DIRECTIONS

Below is a brief description of each piece. To see the score, click the .PDF file.

If you do not have Acrobot Reader installed, please click here to download this software.

To hear the piece, click on the .MP3 file; to hear them, you will need iTunes or RealPlayer. For iTunes, click here; for RealPlayer, click here.

To see the text of the poems, click on the .Text file.

At present, the MP3 files were all generated by MIDI . My hope is to replace them all with live performances as soon as recordings are available. Nevertheless, I feel that a combination of the score plus the MP3, will make clear to musicians and music teachers the intentions of each piece.

Drawing on my own background as researcher and writer on Native American music, I have written three works—for organ and flute, for string quartet, and for piano trio-- inspired by the powwow and the song genres one hears at a powwow. The three works use the same structure and draw on the same melodic material, but yet are distinctly different. Like siblings, they are independent people who bear a family resemblance to one another. The organ and flute piece has three movements: Flag Song, Round Dance, and War Dance; the other two pieces presently only have a single movement, Flag Song. There are notes about these pieces, which are very useful both for the performers and for the audience as program notes.

On my multimedia page I have demonstrated two Northern Plains powwow dances, the Round Dance and the Fancy Shawl Dance (which is the female counterpart of the male Fancy War Dance). These song genres were the models, which inspired my compositions.