Purchase of Manhattan is on the Mommy Poppins calendar! "Written by local parents who love to seek out the coolest, off-the-beaten-track things to do with kids, Mommy Poppins shares activities that aren't just pleasant time passers, but promise enriching experiences for your family."

Check it out! 

"The groundbreaking opera tells the untold story of how the early Dutch settlers of what was then New Netherland unjustly “purchased” the island of Manhattan from the Lenape people, supposedly for 60 guilders or the modern equivalent of $24. From the perspective of the Lenape, whose culture did not operate on the concept of land ownership, the opera explores the myth of the island’s sale" (Mommy Poppins).

Purchase of Manhattan is featured in two great articles today, one in Epoch Times ("Debunking the Myth of the Manhattan Purchase" by Arleen Richards) and another in the Our Time Press ("Lenape's Griot Voices: Of Truth They Sing" by Bernice Elizabeth Green). Check out these two great features, that give part of the back story on the formation of Lenape Center and how the new concert opera came about!

"...The concert opera is the first step in the Lenape Center’s goal toward 'creating a better world for generations to come.' A common understanding for Native Americans is to take actions that will benefit their people for seven generations to come, emphasizing long-term goals that will ultimately benefit their grandchildren..." (Epoch Times).

"...In a sense, 'Purchase of Manhattan' is responding to Lenape ancestral calls for justice echoing through time–from the Marble congregation’s reaction to the price of the ticket at $24, which benefits the establishment of the 'bricks and mortar' Lenape Cultural Center in Manhattan where, Mr. [Joe] Baker says, 'young Lenape people can come to their ancestral homeland. Such a point of reference does not exist now. Now, these many years later, we are back in contact again. As Lenape people, we look beyond boundaries as a way to envision and secure our relevance in a changing world. I have always felt we can best understand our present realities if we understand our history.' So from this production, a new Lenape village center will grow on Manhattan island. 'And that return to our ancestral island takes shape in the form of this platform, this center, for the Lenape today,' Baker said..." (Our Time Press, p6).

It was 2008 when Joe Baker (Delaware Tribe of Indians) and Hadrien Coumans developed the concept for what is today Lenape Center. However, the idea was a long time coming, guided by the influential Lenape people who planted the seeds. Three important individuals for Joe Baker and Hadrien Coumans were Nora Thompson Dean, Jim Rementer and Jim Revey.

As Joe Baker recollects,

“In the early 1970s tribal member, Nora Thompson Dean, broke the silence of 400 years of separation by a series of unprecedented trips East to our ancestral lands. A native speaker,  she visited museums, universities and participated in various symposiums contributing immensely to the scholarship of Lenape cultural practice. An imposing native woman who still held the medicine of plants and the voices and songs of the animals, I was inspired by her bold actions and creativity. She stirred within me the curiosity to know more about the world extending far beyond Oklahoma. It is her spirit that has guided the formation of Lenape Center as we dream and shape our future in the greater Manhattan area.” 

Jim Rementer is project director for the Talking Lenape Project, and the tribally appointed Director of the Lenape Language Project. Rementer “began his study of the Lenape or Delaware language in the summer of 1961. He returned the following summer and resumed his study with James H. Thompson, one of the oldest tribal members. After Mr. Thompson’s death in 1964, Jim continued his study primarily with Nora Thompson Dean, daughter of James Thompson. Jim continued his studies with other speakers, and in 1997 the Delaware Tribe appointed him director of the Lenape Language Project” (Lenape Talking Dictionary).

And looking back, Hadrien Coumans reminisces about Jim Revey,

“I visited with Jim in my youth, privileged to be able to share many conversations in his office. Revey was Sand Hill Lenape from New Jersey and head of New Jersey Indian Office. Nora would meet with him on the historic trips back east. I knew him growing up and through College."

James L.B. Revey, a Delaware Lenape, "was the chairman of the New Jersey Indian Office for the Delaware Lenape Nation in Orange for more than 24 years. Mr. Revey also was the designated state representative and spokesman for the federally-recognized Delaware tribe. He was a genealogical consultant, researcher, author and lecturer on the Delaware Lenape Tribe, New Jersey's first settlers. Mr. Revey gave presentations about his heritage to state universities, museums and other educational and historical institutions throughout New Jersey” (Star-Ledger, Sep 15, 98, Newark, NJ).

By 2009, those early seeds germinated into the Lenape Center, whose mission is to continue the cultural presence in Manhattan by promoting Lenape language and the creation, development, distribution and exhibition of Lenape arts and culture. That year, Lenape Center engaged with Intersections International—a multi-faith, multi-cultural, global social justice initiative of the Collegiate Church of New York—to facilitate a reconciliation event in Manhattan called Healing Turtle Island. Many Lenape people participated, with a look back at the history of Manhattan and an acknowledgement of the treatment of the Indians by the early colonists.

As a Mohican composer, I was invited to attend a formative meeting of the Lenape Center in 2010, where Joe Baker, Hadrien Coumans and Curtis Zunigha (Delaware Tribe of Indians) had the idea to sponsor an artistic work to benefit the mission of Lenape Center. The concept was proposed to commission a work from me, and when asked about this commission, I chuckled that we should do “the purchase of Manhattan!” I had just visited 1 Bowling Green in lower Manhattan, the Heye Foundation, that is now part of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) near Battery Park. Just south of the Museum entrance is a stone obelisk featuring a carving of an Indian man sharing some wampum with a Dutchman, with the inscription underneath “Purchase of Manhattan.” It’s why the notion for a new musical theater work popped into my head when asked. But what first started as a passing thought, next became an impactful suggestion, and finally a significant concrete plan.

After much fundraising on my part, I secured enough support to compose the work, together with Joseph Bruchac on the libretto. Many organizations and individuals have contributed to the works’ formation. Neva Pilgrim, Society for New Music, played an instrumental part in producing the first performance of the shorter 38-minute work (and significantly on the new version as well)! With her highly successful organization, Purchase of Manhattan took to it’s wings! With our deep appreciation, the new 52-minute concert opera—premiering a week from now in Manhattan—owes much to Intersections International, the Collegiate Churches of New York, and to the Society of New Music and Neva Pilgrim! Thank you all!

The world premiere of the new concert opera, Purchase of Manhattan, is the first large performance production of Lenape Center, and is designed to put our best foot forward toward Lenape Center’s mission into the future. I am incredibly privileged and proud to contribute to the Center’s mission, and I invite all of you—wherever you live—to join us in this vital endeavor “to continue the cultural presence in Manhattan by promoting Lenape language and the creation, development, distribution and exhibition of Lenape arts and culture.” The seeds were planted long ago by many Lenapes including Nora Thompson Dean, Jim Rementer and Jim Revey. And today, Joe Baker, Hadrien Coumans, and Curtis Zunigha of Lenape Center are nurturing the growing tree! 

Please come see the world premiere of the new concert opera Purchase of Manhattan on November 20, 7 PM, at the Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan. It’s going to be an exciting one-night-only, one-of-a-kind evening! Please join us!

Posted today, the new concert opera Purchase of Manhattan was featured in Time Out New York! "See a performance that won't cost you the price of an island—tickets are just $24!" www.purchaseofmanhattan.eventbrite.com

In a whirlwind of last minute preparations for the upcoming world premiere of Purchase of Manhattan (there are so many!), I easily drift to earlier discussions about what to call this new composition. I’m not referring to the title which is historical, but what actually IS this work—really? Together, with my collaborators and colleagues I’ve leaned one way , then another, to interpret this artistic work within the established music frameworks. And I’ve reached a conclusion.

In America, our musical theater works (such as broadway musicals) place a greater emphasis on the plot and words, rather than on the music. The plots are woven together with dialogue and acting, but are laced together with songs. When a song occurs, the plot basically stops running, held in a transfixed pause, to present some type of emotional expansion or a moment of commentary on the plot, such as a love song or an expression of feelings. When the song is finished, the plot is no longer rooted to that spot and scurries onward by way of acting once again.

Operas, however, are tremendously reliant on the music; it shapes everything. A songful out-of-time pause is called an “aria” and the plot rolls along by way of “recitative” or simply “recit” (following 'ordinary speech'). Unlike musical theater, however, everything in an opera is musical, including the non-aria recitations. The whole ball of wax is sung. 

A significant portion of Purchase of Manhattan is akin to an opera. Though devoid of sets, props, and costumes, the soloists are performing as 3 particular characters in the storyline. The baritone sings as a Lenape ‘everyman’ while the soprano sings the role of Manhattan Island itself, personified. The tenor is the Dutch visitor General Minuit. Supporting the soloist roles are the 2 choruses, the usual westernized SATB chorus (Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass), plus an added chorus of American Indians vocalizing in a traditional indigenous style. All of the choruses sing from a perspective of the Lenape, except the basses who are supportive of the General Minuit (tenor soloist). This distinct part of the larger work could be considered an “opera” without question.

However, the “other” orchestral moments that portray the uncolonized pre-contact Manhattan, together with the threnodial “history of the island” one hundred years afterward, has little or no dialogue. The afterward history portion is really a ‘sung historical recounting’ shared by the soloists more than a dramatized scene. Furthermore, the conclusion of the opera mixes together a musically reinterpreted ‘condolence ceremony’ with an American Indian ‘welcoming song’ performed using indigenous “vocables,” the syllables that are not language but impart emotional feelings. Bearing in mind these “other” moments, with the collective ensemble of solos, chorus and orchestra, Purchase of Manhattan would not be considered an “opera,” but something more akin to an orchestral concert work, such as a symphony with chorus, or a concerto with soloists.

Because this new work, Purchase of Manhattan, is a hybrid work, existing someplace between opera and concert music, I’ve chosen the invented designation “concert opera.” Yes, it’s not wholly an opera, but neither is it a symphony! At the end of the day, with the license that artists sometimes embrace while reaching for alternate understandings of assumed events, or holding radically different perspectives on the current trends, an American Indian composer has created a concert opera. As a Mohican citizen, I must admit I am especially proud of the caliber Joe Bruchac (co-librettist) and I have achieved with this new artistic work. If you are able, please join us on November 20, 2014, at 7 PM, inside the Marble Collegiate Church, for the aesthetically unconventional Purchase of Manhattan—the concert opera!

"Purchase of Manhattan" concert opera is profiled in Event Guide, New York!

LINK http://new.york.eventguide.com/events/e515051.htm

"'Purchase of Manhattan,' a groundbreaking Opera about the biggest real estate non-deal in the history of the United States will be sung-to-life, Thursday, Nov. 20, 7:00pm at the Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan... Our Times Press' exclusive interviews with Mr. Davids, Rev. Robert Chase [Collegiate Church] ... and Joe Baker [Lenape Center] ... will be presented in Part One of a three-part series to start next week... (Our Times Press, Nov 6-12, 2014; p.6).

Read the Our Times Press issue HERE.

Check out the two new Calendar listings for "Purchase of Manhattan" in Go Magazine and Eventful! The single-night performance is coming soon! Have you got your tickets yet? For only $24, you can experience an operatic look back at the purchase of Manhattan for yourself! Come join us on November 20th!