Anthony Rice-Perttunen's Mt. Mather Base Camp
Greetings, peace, thank you for stopping by to visit!
Come, make yourself at home (I know, it’s a little windy here, but the view is great). This is special place for me, a perch overlooking the lower Muldrow Glacier in Denali National Park, in Alaska. There’s good medicine up here.
No, we definitely don’t have any mountains where I live in Oulu, Finland. But it’s a good land here in Oulu, just the same. We’re fortunate to have good water, clean air and – most importantly, we’re surrounded by courteous human beings. Gardening can be a bit more challenging with the long winters.
I’d offer you something to eat or drink, but I’m afraid web technology hasn’t kept pace with Mohawk custom. Please accept my apologies. You see, I sit with the 
Clan in the Mohawk Trail Longhouse. I’m descended from the Kaniekehaken (“People of the Flint”, or “Mohawk”), of the Hotinosionni (“People of the Longhouse”, or “Iroquois”) Confederacy. That’s me in the black and white (eight year old) picture at right. I do my best to keep the longhouse tradition strong in my life. Every once in a great while, you’ll find me where my grandfather was born and raised: Kahnawake Reserve outside of Montreal or visiting Alaska, where I was born.
Me and Music?
Yes, it is true: I’m also a singer/songwriter, arranger, recording producer and composer. I’ve composed in a wide variety of styles and genres from bluegrass to avantgarde, for string quartets and sequenced synthesizers. At left is a picture of me and one of my more precious instruments.
I’ve played for 51 years (self-taught the first nine). I began music study at U. Alaska, Fairbanks in 1979. There, in the spring of 1980, I first heard classical guitar ‘wunderkind’ Eliot Fisk in concert.
After three Paganini caprice encores he’d only JUST finished transcribing, he ended with the most transcendant ‘Recuerdas D’Alhambra’ (Francisco Tarrega) I’d ever heard. I was totally hooked.
That summer I began master classes led by Eliot and his teacher, Oscar Ghilia in Aspen, CO. I returned again in 1981 and 1983. By 1982 I had already transferred to the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. By 1986, I’d completed BM Classical Guitar Performance studies under Peter Segal. I immediately began studying composition under Frederick Kaufman the following year.
Over the previous four years, and during my next two years of studies in composition and orchestration, U. Arts became rife with collaborative opportunities blending dance, music, theatre, film and visual art. I participated in a multitude of collaborations, leaving me with an enduring passion for creating multimedia performance art.
Over the next seven years I wrote (music and plays), arranged, recorded and produced for a friend’s album, conducted chamber and church ensembles, performed a dizzying variety of styles of music and produced dramatic works commissioned for theater productions, dance companies, for film and video, choral and instrumental ensembles in major cities in California, Colorado, New York, Pennsylvania and Alaska. I got to session and even gig on a couple of occasions with some of Philly’s finest. The photo at right was taken in 1994.
But then, in 1995 I took a sabbatical. Over the ensuing 13 years I grew up, matured, released a few counter-productive stories (popularly condensed from ‘flaming drama’ to simply ‘flama’). I got married, moved to New York, worked for IBM for awhile, lost a sister to cancer, got divorced, moved to New Mexico. I began wondering how I could recover my passion for making music for music’s sake.
FINLAND?
In 2007 I’d begun tinkering with recording a CD, a project I’d considered calling Facets. I began first with re-sequencing a remake of Prophecy, a Native-based instrumental piece I’d composed together with and recorded with Hunkpapa native flautist, Robert Yellowwolf in 1995. The new Prophecy would feature Ron Warren on Native American Flute and fellow Mohawk Dawn Avery on cello. Prophecy became trapped in post-production due to the necessity of migrating out of ProTools.
Then, In February 2008, I traveled to Philly to record two jazz originals (“For My Father” and Feelings of Missing You) at Widener University’s digital studio Philadelphia. Co-producing and accompanying was none other than Philly’s brilliant jazz pianist, Tom Lawton, joined by the world-beloved Larry McKenna on tenor, Dan Monaghan on drums, Paul Gehman on upright and Andy Wilson on chromatic harmonica. Both tunes are also still languishing in post-production.
By July 08, I’d begun recording tracks for two more originals, Mountain Man and The Musher. I’d just moved to Finland in hopes of pursuing a jazz tour in Germany. A global economy crash evaporated both that plan and gigging opportunities. Nevertheless, I had a concert debut in Oulu’s Uuden Musiikin Lokakuu Festival that autumn. That was a sweet success, being the only broadcast from the concert series to make Finland’s YLE 1 national radio.
A performance and recording at Tervasoihtu in early January 2010 of my latin arrangement of the Beatles’ Yesterday was another success. I’d begun working on a big band arrangement of Bob Dylan’s One Too Many Mornings for the Oulu All Star Big Band, and continued orchestrating Bach’s Prelude & Fugue in Bb minor (#22, Well Tempered Clavier) for the Oulu Symphony Orchestra.
If you’re interested in more rough samples of some of my ‘works in progress’ check this page out.