SDSO quartet to perform at Dakota State ahead of Sioux Falls concert
November 4, 2026
MADISON, S.D. — The South Dakota Symphony Orchestra will bring a quartet to Dakota State University on Tuesday, Nov. 10, to preview its upcoming concert at the Washington Pavilion in Sioux Falls.
The performance begins at 6 p.m. in the TCB Auditorium, located in the Tunheim Classroom Building on DSU’s campus. The quartet will play selected excerpts from the orchestra’s Nov. 21 concert, “From the New World,” which explores Native American influences on classical music. The concert will feature Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9, Louis Ballard’s "Incident at Wounded Knee," and "Lakota Refrains," a work by Derek Bermel and Emmanuel Black Bear. The Creekside Singers will perform with the full orchestra.
Led by Keeper of the Drum Emmanuel Black Bear, the Creekside Singers are a Lakota drumming group from the Pine Ridge Reservation. The group performs at powwows throughout the Midwestern United States. Its members include Tim Black Bear, Ari Black Bear, Brent Spoonhunter, and Hanna Gasdia.
The Creekside Singers perform at Pow-Wows throughout the Midwestern United States.
Dakota State faculty in The Beacom College of Computer & Cyber Sciences worked with the orchestra on an artificial intelligence system to help a guest composer compare musical and cultural elements of traditional Lakota music and Western classical music.
“The project brought SDSO and DSU faculty together to explore how an AI system could help a composer consider musical and cultural connections between these traditions,” said Dr. Jason Mixon, assistant professor in The Beacom College of Computer & Cyber Sciences. “We built a proof-of-concept system that responds to a composer’s prompt with quantitative and cultural comparisons. The dataset was limited, but the process worked and offered insights from the information available.”
The Nov. 21 “From the New World” concert is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. at the Washington Pavilion’s Mary W. Sommervold Hall. More information is available on the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra website.