LISTEN: Lakota Music Venture and S.D. Symphony Orchestra’s first business recording – KELOLAND.com

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — The South Dakota Symphony Orchestra is a staple of the state’s music scene, and it has reached a milestone. For the primary time, it has a business recording: 5 songs forming an album titled “Lakota Music Venture.”

“Music is sort of like a language in a method,” flutist Bryan Akipa mentioned.

You possibly can hear Akipa’s pink cedar flute on the track “Wind on a Clear Lake,” a composition from Jeffrey Paul, the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra’s principal oboist. Akipa as soon as performed for Paul at a cabin in northeastern South Dakota.

“He might hear the wind making the melody, and so he began writing it down, and that’s how he wrote the ‘Wind on Clear Lake,” Akipa mentioned.

Paul says it’s “thrilling” to be part of the recording.

“I don’t need to say end result as a result of that is an ongoing undertaking that we’re undoubtedly going to be persevering with in additional and higher capacities nevertheless it’s a end result of the work up to now that has been performed,” Paul mentioned.

The Lakota Music Project, which options members of the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra performing alongside Native musicians, just isn’t new.

“We began conceptualizing it in 2005, nevertheless it took about 4 years to construct it, so by the point we toured it in 2009, we’d been at it for a very long time,” mentioned Delta David Gier, music director of the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra. “And once more the key to it’s that we constructed it along with tribal elders, with cultural leaders and with musicians each Lakota and Dakota.”

Gier performed all compositions on the album.

“I can just about assure you’ve by no means heard something prefer it earlier than,” he mentioned.

The album’s reverent rendition of “Wonderful Grace” is a chief instance of the way it solely follows the beat of its personal drum. For Akipa, who’s a member of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate Sioux Tribe, this album places a highlight on his instrument.

“While you put it in a symphony with the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra, it type of raises the significance of the way in which folks really feel concerning the flute,” Akipa mentioned.

There’s a way of satisfaction, too.

“The most important feeling of satisfaction is definitely after I’m sitting in with the symphony, and you’ll see the musicians proper subsequent to me, and also you’re proper in the midst of all that sound and all that power and all that expertise and all these folks, and that’s after I actually really feel essentially the most proud,” Akipa mentioned.

You possibly can hearken to the album here or here.