Phase I: 2005-2010

The inaugural program of the Lakota Music Project (LMP) was a 2-hour concert which explored how each culture depicts love, war, grief and celebration through music. On the first half of the concert, the South Dakota Symphony and the Creekside Singers each performed music from their unique cultures representing these four elements of the human condition.

On the second half of the program, the South Dakota Symphony and the Creekside Singers came together to perform two commissioned works written specifically for orchestra and Native American drumming group:

Desert Wind: written by Jeff Paul, principal oboist of the South Dakota Symphony
Black Hills Olowan: written by American Indian composer Brent Michael Davids

To reach both white and American Indian populations, the LMP toured three Indian reservations (Pine Ridge Reservation, Santee Sioux Reservation, and Rosebud Reservation) and two South Dakota communities (Sioux Falls and Rapid City) in May 2009. The program was also performed at the Governor’s Conference on Tourism in Pierre, South Dakota in January of 2010, and at Crazy Horse Memorial on Native American Day in October 2010. (Note: In 1989, South Dakota renamed the traditional Columbus Day holiday “Native American Day.”)