Kae Wilbert plays in the Eastman Community Music School’s Music Educators Wind Ensemble, is a retired music teacher from the Churchville-Chili School District, and sits on the Board of Trustees for Friends of Ganondagan. On Tuesday, August 1 at 7:00 p.m., Wilbert and her fellow music educators, directed by Bill Tiberio, will perform the world premiere of Granaries—a piece composed by Dr. Charles Shadle (Choctaw) in honor of Ganondagan’s WAMPUM/OTGÖA exhibition—at the Rush Henrietta High School Auditorium. She joined us to talk about the importance of this event.
Q: Tell us about the performance itself and how it integrates various communities.
K: The purpose of the commissioned piece is to honor and commemorate the International WAMPUM/OTGÖA exhibit that is being held at the Ganondagan State Historic Site. On loan from Paris are 300-year-old artifacts, including wampum belts and other items that were gifted by local Indigenous peoples during their visits to France, predating the formation of the United States. This visit has initiated new friendships, repaired old feuds, and created community between French, Haudenosaunee, and numerous other Indigenous peoples.
Kae Wilbert
Q: How are Eastman and the Eastman Community Music School involved with this concert?
K: The ECMS Music Educators Wind Ensemble, along with the Friends of Ganondagan, commissioned Dr. Charles Shadle (Choctaw), a music theory and composition senior lecturer at MIT, to write Granaries. The Music Educators Wind Ensemble will perform it on August 1. Prior to the concert at 6:00 p.m., Tim Long (Muscogee Creek and Choctaw), Artistic and Music Director of Opera for the Eastman School of Music, will moderate a discussion with Dr. Charles Shadle, Pete Jemison of Ganondagan, and ECMS jazz faculty member Bill Tiberio. High praise to Bill Tiberio for his talent and dedication as director of the ensemble for all the hard work on this intriguing but challenging score.
Q: What makes this event special?
K: Not only is it a world premiere for this piece, but it is a rare occurrence to bring classical musicians together with the Indigenous community in celebration of a historical event. Granaries commemorates the historical territory of Ganondagan being a granary, or repository for threshed grain, for its surrounding community.
Quoting from Dr. Shadle on the inspiration for this piece, “A notion came to me that the beads used in Wampum were analogous to the seed corn: both could be stored, hidden away, and brought back when needed. It seemed to me that so much Native American knowledge has been similarly stored, perhaps in a great museum, or perhaps in the hearts and traditions of Indigenous people. Then the analogy expanded for me into a way of thinking about musical notes themselves. My cryptic dots on music paper are also seeds of a sort and take life––in the hearing of the listener––when brought into sonic being by the musicians like those of the ECMS Music Educators Wind Ensemble. Music, like Wampum, yearns to be understood.”
Granaries is funded by the Cady Grant and the Committee on Native American Ministries of the Upper New York Conference of the United Methodist Church.
For more information about the WAMPUM/OTGÖA exhibition, visit Ganondagan’s website.
ECMS presents Granaries (World Premiere)
Tuesday, August 1, 2023
Pre-concert talk | 6:00 p.m.
Concert | 7:00 p.m.
Rush Henrietta High School Auditorium
1799 Lehigh Station Rd, Henrietta, NY 14467