Music

The Hannah Yoter Band on Alaska Originals — a 360 North production that features original music by Alaskans.

Hannah Yoter is well versed in the language of acoustic music. From an early age her world was filled with songs and stories that spanned generations and genres of folk music. Hannah began playing bluegrass guitar when she was a young girl growing up in rural Hope, Alaska. The music she played took her places around the state before eventually leading her to North Carolina in early 2009. While in NC, Hannah studied the old time Appalachian music tradition and picked up old-time banjo. She also found a love of song writing while living in the Blue Ridge Mountains out side of Asheville. She traveled with multiple bands around the area before deciding to move home to Alaska in 2013. Since moving back to Alaska, Hannah has assembled a band and refined her sound that sits right in the middle of Americana roots and classic country. Hannah and her band have traveled all over the state of Alaska for numerous performances and opened for acts such as Lonestar and The California Honeydrops. Earlier this year Hannah finished her self titled EP and the band is currently working towards a full length album.

On this episode of Arts@360’s Alaska Originals we feature a band who blends psych-folk and hip-hop with classical themes. They’re an experimental chamber group that defies any notion of musical normativity. This is HARM.

A band whose style was once described as “gospel rock futuristic electronica magic.”

Yngvil Vatn Guttu doesn’t just make music. She makes music happen. Since the age of three, when she produced a note on a trumpet on her first try, Yngvil has been inexplicably attracted to the instrument. Little did she know just how much power it would exert over her. Nor just how much of that power she would impart to countless others through her music, communal spirit, and love of life. Before the sounds of this spirited musician-composer began bouncing around the echo chamber of New York City, where she currently spends much of her creative time, they were skimming the icy expanses of Norway. Born in Oslo, Yngvil grew up surrounded by classical music—Bach, Händel, and Schubert were among the first composers to inform her burgeoning mind. In fact, it was Maurice André’s definitive traversal of the Haydn trumpet concerto, along with the classic strains of Louis Armstrong that inspired the balance of note-for-note, classical exposition and soulful elaboration to which she always aspires.

Goldwing is an experimental country rock band based in Juneau, Alaska. With Ben Higdon on electric guitar, Dan Desloover on bass, and Clay Good on drums, vocalist and guitar player Dan Kirkwood writes songs drawn from personal experience in the vein of traditional American music. Goldwing’s style, once dubbed “space country,” is fit for the highway, open skies or the dark end of the bar.

These award-winning musicians showcase drum songs from the Inuit cultures of Greenland and Alaska. Pamyua’s vocalists bring “a blizzard of interlocking harmonies,” says Native People Magazine.