Makana Kai Noah Medeiros is a percussionist active in both classical and contemporary music and a dedicated educator for students from middle school through the collegiate level. 

Makana has appeared with ensembles and festivals including the Yale Percussion Group, The Percussion Collective, New Music New Haven, Blackbox Ensemble, Eastman Percussion Ensemble, Nief-Norf Summer Festival, and Chautauqua Festival Orchestra. He has collaborated with leading contemporary artists such as Pamela Z, Caroline Shaw, and Eighth Blackbird, and has performed internationally, including a TEDx-presented performance with the Yale Percussion Group in Shenzhen, China. 

As a guest artist, Makana has appeared at the Next Festival of Emerging Artists, Lake George Music Festival, and the inaugural ContemporArt Festival in Satu Mare, Romania, with a featured performance of Bartók’s Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion. His solo and chamber performances include the George Flynn Classical Concerts, Ely Center for Contemporary Art, and Hartford Symphony’s Sunday Serenades series with Leonid Sigal. He has performed under the baton of Peter Oundjian, Carolyn Kuan, Giancarlo Guerrero, Leonard Slatkin, Rosen Milanov, Neil Varon, Timothy Muffitt and Samuel Hollister. He was one of four featured soloists for Viet Cuong’s percussion quartet concerto re(new)al with Yale Band under the baton of Thomas Duffy. 

Committed to innovative new repertoire, he has given numerous world premieres including Harriet Steinke’s Marimba Concerto with the New Haven Civic Orchestra and the U.S. premiere of Matīss Čudars’s marimba solo relief. He was a featured clinician at the 2025 Percussive Arts Society Connecticut Day of Percussion, presenting works by Ivan Treviño, Alejandro Viñao, James Wood, and Andy Akiho. 

In the fall of 2025, Makana joined the faculty at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury, CT, as Adjunct Instructor of Percussion. Additionally, he teaches in public school programs across Southern Connecticut. Makana holds a BM, Performer’s Certificate and Arts Leadership Certificate from the Eastman School of Music where he studied under the mentorship of Michael Burritt, Charles Ross and Rich Thompson. He holds both a MM and MMA from the Yale School of Music under the mentorship of Robert van Sice.