitka festival founder violinist Paul Rosenthal. Tickets are available at centertix.net.

Bailey's other hats include artistic director of the El Paso (Texas) Pro-Musica, guest artistic director of the Mesa (Arizona) Arts Center and artistic director of the Northwest Bach Festival in Spokane, Washington. At the same time his Grammy nomination was announced, he was named a 2016 Musical Innovator by the national arts magazine Musical America. One wonders when he finds time to practice.

New books by Alaskans

Two intriguing and very different volumes came to my desk over the past few weeks. One was a pre-publication edition of "Milk Black Carbon," the latest collection by award-winning poet Joan Naviyuk Kane, from University of Pittsburgh Press, due out in February. It includes work in both English and Inupiaq (with translations).

The other is a collaboration between two old friends of ours, "One Night at Reindeer Camp," a children's holiday book. Tim Troll's story involves a Yup'ik reindeer herder who extends hospitality to Santa Claus during a spell of rough weather. It is illustrated by well-known artist Patrick Minock and dedicated to his father Milo Minock and Jimmy Paukan. Now deceased, both men were herders on the Lower Yukon back in the old days.

And a third bit of literary news: The Alutiiq Museum in Kodiak and the Native Village of Afognak have released an app version of "Yaaki," an Alutiiq language children's book about a girl and her dog. Written and narrated by Susan Malutin and illustrated by Hanna Sholl, it's the third in a series of six such app books that the publishers plan to release over the next year. The first two books, "Kiagumuuq" and "Uksumuuq" have been available since August.

The interactive app is free and compatible with iPad, iPhone and other devices and can be downloaded from the iTunes store. Readers can touch a word or letter and hear it spoken.

The Alutiiq language has been enjoying something of a revival lately, with high school and college classes in Kodiak and an immersion preschool set to open next month.

Storyknife cabins named

Three donors recently paid for naming rights for cabins at the Storyknife Writers Retreat in Homer. The retreat, established by novelist Dana Stabenow, hosts women writers in residencies intended to help them concentrate on their work — if they can distract themselves from the view. Former legislator Arliss Sturgulewski named a cabin for her daughter-in-law Carol. Jeannie Penney will honor her mother, Betty Rice. And Catherine Rasmuson will name a cabin for the late Halibut Cove artist Diana Tillion.

Rasmuson intends to decorate the cabin with Tillion's art, leading Stabenow to quip, "We're expecting competition among writers for Diana Cabin to be fierce."

One cabin, named for anthropologist Frederica de Laguna, has already been put to use, hosting Storyknife's first resident writer, Kim Steutermann Rogers, in September. Three other cabins are still awaiting sponsors and names. Fundraising has begun for a main house with dining and community room facilities, to be named for the late writer Eva Saulitis. Former state writer laureate Peggy Shumaker and her husband Joe Usibelli are meeting donations for that building with a two-to-one match through Feb. 14.

More information on donations and applications for residencies can be found at storyknife.org or by writing to P.O. Box 75, Homer, Alaska 99603.

Sealaska mask exhibit on display

A new exhibit of 50 masks from Inupiat, Yup'ik, Athabaskan, Alutiiq, Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian makers will be on display through May at the Nathan Jackson Gallery in the Walter Soboleff Building in Juneau. The show, assembled by the Sealaska Heritage Institute, groups the masks according to cultural significance rather than geography, focusing on the meaning and purpose of the pieces.

Violinist explores Alaska's culture

Violinist William Harvey with Cultures in Harmony, an Indianapolis, Indiana, nonprofit effort to promote cultural understanding through music, traveled to all 50 states this year to "explore the many ways it is possible to define American culture."

In Alaska, Harvey met with composer John Luther Adams and played some of his music at a variety of sites around the state, including the Mountain View Boys and Girls Club, Hiland Mountain Correctional Facility and the City School in Nenana. At the end of the project he prepared an interactive map at the culturesinharmony.org website. You can click on Alaska, or the other states, and get more information on his activities.

Museum news

The Richard Foster Building opened in Nome on Oct. 28. The building houses the Katirvik Cultural Center, Kegoayah Kozga Public Library and the Carrie M. McLain Memorial Museum.

The Alutiiq Museum received the 2016 Museum Institutional Excellence Award from the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries and Museums. The Kodiak museum's Executive Director April Laktonen Counceller received the award at ceremonies in Phoenix on Oct. 11.

Rofkar on the purpose of art

The last few weeks saw the deaths of three prominent Alaska artists, each who made their mark in different ways. Byron Birdsall's flat, primary color, poster-like depictions of Alaska towns and vistas became enormously popular in the past 30 years or so. Tlingit weaver Clarissa Rizal learned the rules of the artform and then extended them into new directions. Much the same could be said for National Heritage Fellow Teri Rofkar, who was particularly noted for her Raven's Tail weaving.

Rofkar's loss was particularly painful to me. I had interviewed her and found her to be not only talented and knowledgeable, but possessed of an inner happiness and humor that transferred to those around her.

In an interview with the National Endowment for the Arts in 2009, Rofkar said, "I'm hoping that the pieces that I create are the teachers. They'll be looking at them, you know, 200 years from now, 'Ah, this is what they were doing.'"

We suspect that 200 years from now they will.