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FROM: THE SYRACUSE POST-STANDARD NEWSPAPER

http://www.syracuse.com/entertainmen...se/entertainme
nt-8/1108028421189350.xml

Shenandoah Not Impressed By Grammy Glitz

Nominee physically will be in Los Angeles, but her heart remains in CNY.

Thursday, February 10, 2005

By Mark Bialczak
Staff writer

Joanne Shenandoah flies to Los Angeles on Friday to attend the 47th annual
Grammy Awards ceremonies.

Truth be known, the singer-songwriter from Oneida Castle says, she would
rather be at home watching the CBS telecast.

"I personally wanted to throw a big party here for my friends and family,"
Shenandoah says Tuesday, over lunch at Sharon's Creekside Inn, a couple of miles
up the road from her home.

After all, Shenandoah's award - she's nominated in the Best Native American
Music Album category for her 2003 disc "Covenant" - will be one of 65
categories announced before the telecast of the show, she says.

Secondly, the Oneida Nation native already had a taste of the Grammy glitz
when she attended the ceremony at Staples Center in 2001, when her disc "Peace-
maker's Journey" was one of the nominees for the first-ever Grammy Award in
that same category.

When Robbie Robertson and Val Kilmer announced on-screen "Gathering of
Nations Pow Wow" as the winner, the 16 sisters, aunts, cousins, nieces and nephews
watching at her home in Oneida Castle groaned en masse.

"They were more disappointed than me," Shenandoah says. "I'm honored, more
than anything."

Not that she wouldn't like to take home the Grammy trophy

when she returns with her daughter, singer Leah Shenandoah, and Leah's
boyfriend, Nick Raineri. Shenandoah is bringing them to the ceremonies because they
both sang backup on "Covenant."

Leah, who is studying textiles at Syracuse University as well as nurturing
her own singing career, also designed the gowns she and her mother will wear to
the ceremony.

"Certainly, it's the attention to the music that any award is good for,"
Shenandoah says. "It's not about me. It's about the music that flows through me.
It's not making or breaking me in any away."

For more than a decade, Shenandoah's music had allowed her entry onto the
world stage.

In 1990, she performed at the Banlieu Bleu Jazz Festival in Paris. Since
then, she has toured North America and Europe. She sang at the White House in 1999
and opened the 25th anniversary Woodstock Festival in Saugerties.

Her awards are many, including artist of the year in 2002 at the North
American Music Awards. She's nominated in that top category and three more at this
year's NAMA ceremony, tonight in Fort Lauderdale. Her aunt, Liz Roberts, will
represent Shenandoah at that ceremony.

The highlight of 2004, she says, was a performance opening the Sacred Music
Concert in Barcelona, Spain, where she saw Chief Jake Swamp of the Mohawk
Nation plant a tree.

Shenandoah is on track for a big 2005, too.

Silver Wave Records will release "Skywoman," the disc of the concerto she
composed for symphony orchestras, on March 15.

"That's been 12 years in the making," Shenandoah says. The disc was recorded
with an international orchestra in Santa Fe. She premiered the nine-movement
piece in 2002 with the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra.

"There was 1,000 sheets of music onstage," Shenandoah says. "I know; I was at
the Xerox machine."

The CD release will be accompanied by a book of the same name she co-wrote
with her husband, Doug George. She will sign advance copies of the disc and book
at a release party at 11 a.m. Feb. 26 at the Shell & Stone Turquoise Gallery,
in The Shoppes at Towne Center, Fayetteville.

Shenandoah also may add acting on the big screen to her resume this year.

She's waiting to hear whether she landed the role of "a smiley nurse" in a
major motion picture about global warming that will be shot in two months in
Iceland.

"I've auditioned. They're interested," she says.

But for now her attention is focused on the Grammys. Shenandoah's disc is
competing with albums by Black Eagle, Black Lodge Singers, Bill Miller and Mary
Youngblood.

She counts Miller and Youngblood as close friends.

"We're all planning a big bash afterward with friends and family," Shenandoah
says.


© 2005 The Post-Standard. Used with permission.

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