Dean Evenson (born December 14, 1944) is an American new-age musician, composer, producer, flutist, and videographer. Dean plays several instruments including the Western concert flute, Native American flute, synthesizer, and keyboard. His music generally features sounds of nature combined with flute melodies and other instruments for ambience, massage, meditation, yoga and relaxation.
Work and collaboration
In addition to recording with his harpist wife Dudley Evenson, he has collaborated with many artists from around the world, including Li Xiangting, Chinese master of the guqin (7-string zither), Sergey Kuryokhin, Russian avant-garde composer, Native American elder Cha-das-ska-dum, Native flutist Peter Ali, Senegalese kora player Youssoupha Sidibe, and even the Dalai Lama of Tibet. He has also collaborated with Hungarian pianist Tom Barabas, trance guitarist Scott Huckabay, harpist d'Rachael, violist Phil Heaven, and Tim Alexander, innovative drummer from the rock group Primus. In 1969, Evenson played flute for the psychedelic rock group The Blues Magoos on their album Never Goin' Back to Georgia.
In 1970, he and his wife Dudley Evenson became involved in the portable-video movement. They worked under grants from the New York State Council on the Arts with Raindance Foundation, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and helped publish a magazine called Radical Software. During the 1970s, the Evensons traveled the country in a half-sized converted school bus, documenting the emerging new-age consciousness. They produced hundreds of hours of half-inch black-and-white video which can be seen on their Soundings Mindful Media YouTube channel.
His music has also been included in Kate and Leopold, the PBS series "The Way West" and the preview for "The Jungle Book"
Evenson earned his master's degree in Molecular Biology in 1968 from the University of Maine. The same year he met his future wife Dudley. He and Dudley currently live in the Pacific Northwest by a wild river in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. They have three children and one granddaughter.
In 1979, Dean and Dudley Evenson founded the independent record company Soundings of the Planet in Tucson, Arizona.
In 1977, Evenson first performed with the American singer-songwriter and environmentalist John Denver on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Later he performed with Denver at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.
