Connor Chee
Updated: 4 days ago
What happens when a classically trained pianist, raised on Beethoven, Chopin, and Debussy, begins looking for a musical voice that reflects his own cultural identity? For Diné (Navajo) composer and pianist Connor Chee, the answer has become a remarkable body of piano music—one that draws upon centuries of Navajo tradition while creating something entirely new.
Chee's compositions transport listeners into a world of desert landscapes, sacred mountains, ancient stories, and everyday Navajo life. A horned lizard becomes the subject of a tender musical portrait. A grandmother's weaving inspires intricate patterns at the keyboard. The preparation of fry bread becomes a playful piano miniature. Elsewhere, his music confronts much weightier subjects, including the forced displacement of the Navajo people and the extraordinary contributions of Navajo Code Talkers during World War II.
Yet what makes Chee's music especially appealing is its accessibility. His compositions are often lyrical, atmospheric, and immediately engaging. They can be enjoyed simply as beautiful piano music, but beneath their inviting surfaces lie layers of cultural symbolism, sophisticated musical construction, and deeply personal meaning.
His journey from a curious little boy playing a toy keyboard in Arizona to an internationally recognized pianist and composer is a fascinating story in its own right.
An Unexpected Christmas Gift
Connor Chee was born in 1987 and grew up in Page, Arizona, near the Navajo Nation. Music was present in his childhood, although his parents were not professional musicians. His mother enjoyed listening to recordings of classical music, and young Connor became fascinated by the melodies floating through the family home.
Then came a seemingly insignificant Christmas gift that would change his life.
When Connor was about five years old, his father received a small electronic keyboard. The instrument wasn't actually intended for Connor, but his father wasn't particularly interested in playing it. His son, on the other hand, was captivated.
Without formal instruction, Connor began experimenting with the keys, picking out melodies by ear and attempting to reproduce the classical music he heard on his mother's cassette tapes.
His parents recognized his enthusiasm and arranged piano lessons when he was six. Soon, the family purchased a proper piano from a traveling piano dealer whose truck periodically visited their remote Arizona community. Remarkably, Chee has said that he still owns that childhood instrument.
He also began experimenting with composition at an early age. By about six, he was inventing little pieces of his own, although he couldn't yet read or write music well enough to preserve them. His elementary-school music teacher helped put his musical ideas onto paper.
The foundation of two careers—pianist and composer—was already taking shape, even if Chee himself had no idea how those interests would eventually come together.
From the Arizona Desert to Carnegie Hall
By the age of ten, Chee had progressed far enough that his family faced a difficult decision. Their small Arizona community offered limited opportunities for advanced classical training, and continuing his musical education would require something drastic.
His parents decided to move the family to Cincinnati, Ohio, where Connor had been accepted into the city's School for Creative and Performing Arts.
It was an enormous sacrifice. The move meant leaving behind familiar surroundings, extended family, and the landscapes of the Southwest for an entirely different environment. For Connor, the change was equally dramatic: one moment he was growing up in a relatively isolated Arizona town; the next he was attending a large performing-arts school in a major Midwestern city.
The gamble paid off.
At just twelve years old, Chee won a gold medal in the Young Artist Division of the World Piano Competition, earning the opportunity to perform at New York City's Carnegie Hall.
For a boy who had discovered the piano only a few years earlier, it was an extraordinary achievement.
More successes followed, including additional competition honors and appearances with orchestras such as the Cincinnati Pops. His rapidly developing career seemed to point toward a future performing the great works of the classical repertoire.
Chee eventually graduated from Cincinnati's School for Creative and Performing Arts at seventeen and continued his education at the prestigious Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York.
There he studied with pianist Rebecca Penneys, earning his Bachelor of Music degree in 2009. He subsequently completed a master's degree at the University of Cincinnati's College-Conservatory of Music, where he studied with Elizabeth Pridonoff.
His formal training was devoted primarily to piano performance, not composition. By conventional standards, he was preparing for a familiar classical career: mastering established repertoire, competing, recording, and performing.
But an unexpected question was beginning to emerge.
Where was the music that reflected his own heritage?
Finding a Voice That Was Missing from the Repertoire
During his years at Eastman, Chee's teacher Rebecca Penneys encouraged students to explore compositions connected to their cultural backgrounds.
For Chee, that apparently simple assignment revealed a surprising problem: he had difficulty finding classical piano compositions by Native American composers that represented his own musical heritage.
The experience planted a seed.
Growing up, Chee had heard his grandfather sing traditional Navajo songs. Those melodies were part of a living family tradition, passed from one generation to another rather than preserved primarily through written scores.
As Chee matured, he became increasingly concerned about what might happen to such music as older generations passed away and fewer young people retained fluency in the Navajo language.
After completing his graduate studies, he returned to Arizona and began working with traditional songs, initially approaching the project as an effort at cultural preservation.
He hadn't set out to become a full-time composer. In fact, he has explained that he originally thought of himself almost exclusively as a performer.
But as he explored these melodies at the piano, something unexpected happened. The preservation project gradually developed into original composition.
He began transforming musical ideas from his heritage into pieces that drew upon his classical training. Soon, the project extended beyond arrangements of existing songs to include original works inspired by Navajo stories, beliefs, landscapes, and experiences.
Interestingly, many of these compositions initially existed only in his memory. He recorded the pieces without necessarily writing them down, an approach that reflected the oral traditions from which much of his inspiration came.
Only when other pianists began asking to perform his music did he start systematically preparing written scores.
A composer had emerged almost by accident.
A Musical Language Built on Tradition
Chee's compositions are sometimes described as a fusion of Native American music and Western classical piano writing. While that description is useful, it only begins to explain what makes his music distinctive.
His approach goes much deeper than borrowing a traditional melody and surrounding it with familiar piano harmonies.
One particularly fascinating aspect of his music is the importance of the number four.
In Diné culture, four carries profound significance. It is associated with the four cardinal directions, four sacred mountains, and other important cultural and spiritual concepts.
Chee frequently incorporates this symbolism into the construction of his compositions. Melodies may be organized into groups of four, musical phrases may follow four-part structures, and harmonies may emphasize the interval of a fourth.
These harmonies—often called quartal harmonies—can create an open, spacious sound quite different from conventional major- and minor-key chord progressions.
That openness is particularly effective in Chee's music. His lyrical melodies often unfold above gently repeating figures, transparent textures, and carefully spaced chords. The results can suggest vast landscapes and a sense of stillness without relying on obvious musical imitation.
But Chee's creative philosophy is also shaped by an important distinction: not every aspect of Navajo musical tradition is intended for public performance.
He has explained that certain songs and ceremonial materials belong within specific sacred contexts. In determining what is appropriate to share, he has consulted family members, elders, and others knowledgeable about Navajo traditions.
His goal is not to reproduce every element of Diné musical culture for outside audiences. It is to create new music that respects cultural boundaries while allowing listeners to experience and appreciate traditions they might otherwise never encounter.
The distinction is essential to understanding his work. This is not an outsider's impression of Native American music. It is a contemporary Diné artist expressing his own heritage through an instrument that happens to have originated in Europe.
The Navajo Piano: Where It All Began
Chee's breakthrough as a composer came with The Navajo Piano, released in 2014.
The album contained fifteen original compositions and piano treatments inspired by traditional Navajo musical material. It introduced listeners to a distinctive musical world in which the expressive possibilities of the piano met the melodic and rhythmic qualities of Diné song.
Works such as the Navajo Vocables and Navajo Preludes demonstrate Chee's ability to create concise, atmospheric piano pieces that communicate without excessive elaboration.
The compositions are often deceptively simple. A short melody, a repeating accompaniment, or an unexpected harmonic shift can establish an entire musical atmosphere.
Among the album's most recognizable works is Beginnings, a lyrical miniature that received the Native American Music Award for Best New Age Song.
The album itself won Best Instrumental Recording at the 16th Annual Native American Music Awards, providing important recognition for Chee's emerging work as a composer.
Several years later, he decided to revisit the project for a particularly personal reason.
The original album had been recorded under modest circumstances, using a digital keyboard in his bedroom. By 2021, his performing and recording experience had grown considerably, and he wanted to give the music a new interpretation.
The result was The Navajo Piano (Revisited), which featured fresh recordings of the original fifteen compositions alongside recordings of traditional songs that had inspired them.
This was more than an opportunity to improve the sound quality. By allowing listeners to hear some of the source material alongside his own compositions, Chee offered an unusually revealing glimpse into his creative process.
The album demonstrates both the connections and the differences between the traditional vocal music and the piano works it inspired.
As Chee has acknowledged, the piano cannot entirely reproduce the rhythmic freedom and vocal inflections of Navajo singing. What it can do is introduce new harmonic colors, textures, and expressive possibilities.
The result is not a replacement for the traditional music, but a new artistic interpretation.
Emergence: Ancient Stories, New Musical Worlds
Chee's 2018 album Emergence marked another stage in his development.
Rather than concentrating primarily on arrangements of traditional melodies, the album explored Navajo stories, beliefs, and mythological figures through original piano compositions.
Its musical subjects include figures such as Spider Woman and Changing Woman, along with creatures and themes drawn from Diné cultural traditions.
The resulting pieces have a strongly pictorial quality. Chee uses the piano to suggest movement, personality, atmosphere, and narrative, sometimes creating music that seems to inhabit the border between a tone poem and a miniature character piece.
An especially interesting aspect of Emergence is what Chee deliberately chose not to provide: detailed explanations of every composition.
He has explained that, in Navajo tradition, acquiring knowledge can involve asking questions, seeking out elders, and discovering stories through personal effort.
Rather than explaining everything in the liner notes, he wanted listeners to become curious enough to investigate the cultural references for themselves.
It's an appealing philosophy. A title such as Spider Woman might initially seem mysterious to someone unfamiliar with Navajo traditions. But that mystery becomes an invitation to learn.
For Chee, the composition can be both an artistic statement and the beginning of a larger conversation.
Scenes from Dinétah: A Musical Portrait of Home
If The Navajo Piano introduced Chee's musical language and Emergence explored traditional stories, his 2020 album Scenes from Dinétah brought that language into everyday life.
The collection consists of twelve piano pieces inspired by elements of the Navajo homeland, culture, and daily experience.
The titles alone reveal the delightful range of subjects: Sunrise, Horny Toad, Hogan, Sheep, Horses, Weaving, Female Rain, Fry Bread, Cedar, Sunset, and Stars, along with Pathways, a work for two pianos.
These are not grand historical narratives or elaborate concert fantasies. They are intimate musical portraits, many of them only a few minutes long.
And some are wonderfully playful.
In Fry Bread, Chee turns a familiar food into a lively keyboard miniature. Its flowing figures and bubbling energy seem perfectly suited to the activity described by the title. The accompanying music video even depicts the preparation of fry bread, transforming a simple culinary tradition into an unexpectedly charming musical subject.
Weaving, on the other hand, draws upon a very personal childhood memory.
Chee remembers watching his grandmother work at her loom, fascinated by the speed and dexterity of her fingers and the way she could transform countless individual threads into an intricate design.
Years later, he recognized a striking resemblance between weaving and composing.
A weaver begins with an imagined design and patiently constructs it thread by thread. A composer begins with an imagined musical idea and gradually brings it into existence note by note.
For Weaving, Chee translated these observations into piano writing that evokes the physical movements of the loom, using flowing arpeggios and harp-like textures to suggest interlacing threads.
It is a beautiful example of how an apparently modest childhood experience can eventually become the foundation of a sophisticated composition.
Other pieces in the collection are more contemplative. Cedar has a reverent quality, while Stars evokes the night sky and its significance within Navajo cosmology.
The album also contains an imaginative structural feature. Each of the twelve compositions is preceded by a brief spoken passage in Navajo, accompanied by flute and piano, giving listeners additional cultural context.
Chee collaborated with Navajo filmmaker Michael Etcitty Jr. to create a series of accompanying music videos filmed in the Navajo homeland.
The two had known each other since childhood, having studied with the same piano teacher, and reconnected as adults. Their collaboration developed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Filming the videos presented some unusual logistical problems, including transporting a piano-shaped setup into remote desert locations.
The resulting images are striking: Chee performs against the backdrop of expansive Southwestern landscapes, near traditional Navajo settings, and amid scenes of everyday life.
The videos make an important visual statement. Rather than bringing Navajo-inspired music exclusively into a conventional concert hall, Chee brings the piano directly into the landscapes and communities that inspired it.
Across the Desert: Remembering the Long Walk
In 2023, Chee turned to one of the most painful chapters in Navajo history with Across the Desert: The Long Walk Home.
The album commemorates the forced removal of thousands of Navajo people from their ancestral lands during the 1860s, their confinement at Bosque Redondo in present-day New Mexico, and their eventual return following the Treaty of 1868.
The Long Walk remains a defining event in Diné historical memory, representing enormous suffering, loss, displacement, and ultimately remarkable endurance.
For Chee, the project offered an opportunity to engage with this history through music while honoring the generations who experienced and remembered it.
The recording moves beyond the exclusively solo-piano format of much of his earlier work. It incorporates orchestral arrangements and traditional musical material associated with the Long Walk and its aftermath.
Particularly moving is the participation of Chee's father, Tex Chee, whose spoken contributions appear in works including Dawn of Displacement and Footprints in the Sand.
Father and son collaborated on the words for these pieces, adding a deeply personal element to an already emotional undertaking.
The album demonstrates an important expansion of Chee's artistic ambitions. His music is no longer concerned only with interpreting traditional melodies or creating portraits of Navajo life; it also provides a medium for exploring historical memory and collective resilience.
The piano becomes a voice for stories that extend far beyond the experiences of a single individual.
Sandpaintings for Piano: Music, Mathematics, and Balance
Chee's 2026 recording Sandpaintings for Piano represents one of his most ambitious contributions to the contemporary American piano repertoire.
The sixteen-movement cycle, originally composed in 2021, draws inspiration from the design and underlying principles of traditional Diné sandpaintings.
These intricate works of art are associated with Navajo ceremonial traditions and concepts of harmony, healing, and balance.
Rather than attempting to reproduce sacred ceremonial imagery literally, Chee translated selected structural principles into musical form.
The result is a fascinating example of cultural symbolism expressed through sophisticated compositional techniques.
The cycle is organized around the four cardinal directions—East, South, West, and North—with four pieces associated with each direction.
The opening group includes White Shell, Eastern Clouds, Eastern Lightning, and Eastern Mountain. Later movements include Turquoise, Abalone, and Jet, along with corresponding musical representations of clouds, lightning, and mountains.
But the most ingenious feature is hidden in the relationship between the melodies.
Chee composed the themes associated with the North first, even though those movements appear at the end of the cycle. He then transformed that musical material through techniques such as inversion, retrograde, and retrograde inversion.
In other words, melodies are turned upside down, played backward, or subjected to combinations of these transformations.
The music progresses through its four directional groups until the original melodic forms finally emerge in the concluding Northern movements.
What initially seems musically altered or unsettled gradually returns to its original state.
The idea reflects the Diné concept of Hózhó, a philosophy associated with harmony, beauty, and balance.
For pianists interested in musical architecture, the collection offers a particularly rewarding listening experience. Its construction is rigorous, but that rigor serves a larger expressive purpose.
The symbolism is not simply attached to the music through descriptive titles. It is embedded in the very way the compositions are built.
It is a striking reminder that contemporary American piano music can find new structural possibilities by drawing upon cultural ideas outside the conventional European compositional tradition.
Beyond the Piano: Honoring the Navajo Code Talkers
Although solo piano remains central to his artistic identity, Chee has also written works exploring broader instrumental and historical subjects.
Among the most significant is Unbroken: Music for the Navajo Code Talkers, commissioned by YourClassical and introduced in 2022.
The four-movement composition pays tribute to the Navajo servicemen whose use of their language helped create a remarkably effective military communications code during World War II.
Their work contributed to Allied military operations in the Pacific, and their achievements have become an important part of both Navajo and American history.
For Chee, the composition was an opportunity to honor not only the Code Talkers but also the broader contributions and sacrifices of military veterans.
The subject is particularly resonant in the context of his career. A language whose traditional songs he has worked to preserve was also used to perform an extraordinary service during a pivotal moment in world history.
It is another example of how Chee's compositions connect cultural heritage with experiences of wider historical significance.
Performer, Educator, and Advocate
Chee's accomplishments as a composer should not obscure his considerable achievements as a pianist.
In addition to his childhood competition successes and Carnegie Hall debut, he won first prize in the 2016 Bradshaw & Buono International Piano Competition, returning to Carnegie Hall for a winners' recital.
His performances and compositions have received national exposure, including appearances on Performance Today, and his music has been presented at colleges, festivals, and cultural institutions throughout the United States.
His compositions have also attracted the attention of other pianists interested in expanding the American repertoire.
That development is particularly meaningful given the origins of his composing career. A musician who once struggled to locate piano works representing his own cultural background has now created a substantial catalog that other performers can study and share.
Chee also participates in masterclasses, festivals, and educational events, encouraging young musicians to develop individual artistic voices.
His philosophy of musical interpretation emphasizes curiosity and personal discovery. Rather than insisting that students simply reproduce a prescribed performance, he encourages them to consider different possibilities and understand why certain musical choices feel meaningful.
His broader educational mission also challenges familiar stereotypes about Indigenous music.
Navajo culture, he emphasizes, is not something confined to the distant past. It is a living, evolving culture whose artists participate in every aspect of contemporary creative life.
A Diné musician may perform Beethoven, write electronic music, play jazz, compose for orchestra, or draw upon traditional songs. None of these possibilities diminishes that musician's cultural identity.
Chee's own career makes that point particularly clearly.
A New Chapter in American Piano Music
What makes Connor Chee important to the continuing development of American piano music is not simply that he incorporates Navajo cultural influences into classical composition.
It is that he approaches the piano with a distinctive musical imagination, one shaped by the experiences, traditions, and personal memories of a contemporary Diné musician.
His works range from intimate character pieces to carefully organized multi-movement cycles. Some are playful, others contemplative, and still others confront difficult historical subjects.
Yet they share an unmistakable concern with communicating something meaningful.
There is also a pleasing irony in Chee's artistic journey.
As a young pianist, he left Arizona to pursue the highest levels of classical training, immersing himself in a repertoire that had developed largely within European musical traditions.
As a mature composer, he returned to the songs, stories, and landscapes of his childhood—and discovered an artistic voice that was entirely his own.
Today, the music of Connor Chee offers pianists and listeners something both unusual and inviting: a contemporary American repertoire that is rooted in a living Indigenous tradition while remaining unmistakably personal.
And sometimes, the doorway into that musical world is wonderfully simple.
It might be the image of a grandmother weaving a rug, a family preparing fry bread, or a small horned lizard resting quietly beneath the Arizona sun.
Through Chee's imagination, all three can become music.
Selected Performances
Horny Toad - Horny Toad, from the twelve-movement suite Scenes from Dinétah, opens in a hush: four quiet half-note octaves that feel like a brief invocation before the music begins to flow. From this stillness emerges a lyrical, singing texture shaped by unmistakable Navajo melodic contours—lines that seem to breathe, chant, and move with the natural rhythms of the desert landscape.
The title refers to the horned lizard, known as the “horny toad,” a small desert creature that holds symbolic meaning in Navajo (Diné) culture. Often associated with resilience and protection, it represents the quiet strength needed to live in harmony with a demanding environment.
In this evocative miniature, Connor Chee transforms the piano into a storyteller’s voice, offering a musical portrait of Dinétah—the Navajo homeland—where even the smallest creatures carry deep cultural and spiritual significance.
Sunrise - In his piece Sunrise, from Scenes from Dinétah, composer and pianist Connor Chee reflects a beautiful Navajo (Diné) tradition:
“It is Navajo tradition to wake up before the sun rises, so you can greet him and offer a prayer with white corn pollen. It is believed that you should never let the sun ‘see you sleeping,’ but rather find you already awake and ready to take on the day. When the Holy People see that you are already prepared to face the challenges of the day, they will bless you.”
This moving reflection reminds us that Sunrise is not only a musical depiction of dawn, but also a meditation on readiness, gratitude, and beginning each day with intention.
Weaving - In Weaving, from Scenes from Dinétah, composer and pianist Connor Chee reflects on the deep connection between Navajo weaving and music:
“The Navajo people are known for weaving beautiful rugs, a tradition that continues today. I’ve always been fascinated by the relationship between music and weaving—both require balance, vision, and meticulous counting to create intricate patterns. Watching my grandmother weave had a profound influence on my musical discipline and the way I shape my own compositions.”
A beautiful reminder that music, like weaving, is an art of patience, structure, and imagination.
Locating The Music
You can purchase all of Connor Chee's piano score at Wild Saguaro Records.
Solo Piano Suites/Collections
Sandpaintings — 2012
The Navajo Piano — 2014
Emergence — 2018
Scenes from Dinétah — 2020
The Navajo Piano (Revisited) — 2021
Across the Desert: The Long Walk Home — 2023
