Album Notes

Michael Fitzsimmons is a percussionist, composer and recording artist with Dancing Man Music. His most recent recordings include Skin on Skin (2002), recipient of a Nebraska Arts Council Fellowship Award, Light in the Village (1994), Coyote Oldman records, In Medicine River (1992) with Michael Graham Allen, Coyote Oldman records, Joydance (1990), and Sunshower (1987).

He has composed and performed music for Robert Bly's Tatterhood, and adaptations of Snow White, and Cinderella for the Omaha Emmy Gifford Children's Theater. Fitzsimmons also accompanies storyteller Nancy Duncan's Coyote, Good Old Crunchy Stories II, and The Cat that Walked by Himself with his original score. He is a percussionist with the Sacred Heart Freedom Choir under the direction of James Bogess, Always/Never Coming Home directed by Bill Kirk, and the Jimmy Mitchell Trio.

Michael is a solo artist with the Nebraska Arts Council's Touring Program, performing in schools, communities, and corporate settings. As a master teaching artist with University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Arts Are Basic, and a resident teaching artist with Nebraska Arts Council, Fitzsimmons provides programs for music and story as a way of learning at many regional schools. He is a skilled performer of diverse percussion instruments including drums, African instruments, kalimba (thumb piano), Plains Indian flutes, Brazilian percussion flutes, various bamboo flutes, and dulcimer.