LOOKING FOR SOMETHING AKIN TO
DMT2011 FOR YOUR OWN ORCHESTRA?

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PLEASE CONTACT:

THOMAS F. PARKER

212-864-7928

tom@parkerartists.com

Parker ARTISTS

382 Central Park West #9G

New York, NY 10025

www.parkerartists.com

WHAT WAS THE DAKOTA MUSIC TOUR?

2011—Maestro Ken Freed conducted Mankato Symphony Orchestra, Maza Kute Singers (Santee Dakota), Trumpeter Manny Laureano (Minnesota Orchestra), M. Cochise Anderson (Chickasaw-Choctaw) and Award-Winning Composer Brent Michael Davids (Mohican-Lenape) on a concert tour through Dakota country, merging American Indian and Western classical music. Filmed by Syd Beane (Flandreau Santee Dakota); Radio by James E Gullickson. Publicity by Liz Hill (Red Lake Ojibwe). Evaluation by Dr. Patricia Shifferd. Supported by Arts Tour Minnesota, & Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment.

DAKOTA MUSIC TOUR Video

BLACK HILLS OLOWAN Promo


BLACK HILLS OLOWAN Promo from Brent Michael Davids on Vimeo.

POWWOW SYMPHONY Promo

POWWOW SYMPHONY Promo from Brent Michael Davids on Vimeo.

DMT featured in SYMPHONY MAGAZINE in Summer 2011 Issue (League of American Orchestras) online:

https://issuu.com/americanorchestras/docs/symphonyonline_summer_2011/40

► ON RADIO ◄ Tonight on KGAC-FM at 8PM (Sunday), Minnesota Public Radio will broadcast the Dakota Music Tour concerts featuring Dakota singers Maza Kute, Mankato Symphony, and Davids on quartz and wood flutes.

DMT featured in League of American Orchestra's "Symphony NOW"

Powwow in Mankato
By Jennifer Melick

For many Americans, the first association with the year 1862 is the Civil War. But for Native Americans, there is also a vivid association with the Dakota War of 1862, a conflict between the Dakota people and the United States that ended in the mass execution of 38 Dakota members on December 26, 1862, in Mankato, Minnesota. It’s an event that still registers large in local memory. This year, the Mankato Symphony Orchestra launched the Dakota Music Tour in Minnesota, a musical response to the events of 1862. The four-concert tour opened on May 22 in Mankato and continued with performances on reservations in Morton and Granite Falls. It concludes on June 4 in Winona at the Eighth Annual Great Dakota Gathering and Homecoming in Unity Park, a remarkable annual event supported by the Winona community that brings together Dakota members from a wide diaspora for a day of music and other festivities.

READ MORE HERE http://www.americanorchestras.org/symphonynow/2011/06/powwow-in-mankato/

Dakota Music Tour featured in the Winona Post!

Meld of Native, classical music at Unity Park Saturday
By Cynthya Porter (06/01/2011)

The mellifluous timbre of a flute will drift through the air at Unity Park Saturday, lifted up by the sound of violins and an unusual accompaniment: Native American drums and singers telling the story of indigenous people. The concert is a stop on the Dakota Music Tour, a one-of-a-kind event that weaves traditional orchestral music together with traditional Indian music. Performing on the Dakota Music Tour is the Mankato Symphony Orchestra along with Maza Kute, a renowned Dakota drum group from Santee, Nebraska...
The Dakota Music Tour is ... an example of how people from all lineages can integrate their many diverse parts into their lives, something more and more necessary as society becomes homogenized with many races... “It was designed as a way for Dakota people to have a voice,” Davids said. “Minnesota was founded on genocide. No one wants to go back and look at it, but they are ignoring the Dakota people if they won’t.” The music brings people to the event, but the healing comes from the dialog that happens, Davids said, kind of like the Mary Poppins saying, he said. “A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down,” he said. “The concert is the sugar.”

DMT featured on "Native America Calling" radio show, May 31

The Dakota Music Tour was featured on the national American Indian call-in talk show "Native America Calling" today (May 31, 2011). If you missed it, you can catch the podcast at this link.

The poster for the Winona-Dakota Connection 2011!

Checkout the DMT Winona Program!

Check out the DMT ads for May 28 and 29!

More Dakota Music Tour in the news!

Thank you to Tim Krohn of The Free Press, Mark Steil of MPR's Minnesota Today's Statewide Blog, and Allison Herrera of MPR's Art Hounds, for the 3 recent articles, and thank you to our wonderful PR coordinator from Liz Hill Public Relations, Limited, Liz Hill!

The Free Press:
http://mankatofreepress.com/local/x1810036145/Dakota-Music-Tour-coming-to-Mankato

Art Hounds:
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/collections/special/columns/state-of-the-arts/archive/2011/05/art-hounds-dakota-tour-man-man-and-a-jazzy-rite-of-spring.shtml

New Venue for DMT's 2nd Tour Stop!

The venue for the second Dakota Music Tour concert has changed. The new venue is the Estebo Performing Arts Center!

Estebo Performing Arts Center
Redwood Valley High School
100 George Ramseth Drive
Redwood Falls, MN 56283

The Estebo Performing Arts Center is located in the Redwood Valley High School and is commonly referred to as the High School Performing Arts Center. The Redwood Valley High School is located behind Wal-Mart on the East side of Redwood Falls. The facility is clearly visible from Highway 19/71, and there is signage along the road for the facility. Spectators should park in the main parking lot in the front of the school and enter through the main doors. The Performing Arts Center is located to the right as you enter the building and circle the rotunda area.

"The Valley" reviews annual youth concerts!

NATIVE SOUNDS
Annual youth concert series held at West High School
Composer blends qualities of American Indian and Western classical music
By Tanner Kent, Email

"Nearly 2000 elementary students heard music Friday they may never have the opportunity to experience again. As part of the annual youth concert series, the Mankato Symphony Orchestra hosted performances for every fourth- and fifth-grade students in Mankato (as well as many from around the region) at Mankato West High School. The performances featured guest composer Brent Michael Davids, an American Indian who has achieved a measure of national acclaim for his musical compositions that blend native traditional music with Western classical. Ken Freed, MSO's music director and conductor, said Davids' work represents a significant departure from the orchestra's usual pieces. 'It's beautiful musc,' he said, 'but very challenging. It's a different aesthetic' ... The second piece came from Davids 'Black Hills Olowan,' a sweeping, dramatic piece that features the Maza Kute drumming group (also the drumming group at the annual Mankato Wacipi) ... the youth concerts also served as the first public performance of the works that will be featured on the Dakota Music Tour. The tour is sponsored by a Legacy grant and kicks off with a performance on May 22 in Mankato, followed by stops in Morton, Granite Falls and Winona."

The Maza Kute singers (foreground) perform during the Mankato Symphony Orchestra’s annual youth concert Friday at Mankato West. About 1,800 students from Mankato and the region attended the performances. Standing in the background are (from left) Ken Freed, MSO’s music director, and composer Brent Michael Davids. Photo: John Cross

http://mankatofreepress.com/local/x966119711/Annual-youth-concert-series-held-at-West-High-School

Dakota Music Tour featured at Youth Concert

Posted: Apr 15, 2011 11:35 AM
Updated: Apr 19, 2011 11:39 AM
By Dan Ruiter, News Director Email

Mankato Symphony Entertains Area Youth

Mankato — Hundreds of students gathered for a kind of 'wedding' at Mankato West Auditorium Friday morning. Kenneth Freed and The Mankato Symphony joined guest artists, Brent Michael Davids and the Maza Kute Drummers for the annual Youth Concert. The music was a 'marriage 'of traditional Native American and classical instrumentation. 'Powwow Symphony' used elements of a real powwow. Plus, an emcee who told jokes to the audience of 4th, 5th, and 6th graders.

Mankato Symphony Youth Concerts with Maza Kute!

PHOTOS FROM THE YOUTH CONCERTS!

Every spring, the Mankato Symphony presents free concerts to 4th, 5th and 6th grade public and private school students from Mankato and the surrounding nine-county region. These hour-long concerts present an exciting mix of music and education to about 3,000 students annually. The Youth Concerts are made possible by grants from Target and Xcel Energy.

The 2011 Youth Concert took place this morning, April 15, 2011 at 9AM and 10:45AM, in Mankato West High School Auditorium. Guest Artists were Brent Michael Davids on native wood flute, and the Maza Kute Singers. The music combined traditional Native American and traditional symphonic sounds for a unique blend.

  

  

  

  

DMT featured in Native People Magazine!

Daniel Gibson wrote a great preview of the upcoming Dakota Music Tour, featured in the "Happening" section of the recent Native Peoples Magazine (May/June, 2011, p.18). Native Peoples Magazine is a journal of strong visuals and accurate, erudite prose dedicated to sensitively portraying the arts and lifeways of Native Americans. Subscribe to this fantastic magazine at the link below, and check out the DMT preview!

Tonight on Radio and Webstream

Tonight, radio host Jay Winter Nightwolf will interview Brent Michael Davids about the upcoming Dakota Music Tour on his radio program "The Nightwolf Show" — The American Indians' Truths: The Most Dangerous Show on Radio! — If you'd like to listen in, click the link below, tonight at 6-7 pm EDT!

Dakota Music Tour featured in Native Sun News! (Feb 23)

DMT featured in Stockbridge-Munsee News (March 1)!

http://www.mohican-nsn.gov/Departments/Mohican_News/issues/index.htm

DMT "One Sheet" Description just released!

Download the Dakota Music Tour ONE-SHEET description here (pdf)

The city of Mankato’s premiere ensemble, Mankato Symphony Orchestra, and the renowned Dakota singers from Santee Nebraska, Maza Kute, hit the road touring the orchestra music of Mohican composer Brent Michael Davids! No matter what Minnesota weather, blazing sunshine will radiate on four spirited concerts, under the baton of Ken Freed.

A lustrous fanfare opens each concert, as the composition “Honoring Kwa'apoge” leaps from the trumpets and trombones of Mankato Symphony. Suddenly, soft wooden refrains of American Indian flute spring up as composer Brent Michael Davids performs on his solo pipe of mahogany set against a gentle current of orchestral sounds. The composition is titled after the Pueblo name for Santa Fe, meaning “down at the water where they make the beads they so highly prize.” The work is inspired by Pueblo Mockingbird songs, and incorporates actual mockingbird songs into the music.

The second composition features the remarkable Maza Kute singers, taking the stage with a steady succession of drum beats in a traditional song. From the Santee Indian Reservation in Nebraska, the prestigious Native group has been singing for over 30 years, keeping the music alive. “Maza Kute” singers were named by the community in honor of Santee leader Maza Kute.

A lyrical trumpet melody soars in the third composition, “Trumpeting the Stone.” Manny Laureano, principal trumpeter for the Minnesota Orchestra, rouses a brilliant and haunting spirit from his instrument in a way both rich and satisfying. Accompanied by a dark orchestral mood and the water drum one might hear inside an Iroquois longhouse, the trumpet concerto unfolds to a hopeful future, honoring the “People of the Standing Stone,” known as the Oneida Nation. Following a Native American theme from its shimmering start to its brisk final two drum beats, the music evokes Oneida life, including Oneida brass bands and the famed Oneida hymn singing.

The composition before intermission is “Black Hills Olowan,” for drum group and orchestra. Minnesotans might recognize “Olowan” as the Lakota word for “song.” Yes, this composition honors the Black Hills of South Dakota, and the powerful Santee Dakota singers are integrated with the symphonic instruments, as another section of the orchestra. At first, a glimmer of light violins quietly flicker in the darkness, broken immediately by a swelling up of thunderous drum rolls as if the Black Hills were breathing. Glimpses of the Maza Kute song appear around rocks and crevices of orchestral color, but traveling further into the Black Hills composition, a full rendition of the final song ultimately shines majestic and magnificent.

The final composition is Davids’ fiery “Powwow Symphony.” Featuring a joke-telling powwow M.C. and American Indian dancers, the lively work is a "symphonic powwow" brought into the concert hall, and recalls the typical events of a powwow day. With Brent Michael Davids on his signature quartz crystal flute, and Chickasaw/Choctaw actor M. Cochise Anderson as the M.C., the composition starts just prior to the Grand Entry. A sublime adagio “sunset” colors a glowing orchestral landscape. With Grand Entry, a Flag Song, Contest Song, even a Tiny Tot Dance, "Powwow Symphony" vibrantly mixes together the orchestral tradition and Indigenous life, bringing orchestra music to Native audiences in a familiar way, and an understanding of the powwow to audiences already familiar with orchestra music.

DMT aired on Tribal Scene Radio: events calendar for Jan. 7!

"The 'Dakota Music Tour' begins May 22 in Mankato, Minn. The four-city concert tour features the Mankota Symphony Orchestra and Maza Kute, a traditional drum group from the Santee Reservation in Nebraska. The concerts are a musical response to the largest mass execution in American history when 38 Dakota men were hung on December 26, 1862 in Minnesota. For more information call Liz Hill at (202) 744-7629, or go to dakotamusictour.blogspot.com/."

Jodi Rave is the host on Tribal Scene Radio at KBGA Missoula. Listen in every Friday morning from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m.. Or visit the KBGA website for a live stream. Tribal Scene Radio provides listeners with a look at what's happening in Native America. Each week host Jodi Rave brings tribal newsmakers into the studio for a morning conversation about just about anything you can think of. Music. Life. Health. Diabetes. Tobacco.

DMT featured in The Circle: Native American News & Arts!

"... The four stops on the concert tour will include:

• Mankato West High School Auditorium, Mankato (Sunday, May 22, 3 p.m.);

• Lower Sioux Community Center, Morton, Minn. (Saturday, May 28, 1 p.m.);

• Prairie Edge Casino, Upper Sioux Community, Granite Falls, Minn. (Sunday, May 29, 1 p.m.);

• And Winona Dakota Unity Alliance: 8th Annual Great Dakota Gathering and Homecoming, Unity Park, Winona, Minn. (Saturday, June 4, 1 p.m.)..." (The Circle, 13 January 2011)

READ MORE HERE: thecirclenews.org

The Dakota Music Tour is featured in Native Sun Weekly!

SAINT PAUL, Minn. — “Dakota Music Tour” – a 90-minute musical response to the Dakota-American events of 1862 in Minnesota – will feature four concerts that will reach out to Dakota and non-Dakota communities in southern Minnesota. The tour will begin in Mankato, Minnesota, which was the site of the largest mass execution in American history when 38 Dakota men were hung on December 26, 1862.

Each concert will feature traditional American Indian music, Western classical music, music that merges the two together, and “community chats.” Internationally renowned composer, flutist and scholar Brent Michael Davids, a citizen of the Mohican Nation, has composed the orchestra music, which will be performed by the Mankato Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Music Director and Conductor Kenneth Freed. The production will feature Santee Dakota Maza Kute Drummers, Chickasaw/Choctaw actor and musician Cochise Anderson, and Manny Laureano, who is the principal trumpet of the Minnesota Orchestra. Funding has been provided by the “Arts Tour Minnesota,” a new program of the voter-approved “Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment” of the Minnesota Constitution...

DMT on Indian Country TV

Watch from (minute:second) 2:20 to 4:00, Native News Update for January 4, 2011. Thanks Paul DeMain!

PRESS RELEASE

Contact: Liz Hill, (202) 744-7629 (liz@lizhillpr.com)

“DAKOTA MUSIC TOUR” WILL FEATURE MANKATO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA AND MAZA KUTE ONSTAGE TOGETHER FOR THE FIRST TIME

SAINT PAUL, Minn., January 3 – “Dakota Music Tour” – a 90-minute musical response to the Dakota-American events of 1862 in Minnesota – will feature four concerts that will reach out to Dakota and non-Dakota communities in southern Minnesota. The tour will begin in Mankato, Minnesota, which was the site of the largest mass execution in American history when 38 Dakota men were hung on December 26, 1862.

Each concert will feature traditional American Indian music, Western classical music, music that merges the two together, and “community chats.” Internationally renowned composer, flutist and scholar Brent Michael Davids, a citizen of the Mohican Nation, has composed the orchestra music, which will be performed by the Mankato Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Music Director and Conductor Kenneth Freed. The production will feature Santee Dakota Maza Kute Drummers, Chickasaw/Choctaw actor and musician Cochise Anderson, and Manny Laureano, who is the principal trumpet of the Minnesota Orchestra. Funding has been provided by the “Arts Tour Minnesota,” a new program of the voter-approved “Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment” of the Minnesota Constitution.

“It is my hope that ‘Dakota Music Tour’ will offer a musical response to the terrible events of 1862 that took so many Dakota and American lives,” says Davids. “By musically honoring the Dakota people and their intersection with the Western world, all citizens can benefit from a deeper understanding of our shared living history.”

The four stops on the concert tour will include: Mankato West High School Auditorium, Mankato (Sunday, May 22, 3 p.m.); Lower Sioux Community Center, Morton, Minn. (Saturday, May 28, 1 p.m.); Prairie Edge Casino, Upper Sioux Community, Granite Falls, Minn. (Sunday, May 29, 1 p.m.); and Winona Dakota Unity Alliance: 8th Annual Great Dakota Gathering and Homecoming, Unity Park, Winona, Minn. (Saturday, June 4, 12 noon).

The Winona concert will be hosted by the Winona-Dakota Unity Alliance (WDUA), a nonprofit organization formed in 2004 with Winona Mayor Jerry Miller, whose mission it is to continue the reconciliation process. Dakota citizens from across North America, including Minnesota, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Canada, will be in attendance.

In addition to the musical production, a documentary video will be produced by Flandreau Santee Dakota filmmaker Syd Beane.

Visit Mankato Symphony Orchestra at http://www.mankatosymphony.com/. For news, blog postings, and other information about Dakota Music Tour, visit http://dakotamusictour.blogspot.com/.

What is the Dakota Music Tour?

It’s no secret among Dakota communities that Indian history is often obscured in the mainstream. In response, the "Dakota Music Tour" (DMT) was formed to bring an enlightening and collaborative mix of Native American music and Western classical music to Dakota and non-Dakota communities. DMT will perform 4 concerts in Minnesota, two in Dakota reservation communities, and two in cities of Mankato and Winona.

DMT will perform in the Lower Sioux and Upper Sioux communities, facilitate public “community chats” that explore the intersection of Dakota history and music. Mankato is the well known site of the largest mass execution in American history when 38 Dakota men were simultaneously hung. DMT and the Mankato Symphony Orchestra aspire to an alternate response by reaching out to the historical town as a place of connection and understanding.

Hosting the Winona DMT concert, in June, will be the Winona-Dakota Unity Alliance (WDUA), a nonprofit formed in 2004 with Winona mayor Jerry Miller and several residents whose mission is to continue the reconciliation process. The final DMT concert in Winona will host Dakota citizens coming from all over the continent, including the Dakota communities in MN, NE, SD and Canada. Please join us!

Anticipated Program

"HONORING KWA'APOGE" by Brent Michael Davids
- Mankato Symphony Orchestra
- Brent Michael Davids, native wood flute
- SATB chorus

TRADITIONAL SONG
- Maza Kute, singers

"TRUMPETING THE STONE" by Brent Michael Davids
- Mankato Symphony Orchestra
- Manny Laureano, trumpet/flugel horn
- SATB Chorus

"BLACK HILLS OLOWAN" by Brent Michael Davids
- Mankato Symphony Orchestra
- Maza Kute, singers

TRADITIONAL SONG
- Maza Kute, singers

"POWWOW SYMPHONY" by Brent Michael Davids
- Mankato Symphony Orchestra
- Cochise Anderson, powwow emcee
- Brent Michael Davids, quartz crystal flute
- Maza Kute, singers
- SATB Chorus
- Traditional Native Dancers