“For the past three years, the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota has also hosted performances of music written by high school composers for the instruments of a European-style symphony orchestra,” writes Anne Midgette in Thursday’s (9/5) Washington Post. “The South Dakota Symphony Orchestra’s … annual music academy is only one arm of the Lakota Music Project … developed with the orchestra and musicians of the tribe…. Emmanuel Black Bear, a traditional singer … along with the cedar flute player Bryan Akipa and nine members of the South Dakota Symphony, is bringing the Lakota Music Project to Washington in October, when he will perform at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian and at Washington National Cathedral—part of a festival conceived and hosted by the PostClassical Ensemble to spotlight Native American influences on American classical music…. The D.C. performances will include works by the Chickasaw composer Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate … and Jeffrey Paul, the orchestra’s principal oboist…. The Lakota Music Project is coming to Washington as a result of [PostClassical Executive Director Joseph] Horowitz’s championing of the Indianist movement, a school that flourished in the early 20th century in which American classical composers based works on putatively Native American themes.”
Posted September 9, 2019
